3 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.
Browse specific styles
Debut full-length effort of dark and strange pop from the California singer-songwriter
6.2
If 2011 doesn’t belong to Sea of Bees, something will have gone very wrong indeed Read Review
Print edition only
Possessed with a voice that squeaks incomprehensibly like a low-budget Kate Bush. Print edition only
Succeeds through Baezinger's singing and storytelling Read Review
The control of the arrangements and the withholding of her voice’s upper range that makes Sea of Bees an intriguing prospect Read Review
A heart-warming, heartbreaking introduction Read Review
Her efforts to ensure that each song is sincerely crafted culminate in an honest and likeable first album Read Review
Wears her heart on her sleeve; her lyrics are infused with romance and cover more bases than one Read Review
Country-folk with indie leanings. Print edition only
With overdubbed vocals and multiple aqueous, shifting instrumental layers, the more intricate textures of bands like Sigur Ros are brought to mind Read Review
A fine introduction to an artist who will definitely be sticking around for a while longer Read Review
Her lyrics read like a teenage diary, solipsistic and sometimes startling in their innocence Read Review
Her voice will initially turn heads, she has the Kate Bush wail and range, her intonation is quirky – and she knows when to slur and when to sing the words. Read Review
Everything here threatens to launch into the stratosphere, but fails to get as far as the tree tops Read Review
Agreeable enough and nicely produced but not nearly as involving as it ought to be Read Review
Surprisingly one dimensional Read Review
A similar mix of emotional openness and affinity for the natural world as Laura Veirs, with something of Veirs's inquistive approach to musical textures, too Read Review
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Sea of Bees: Songs for the Ravens
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 Virgin
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
Frankie Cosmos Different Talking
Different Talking introduces some novel elements to the Frankie Cosmos sound, but despite that, their core identity remains intact Spectrum Culture
U.S. Girls Scratch It
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
The album is a hesitant step in the right direction for the singer Slant Magazine
Virgin is Lorde at her best yet as an affective poet and, frustratingly, at her most tamed as a digital sound designer The Line Of Best Fit
The New York band’s sixth LP feels like a scaled-up team effort. The newly expansive sound suits Greta Kline’s hard-won self-knowledge Pitchfork
Lorde’s fourth album returns to the digital, physical sound of Melodrama. While rooted somewhat in her past, it’s a gritty, tender, and often transcendent ode to freedom and transformation Pitchfork
Her fourth album celebrates the messiness of being human – and is also her most compelling and revealing musicOMH
BC Camplight A Sober Conversation
It’s perhaps the finest release of his career from start to finish, and that’s beating some stiff competition Far Out
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