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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Third album of synth pop / indie rock from the Santa Barbara five-piece
6.2
Gardens & Villa have granted themselves a new lease on their artistic life, and have produced one of the year’s best rock albums Read Review
Music For Dogs kind of ends up resembling a bag of chocolate misshapes: weird-looking and questionable, but still somehow oddly loveable Read Review
More in the mode of the band’s self-titled 2011 debut album than 2014’s Dunes Read Review
It's the songs rather than the production that will keep repeat listeners coming back, even if they don't notice at first Read Review
The slinky synthesizers and psychedelic flute flourishes have been toned down in favor of frantic pianos and increasingly spaced-out vocal echoes Read Review
The third and best album yet from Santa Barbara’s Gardens & Villa Read Review
The band is worried about the status quo being upset, and that applies to how they approach their music, too Read Review
Will it give you something think about? Something feel? Something to inspire you? Something to get you up to dance? Something to soundtrack your day with? Something to remember? Unfortunately not Read Review
This album takes time to blossom, flowering when they leave behind the uneasiness of Maximize Results and find bliss in Paradise Read Review
The potential in lieu of this makes it that much sadder that Gardens & Villa didn't take more time to polish the sounds of last year's Dunes Read Review
The guitars are thin, the drum beats flimsy, the vocals frequently obfuscated by a droning synth or a similar effect Read Review
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Gardens And Villa: Music For Dogs
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