18 July 2018
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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Belfast quartet's fourth album of indie surf rock
6.1
If Girls Names relied more on their melodic instincts, Stains on Silence would be their best record yet Read Review
At eight songs, it’s easy to go through Stains on Silence multiple times. Each time you come back with a different stain left by one of the songs. But don’t try to wash it off; it’s permanent Read Review
It's tough for a band to reshape themselves drastically without losing the best parts of what came before, but Girls Names do a very good job of keeping the drama, intensity, and twisted emotion in place while taking the music into darker, odder realms Read Review
Singer Cathal Cully’s voice is the perfect epitome of the genre’s requirements, as are the piercing synths, the vintage drum machines and the occasional metallic/industrial sounds that act as a constant wink to the ’80s and eventually threaten to overshadow the band’s own progression Read Review
There’s too little that hits home, and too much that feels like Girls Names being experimental for experimental’s sake Read Review
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Cowboy Junkies Cowboy Junkies
All That Reckoning feels like music to listen to on an oppressively hot day, accompanied by an icy bourbon, under a tree The Arts Desk
A really well-produced, self-assured and enjoyable listen that can be played multiple types and one that could have only made by a band with a long rich life experience God Is In The TV
Laurel Halo Raw Silk Uncut Wood
See review Tiny Mix Tapes
Having defined her trademark sound on ‘Dust’, Halo has set out to confound one more – perhaps indicating that her music’s as playful as her persona after all NME
This is music that transports without ever deadening the mind The Arts Desk
Laurel Halo’s most ambient—and most linear—record to date swims in mysterious electro-acoustic textures; it marks a departure from her usual mode of thorny, cerebral electronic composition Pitchfork
Halo has tried her hand at just about everything and while Raw Silk Uncut Wood may alienate some in its distinctness from her back catalogue it finds a firm place in her ever-growing oeuvre The 405
Lotic Power
Morgan's music can be dizzyingly frantic, but there's a compelling emotional intelligence within it Resident Advisor
Luluc Sculptor
More quiet yet stunning songs Earbuddy
Chastity Death Lust
Those with a lust for LOUD rock songs will want to hear Chastity's debut album Earbuddy
Deafheaven Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Subverting expectations to bring you closer to emotional reality: pain and beauty are one in the same Sputnik Music (staff)
Florence + The Machine High As Hope
Undoubtedly the saddest record to come out of the Machine camp, and Welch owns it with that flamethrower emotional power Spectrum Culture
Messy and candid, in a way that imitates movement and turmoil Loud And Quiet
Gorillaz The Now Now
Albarn is at his most interesting when he is in the spotlight Under The Radar
Body/Head The Switch
A fascinating journey into post-apocalyptic art-punk muck Rolling Stone
Since we've been around, that is. So, the highest-rated albums from the past eight years or so. Rankings are calculated to two decimal places.
Kendrick Lamar To Pimp A Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar Damn.
D'Angelo And The Vanguard Black Messiah
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Skeleton Tree
Frank Ocean Channel Orange
Anaïs Mitchell Hadestown
Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Leonard Cohen You Want It Darker
Sufjan Stevens Carrie & Lowell
Mount Eerie A Crow Looked at Me