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.
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Second album of folk / indie pop from the North Carolina band led by Ari Picker
7.5
Draws heavily from his [Ari Picker] classical training, yet maintains a smart, accessible core that brings to mind Sufjan Stevens at his least quirky Read Review
Lost In The Trees has constructed a beautiful memorial for the soul of Ari Picker’s mother to rest in Read Review
This may be one of the best records of the year so far Read Review
The tracks on A Church are beatifically mournful, its orchestrations minor key, and its vocals sung by an author distinctly heavy of heart Read Review
The album is stirring without wallowing; it can move even the listener who knows nothing of the backstory Read Review
Too deep in its emotion to idly listen to, and too warm in its instrumentation to wear you down, this record proves a strange, incomplete comfort -- one that embraces loss as much as it tangles with it Read Review
The tragedy that inspired and plagues this album seems to be offered as a celebration rather than an exercise in mourning Read Review
A stirring coda that embraces the aftermath of despair, ringing with a resilience that's inspired, ambitious, mesmerizing and majestic Read Review
The album is as intricate and well-crafted as a Radiohead release, with highly emotional content that was inspired by the recent suicide of frontman Ari Picker’s mother Read Review
A mother’s suicide inspires moving orchestral folk, beauty and hope found amid grief Read Review
Over the course of a dozen songs, frontman Ari Picker tries to make sense of his mother's suicide against a backdrop of rich orchestration Read Review
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Lost In The Trees: A Church That Fits Our Needs
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