25 March 2026
Here's how it works: The Recent Releases chart brings together critical reaction to new albums from more than 50 sources worldwide. It's updated daily. Albums qualify with 5 reviews, and drop out after 6 weeks into the longer timespan charts.
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First album in 14 years from the pop singer-songwriter and onetime Take That member
4.5
He’s essentially a classic pop singer-songwriter in the stalwart British style of McCartney and Elton John Read Review
A reliable collection of balladry and harmony-flooded pop songs Read Review
Barlow’s command of melody is as strong as ever, especially on the lovely God, but there’s not enough of his own personality in the music Read Review
There’s flashes of very skilled songwriting, but there’s also the cynical, calculated feel of a record built with a certain commercial targets in mind Read Review
Even in the album’s more exciting moments, Gary sounds a little lonely. It’s hard not to yearn for the ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s of Robbie and the gang Read Review
When Gary Barlow actually has something to say, it turns out he can say it rather eloquently. That he usually doesn't is Since I Saw You Last's big problem Read Review
There is something of Paul McCartney about Barlow's work and persona, the niceness and smiley opaque frontage, but this album shows none of McCartney's occasional sense of adventure and is the worse for it Read Review
Gary’s safety-first slump into a ballad-ageddon of platitudes is even cheesier than his eyebrow-and-stubble sex-face on the tastefully black-and-white sleeve Read Review
Reference points include ... banjo-virulent arena folk in the exhausted Mumford vein as well as the tritest and most insipid of musical theatre showtunes Read Review
Gary Barlow: Since I Saw You Last
Underscores U
It’s a confident evolution from her 2020 EP Character Development!, with Grey producing an utterly refined sound that encapsulates the highs of the 2010 pop, bro-step and bubblegum bass eras The Quietus
Kim Gordon Play Me
She’s incorporating sounds and techniques that – and apologies for bringing age into it – most other septuagenarians would recoil from The Quietus
BTS ARIRANG
There’s a lot riding on the sensational K-pop group’s first album in four years, but its generic songs ring hollow and lack the vim and vigor of the band’s best work Pitchfork
It’s a scintillating experience, perhaps the moment where underscores fully out-strips her peers, and comes into her own Clash
Ladytron Paradises
Ladytron have produced an album that, from its inception, sought to invoke the same spirit that the band had 25 years ago Far Out
Gorillaz The Mountain
The strongest case in years that Gorillaz can still make records that matter as records Dork
'Play me' doesn’t try to comfort. It tries to provoke, energise and outlast the scroll Dork
The Orielles Only You Left
These songs come from months of demo-hoarding and forensic listening, the band archiving every practice-room spark before lovingly picking through the results Dork
James Blake Trying Times
Blake sounds energised by the room he has carved out for himself Dork
Harry Styles Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.
This isn’t an album built like a straight line from hook to hook. It moves in waves, often favouring texture and atmosphere over immediate release Dork
It’s technical excellence as a musical product cannot be overstated. For a pop album to be this busy yet possess a pocket as deep and rich as underscores displays here is simply amazing Sputnik Music (staff)
Indie rock icon Kim Gordon acerbically wrestles with the state of the world over hip-hop and industrial beats on Play Me PopMatters
The former electro-pop enfant terrible swings big on her latest album, compressing all her split personalities and eclectic tastes into a high-gloss, high-stakes gamble to remake pop on her own terms Pitchfork
On U, she finds a clearly-defined, rounded-out identity in her music for the first time, and she delivers the most immediate and the most robust work of her career The Line Of Best Fit
Performing, writing and producing everything herself, April Grey pares back her hyperpop electronics for an LP in thrall to 90s pop-R&B, with songs that big stars would die for The Guardian
Since we've been around, that is. So, the highest-rated albums from the past twelve years or so. Rankings are calculated to two decimal places.
Kendrick Lamar To Pimp A Butterfly
Fiona Apple Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Rosalía Lux
Kendrick Lamar Damn.
D'Angelo And The Vanguard Black Messiah
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Ghosteen
Spiritbox Tsunami Sea
Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure
Hayley Williams Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party
Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways