1 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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Fourth album from the Copenhagen-based synthpop band led by Swedish producer Hannes Norrvide
5.9
The melodies are joyously simple and memorable, and nearly every song on the album is infectiously catchy Read Review
While Compassion crosses over unapologetically into the realm of pop and new-wave, it still feels tethered to the post-punk and noise scenes from which Norrvide and synth player Loke Rahbek emerged Read Review
It’s a largely fat-free collection of club-ready Danish synth-pop Read Review
The band has some exciting years ahead Read Review
They save the best for last and In Return explores the more experimental side of the band Read Review
Lust for Youth's Compassion is danceable and hypnotizing, to the point where their songs' clichés of mystery and jealousy become erased in the trance Read Review
With incremental steps, Lust For Youth are evolving into far more than a facsimile of their influences Read Review
Lust For Youth have spent the last six years refining lo-fi darkwave into club-ready synth-pop. Compassion is the end product of that evolution, a once rough stone polished into a lustrous crystal Read Review
It’s a purposeful record that shows a trio holding on to the makings of something quite special Read Review
Compassion is at its most gripping when it decides to go against the grain Read Review
When the pace slows the group’s very affected 80s-evoking style becomes a bit overbearing Read Review
Channel their inner new romantic. Print edition only
Sees the Danish act rummage through a list of influences of the alternative, electronic and European varieties, and they’re doing it with lots of style, and some flair Read Review
While the second half of the album almost makes up for its flaws, it doesn't quite manage to make Compassion a memorable whole Read Review
For the most part plodding, unimaginative 80s-inspired synthpop Read Review
Compassion feels like a cover album of some lost early Depeche Mode EP Read Review
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Lust for Youth: Compassion
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