2 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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Chillwave, new wave and synth-heavy indie pop on the second release from the Brooklyn quartet
6.2
Small Black successfully avoids a sophomore slump by harnessing their various sonic inclinations Read Review
We are faced with a band who possess a sound that is not so much polished but layered with textures and flourishes that prove they have matured into a far more interesting proposition Read Review
With the album’s 10 tracks, the foursome find their emotional treasure, only at the cost of their more alluring production components Read Review
This record could be the perfect soundtrack to the late night tales that unfold after you leave the club alone Read Review
While Limits of Desire isn't ground-breaking, it's a charming record suggestive of a band with a bright future Read Review
A record whose production puts their music in sharper relief, but does so with an R&B slickness that once again puts Small Black right in the center of the zeitgeist rather than above or outside of it Read Review
Vocals slide and glide in layers between the sort of chilled dance beats you’d most likely hear at 5am in ‘Club Euro-Zero’, that smart and sophisticated cellar bar in the basement of your concrete and glass hotel, in whichever city you happen to find yourself tonight Read Review
It’s when they do what their contemporaries never quite dare to do that they establish an exciting new voice Read Review
This is an absolutely-not-chillwave, laid back, breezy slice of intelligent pop music Read Review
Feels like a record you might never truly fancy Read Review
It’s up for the group to let out the energy that’s waiting to move from potential to kinetic Read Review
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Small Black: Limits Of Desire
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