4 July 2025
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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Second album of post dubstep / soul / R&B from the South-East Londoner
Debut album from the well hyped South-East Londoner, dealing in that slippery non-genre of post dubstep / soul / R&B
Jamie Woon : Making Time
It does make for a sophisticated make-out record
Woon is an oddball, even in the twitchy pop world of London
While the music is groovy enough and the bass is smooth, it's all too anonymous
Woon has, from the start, been his strongest when he lets his voice say everything that’s necessary. This might come across as traditionalist, but that is OK. With songs this good, little else needs to be said
While the musical palette makes more use of jazz and psychedelic echoes and whispers, Woon’s voice is the main act
Sumptuously slick, and with the humidity of a tropical locale. Make sure you make time for Making Time
The album sags a little in the middle but there is much here to justify a nearly five-year wait
A set of songs that make lingering seem the most pleasurable of activities
Given how relaxed and poised the whole sequence plays out, Woon could have fooled his audience into thinking that he and his partners merely rolled into the studio without any ideas and knocked the whole thing out in a couple weeks
Woon might have been expected to return with a dancefloor-focused second album, but instead he’s taken the soul road, and it sounds like a brilliant statement of intent
Lorde Virgin
Because for all the grand ideas here, it feels like Lorde has more to say about them, and as the aesthetic and songcraft of Virgin illustrates — almost despite all of this — she is more than skilled enough to do so Beats Per Minute
Frankie Cosmos Different Talking
Different Talking feels like Frankie Cosmos finally coming into its own. By self-producing, the band articulates a broader sound palette than on 2022’s Inner World Peace Northern Transmissions
A thrilling comeback that puts Lorde’s trajectory to the stars back on track DIY
Haim I quit
It’s easy to wonder if the soft-rock trio’s fourth record would be better if it were just a few songs — or, ideally, about 10-15 minutes — shorter Spectrum Culture
Hotline TNT Raspberry Moon
By opening up the recording process to accommodate more people and more ideas, Hotline TNT embrace a different side of themselves on Raspberry Moon, one that feels warmer and more open-hearted while still retaining the fuzz and noise that made their early albums so bracing Spectrum Culture
U.S. Girls Scratch It
While Scratch It lives up to its aged influences, Remy gives these nine tracks an undeniable immediacy, both with her singing and lyricism — which are eerily left of field — along with her spot-on taste in backing musicians and homage-motif Under The Radar
Loyle Carner hopefully!
The sounds are slightly different here than on previous albums and his tentative sojourn into singing is a success because his voice connects as easily as his rapping does Albumism
Lorde trades in her secrecy and mystique for a tremendously healing, desperately relatable record that cements her mark as her generation’s defining artist Northern Transmissions
On the uncomfortable paths of the 28-year-old’s fourth album, slam-dunk bangers are substituted with reinvention and restraint surrendered through hushed, reflective, and carnal synth-pop vestiges Paste Magazine
The New Zealand pop star chips away to reveal her purest self on her fourth album NME
For Lorde, it's an opportunity to reclaim something she thought she had lost long ago, but has always been within her: her true self Exclaim
Different Talking introduces some novel elements to the Frankie Cosmos sound, but despite that, their core identity remains intact Spectrum Culture
Musically Scratch It will probably be the least memorable in U.S Girls’ discography and aside from ‘Like James Said’ and ‘Bookends‘, the relatively thrill-less album does sort of fly by unnoticeably, made worse by the weak closing track No Fruit God Is In The TV
Lorde may not break entirely new ground on fourth album Virgin, but its warmth and texture make it consistently compelling and quietly brilliant The Skinny
yeule Evangelic Girl Is A Gun
A sun-drenched pop album — perhaps the pop record of the summer Under The Radar
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"Full of love, fatherhood and feeling, the Croydon lyricist’s fourth is less a reinvention than a maturation" (7/10 - musicOMH). "As moving as it is musically satisfying" (8/10 - DIY)
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
Spiritbox Tsunami Sea
Kendrick Lamar Damn.
D'Angelo And The Vanguard Black Messiah
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Ghosteen
Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure
Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Skeleton Tree
Frank Ocean Channel Orange