18 May 2012
Here's how it works: The Recent Releases chart brings together critical reaction to new albums from more than 50 publications. It's updated daily. Albums qualify with 5 reviews, and drop out after 6 weeks into the longer timespan charts.
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Tracks the critics are loving: hear them now
" Highlights include DJ Ease My Mind which is sure to become a club anthem" The Line Of Best Fit
Listen on SpotifyListen on grooveshark
" Metamorphoses commence in unison on the mighty creepiness of the album’s near-seven-minute centerpiece, Simmer. And does it ever" Pop Matters
" Simply put, it’s one of the singles of the year" music OMH
" The finest jangle pop this side of the Rockies" The Digital Fix
" When they hit full, throat-ripping, riff-driven throttle, such as on Gebbie Street, they sound superbly riotous" The Fly
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Self-produced, self-funded second album of dance-punk from London five piece
6.7
An early contender for Quietus album of the year? It wouldn't be too optimistic to think so Read Review
It’s The Black Kids with their ambient, wandering attitude honed down to a laser-like focus. It’s CSS, it’s Paramore, it’s Miss Kittin, it’s bits of them all with a thousand times more attack Read Review
The Optimist is taut and dark, like The XX learning to dance, with basslines that seize your spine and hooks that snag your brai Read Review
All in all, it’s a cracking comeback Read Review
Self-produced, self-funded and self-released, The Optimist is much darker than their previous effort and the feeling is anything but upbeat Read Review
It is difficult to imagine a better pop album coming out this year Read Review
An album that invites you to listen from beginning to end, and get lost in the haze – it’s less flashy than their first, for sure, but no less rewarding Read Review
Let’s get straight to business: NYPC have grown up Read Review
With nods to Siouxsie Sioux on the excellent title track and to Toni Halliday on Before The Light, it's all gone post-punk goth with a pop ethic Read Review
Print edition only
Despite forays into a wider world, and the dreamy, vulnerable and hypnotic subtlety of 'Stone', you can't help but think that NYPC have still got one foot firmly anchored in the glowstick glimmer of past glories Read Review
The 45 minutes of broody disco contained herein is never unlikable. But there's too much that sounds like what a New Young Pony Club album track ought to sound like Read Review
Too often gets lost in non-committal melodies as Bulmer tries and tries again to capture quote-worthy elegant wastefulnes Read Review
Recommended only to seriously die-hard NWPC fans, and even then you’ll probably want to spotify it first. Put this nag down Read Review
The band is too caught up in being serious to even realize that there’s not a whole going on beneath the surface Read Review
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New Young Pony Club: The Optimist
Squarepusher Ufabulum
In the form of his life. Print edition only Uncut
The Magnetic North Orkney: Symphony of the Magnetic North
Majestic yet frustratingly aloof. Print edition only Uncut
The windswept islands captured in music. Print edition only Mojo
No, Squarepusher doesn’t seem to give a damn, but he does want to smoosh eardrums with whacky stuff. More power to him The Arts Desk
Some of the tracks are over-arranged which gives the album, overall, a bit of an identity crisis Bowlegs
An evocative, indelible, and utterly majestic ode to Orkney AU Magazine
Ultimately Ufabulum’s jarring stylistic schism may make the album tough to digest for many people, but the quality of Jenkinson’s craftsmanship remains constant throughout The Skinny
These are timeless songs which rather than being of any genre - not even the hard-to-define 'folk' - seem to spring from the bare open horizons, low-lying islands and sea of Orkney, creating a unique bleak and windswept aesthetic The Quietus
Funky as he wants to be — EPCOT-rocking splatterjazz, rainbow-tasting ravewave, Inspector Gadget ringtone funk Spin
Each track is rich with strings and woodwind, but all with an unavoidable folky edge. It’s a formula that works, and works to the extent that sets it aside in terms of originality music OMH
A truly beguiling record Drowned In Sound
A bit cold, clinical and repetitive NME
Hugely impressive, technically, but too cold and forbidding for many tastes BBC
Public Image Ltd This Is PiL
It may not be of the calibre of Metal Box, but it finds its maker firmly in 2012, not 1979, and with plenty still to grouse about Uncut
Saint Etienne Words And Music By Saint Etienne
These songs are their sharpest in over a decade. Print edition only NME
What's finding favour with bloggers & other review sites
The Mars Volta Noctourniquet
Bruce Springsteen Wrecking Ball
Andrew Bird Break It Yourself
Following up the highly-acclaimed Teen Dream album was never going to be an easy feat but Beach House appear to have succeeded with Bloom. It has 10s from two sources and a 9.1 from Pitchfork, while FasterLouder see it as a "transportive journey"
Since we've been around, that is. So, the highest-rated albums from the past three and a half years or so
Anaïs Mitchell Hadestown
Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
PJ Harvey Let England Shake
Ry Cooder Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down
Arcade Fire The Suburbs
Tom Waits Bad As Me
Janelle Monáe The ArchAndroid
Joanna Newsom Have One On Me
Gillian Welch The Harrow & The Harvest
Burial Kindred