25 September 2026
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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Acoustic hip hop from South London on her Mercury Prize winning debut album
7.2
If you know nothing about Speech Debelle, it doesn’t matter. As the title indicates, not a tune on Speech Therapy goes by without the revelation of more back story. Read Review
With lyrics so accomplished, entertaining and labyrinthine as these to be matched with well-measured, anti-bravado beats and textural sensitivity it’s difficult not to see a bright future for Speech Debelle. Read Review
May well have recorded most of her debut in Australia, but it sounds like it sprang from the murk and majesty of the capital. One to seriously watch. Read Review
Hip-hop could use a less rigid paradigm, less insularity, more girls on the mic. I suspect plenty of people with a greater investment in this genre would disagree and dismiss Speech Therapy as coffeehouse rap. Debelle anticipates that reaction, though, with the record's final lyric: ""I understand this is my speech therapy, this ain't rap."" Read Review
She’s a special talent who is primed to make something of herself with a little more polishing. But don’t get it twisted: Speech Therapy is an album you want and need to hear Read Review
Her stories of surviving tough times and living life resonate with an understated charm. Read Review
There's something intriguing about Speech Debelle, with a voice both husky and sweet, and a back story that's emotive if unclear Read Review
The issues she raps about don’t make for particularly cheery listening, and her constant tone of hurt reproach enervates rather than uplifts. Read Review
Speech Debelle: Speech Therapy
Blondshell Violins
This is an artist widening her frame without losing her bite. It’s confident, a little wistful, and often loud in all the right places Northern Transmissions
On her third album, Sabrina Teitelbaum fights to strike a balance between savage beauty and jagged home truths NME
Everything great about Blondshell is present on ‘Violins’, but it feels sharper, more adventurous and more assured then ever before Clash
LA alt-rock singer Blondshell trades plain-speaking lyricism for something more abstract, while Irish rock band Gurriers cut through the noise with their ambitious second album The Independent
While trying to find and assert herself, the song has her imagining walking down the aisle to Beethoven's Für Elise, even though no one, including her, would pick it as a wedding song All Music
An often-delicate inward vision that pairs frustration with beauty DIY
It's in her ability to take the everyday experience and turn it into an epic noise that Violins finds its sweet spot The Line Of Best Fit
It would be unfair to call Violins Blondshell’s finest work to date, given the strength of her previous albums. What’s clear, though, is that it’s every bit as good as what came before Under The Radar
Protomartyr Hotel Usona
The album is more eerie in tone than its predecessors, like a distant alarm sounding, trying to amplify the sounds we cannot hear Northern Transmissions
It’s a bleak listen, sure, but Protomartyr haven’t ever been the comforting types. In fact, they’ve chosen the perfect time to double down on their righteous anger and despair, and if everything were to come to a catastrophic end right now, you’ve got the perfect soundtrack for it Far Out
For newcomers, it's a perfectly moody entry point. Hotel Usona is the sound of a band settling into their own skin, creating a space that's uniquely theirs and generously sharing the key Exclaim
From singer Joe Casey’s handmade album artwork to drummer Alex Leonard’s impish, kinetic inversions of classic post-punk rhythm, the Detroit band crafts an austere, unflinching record as bleak as it is cathartic Paste Magazine
This is not a hotel you'd want to stay at any time soon, but it's a remarkable record to spend time with. Print edition only Uncut
Under dim hotel lights, Casey’s lyricism appears foreboding and alien in a way it never has before The Line Of Best Fit
Ezra Collective Here Because of Hope
Arguably the biggest jazz band in the country return with an album that shows off both their exuberant and more reflective sides musicOMH
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
Rosalía Lux
Kendrick Lamar Damn.
D'Angelo And The Vanguard Black Messiah
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Ghosteen
Spiritbox Tsunami Sea
Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure
Hayley Williams Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party
Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways