22 August 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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Our archive of chart news from the past, and present.
Nourished By Time The Passionate Ones
Marcus Brown yearns for lasting love and satisfaction – and puts faith in his future NME
Shows significant growth from 2023's more dream-poppy debut Erotic Probiotic 2. One senses this twisted R&B Baby Bird has even more in the locker. Print edition only Mojo
An experimental R'n'B album in which desire and disillusionment share the same groove The Skinny
The album sounds rich, even if the people Brown sings about (and for) are not. The songs themselves are brain-swirls of half-remembered fragments, dreams, bits of song, ephemera that repeats in your mind against the everyday wash of thought. You’re captured in its sticky, squelchy synth web from start to finish The Quietus
Marcus Brown’s second album makes a plea for big feelings in earthy vocals, rolling breakbeats and a contender for song of the summer The Guardian
The result is a testament to what can be achieved by committing yourself to your dreams and desires, and it should see Nourished By Time handsomely rewarded with growing notoriety and admiration Beats Per Minute
The album sets up shop comfortably on the border between R&B and lo-fi indie pop Slant Magazine
Brown is no longer trapped working feeling unappreciated. Now, he’s inviting people into his unwavering, vital psyche. If you're listening and agreeing with Brown, you’re already one of the passionate ones The Line Of Best Fit
Each movement is staggeringly inventive in its own right, even as it’s whizzing by you. His interrogations of art, relationships, and late-stage capitalism make it his most considered, elaborate expression yet Paste Magazine
Maroon 5 Love Is Like
The band continues its unchallenged legacy as the kings of normie rock. The swagger is unconvincing; the odes to reconciliation tepid; even LISA and Lil Wayne can’t rescue these songs from banality Pitchfork
Water From Your Eyes It’s A Beautiful Place
It’s essential and current, ending the lyrics for the album on a plea for the future that is not dystopian Clash
Wolf Alice The Clearing
It’s a testimony to Wolf Alice, then, that such broad, ambitious, and overtly pop material as ‘The Clearing’ can remain tethered to their roots Clash
Mac DeMarco Guitar
‘Guitar’ is easily one of Mac DeMarco’s most humane, and emotive records Clash
Flimsy and unfulfilling, ‘Love Is Like’ stumbles to a halt with the crooning ‘My Love’ and insubstantial ‘California’. Sometimes waiting doesn’t make the heart grow fonder Clash
Marissa Nadler New Radiations
Marissa Nadler’s tenth studio album, New Radiations, is her most raw, stripped-down, and intimate to date. It’s also one of her best PopMatters
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"Hayden Anhedönia closes the ‘Ethel Cain’ chapter of her artistic journey with a bleak yet beautiful record" (10/10 - NME)
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