6 December 2013
Here's how it works: The Recent Releases chart brings together critical reaction to new albums from more than 50 publications worldwide. It's updated daily. Albums qualify with 5 reviews, and drop out after 6 weeks into the longer timespan charts.
Browse specific styles
Fifth album of alt.rock from the Bristol-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Nick Talbot
7.0
His songs initially appear to be gentle, rueful folk ballads on cursory listen but a decent pair of headphones reveals deep pools of shimmering reverb and a submarine world of echo Read Review
Gravenhurst's most solid and unsettling work to date Read Review
An exquisite, unexpected gem. Print edition only
Talbot’s created a uniquely potent blend of icy chill and soothing balm, and with it that rarest of things: totally cliché-dodging songwriting Read Review
It adds up to a beautifully haunting set, and the sense that Talbot is surely among music's best-kept secrets Read Review
Superficially unassuming, taken as a whole it’s really a bold, consistent collection Read Review
His best work since ‘Black Holes In The Sand’ Read Review
This is folk music going into unknown territory, braving dangers, making new footprints, and, in the process, changing into something else entirely Read Review
A melancholy beauty predominates. Print edition only
The mellotrons, optigans, and synthesizers employed here hang like a silvery mist atop the cyclical fingerpicking that makes up the majority of the album, which either soothes or lulls, depending on your predilection for such softness Read Review
A memory-haunted journey through the dead voices and deep narratives of Englands lost. Print edition only
Much of this record plays like a tribute to ’90s miserabilists Red House Painters, all phantom-like reverb over misleadingly comforting folk tropes Read Review
A reminder of just how great Gravenhurst can be when they’re on top of their game, which they are here more often than not Read Review
Ignorable background music and the lowest point of the Gravenhurst discography thus far Read Review
Roll over video for more options
Gravenhurst: The Ghost In Daylight
TOY Join The Dots
Join The Dots is a very good album, derivative maybe, but much more than the sum of its parts music OMH
Mutual Benefit Love’s Crushing Diamond
"Gentle" and "reassuring" aren't necessarily the most exciting compliments to give an album, but Mutual Benefit's Jordan Lee turns those virtues into a remarkably engaging full-length debut All Music
For those of us always searching for something new, for something else, particularly in music, this is the type of album that we are looking for Paste Magazine
In no way is Jordan Lee a complacent songwriter. In fact, throughout this collection of seven gorgeous, baroque-folk songs, he’s dealing in perhaps the most pervasive and difficult internal battle of all Pitchfork
The textures of this record are so pronounced, the colors running in waves so profound that it’s almost impossible to believe that one man created them (and on his debut record, to boot) Consequence Of Sound
Robert Pollard Blazing Gentlemen
16 slightly fried examples of his gift for surrealist pop/classic rock synthesis. Print edition only Mojo
Worth a listen, it's just that he has done all this better before. Print edition only Q
Blazing Gentlemen simply sees the man operating in as relentlessly fine form as ever The Line Of Best Fit
Cold Crows Dead I Fear A New World
You can't help but admire their ambition. Print edition only Uncut
Those searching for the sounds of the '60s today will rightly lap it up. Print edition only Q
An album that comes across like a few exquisite, mysterious pages torn out of an old master’s sketch book Time Out
Chalk this one up as a hit A.V. Club
Proof that there are British bands crafting alternatively minded pop music without resorting to scene fads or dull retreads of Britpop’s worst farts. I Fear a New World is definitely worth an investigation Drowned In Sound
Steel and McLeod’s often exciting first strides as Cold Crows Dead have been well worth the effort Time Out
This is so over-the-top Cold Crows Dead's studio sessions must've been a hoot DIY
Make your voice heard: vote in the ADM Readers' Album of the Year poll. Click the link below (or just mail us at admteam@anydecentmusic.com), put your top 5 listed in order with artist name then album name (they can be albums or EPs), put Readers' Poll as the subject and we'll do the rest. Easy as that! Thanks ...
Click here to send your vote
Some extremely enthusiastic reviews for the full-length debut from Brooklyn-based indie folk singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Lee. As well as a BNM from Pitchfork, there's a 9/10 from Consequence of Sound, while All Music call it "a remarkably engaging debut"
Since we've been around, that is. So, the highest-rated albums from the past four years and a half or so. Rankings are calculated to two decimal places.
Frank Ocean Channel Orange
Anaïs Mitchell Hadestown
Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Deafheaven Sunbather
PJ Harvey Let England Shake
My Bloody Valentine mbv
Ry Cooder Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down
Kendrick Lamar good kid, m.A.A.d city
Arcade Fire The Suburbs
Patty Griffin American Kid