Beats Per Minute's Scores
- Music
For 1,700 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
57% higher than the average critic
-
4% same as the average critic
-
39% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.1 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 75
Highest review score: | Achtung Baby [Super Deluxe] | |
---|---|---|
Lowest review score: | If Not Now, When? |
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 1,553 out of 1700
-
Mixed: 129 out of 1700
-
Negative: 18 out of 1700
1700
music
reviews
-
- Critic Score
At heart, it’s all too modest, too fatigued, too lacking in ambition and attitude.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 31, 2022
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
She’s basically incapable of making a song that isn’t at least pretty, but this album shows that some songs are simply meant to have more meat on the bone, and others are meant to be left out of the conversation altogether.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Aug 28, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
To his credit, he once again proves why he’s esteemed at the former via the blunt insights of “TMVTL”, but the “run that verse back” Benny is all but absent on Everybody Can’t Go. Once more, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but he doesn’t seem sure how to replace that energy with conviction. Even The Alchemist gets dragged down by the pursuit of safe material.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jan 30, 2024
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There’s so much talent and story hidden behind the mask, but this album isn’t Orville Peck at his truest.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Apr 11, 2022
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Judging from these recordings, it’s unclear where Secret Machines are heading. Their strength lies in dynamic live shows, and those are postponed until further notice. Awake in the Brain Chamber possesses the clean-cut sound of a mainstream rock album that can sell large quantities, but it lacks the wild abandon and unique inspiration that leads to fervent adoration – the qualities that made their debut album into an underdog classic of the era. But the potential remains.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Aug 24, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Cracker Island’s forgettable, milquetoast assembly line of tracks – though crisply and professionally engineered – proves that having it all shouldn’t always mean using it all.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 2, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
What remains is a record that feels all too groomed, all polished execution and often not well thought out. Music to nod and tap your foot along to, then turn it off and move on.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Sep 7, 2022
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
As is, I Am Very Far is far from a lot of things, the biggest among these is the high bar that Okkervil River has never had a problem exceeding, until now.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 6, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Where There Existed an Addiction to Blood seemed to take the listener down a spiral of harsh violence and vaguely interconnected moments of supernatural terror, Visions of Bodies Being Burned just feels lost.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Oct 26, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Unfortunately, after years of anticipation, the reveal is an overtly tedious shell of everything Parker has ever charmed into existence. In fact, tedious may be an understatement.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 25, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There’s nothing on this third round that shocks or surprises, it’s all standard formula Barnett except for her witticisms being down-played slightly, and maybe her watered-down mope-rock influences are a little brighter on her sleeve.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 15, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 5, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
After three albums about the same thing, Hinds haven’t shown any real progression by shedding their lo-fi trappings; instead they’ve just unearthed their shortcomings.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 4, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Toward the Low Sun staggers to get that momentum, though it does achieve atonement through progression.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 1, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
What works for Lambchop in the case of TRIP is the level of consistency in their sound that they were able to achieve through years of playing music together. However, it does not exactly bring the album together, because the tracks are thematically very different, and the band’s decision to apply the same approach to them contributes to the plainness of TRIP.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 18, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Junior Boys’ track record shows that change is good, but here it feels like the tiptoe before a more significant step.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Oct 31, 2022
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Wrecking Ball is an album that will reinforce most everyone's preexisting opinion of The Boss, whether they be good or bad.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 12, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This collection of radiant jangle pop songs, burdened by nostalgic love and depressive yearning for something real, ultimately loses its luster. Everything else blends into one garbled, hazy murmur that ensues without much variance.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 14, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s not bad music per se, but lacking Weiss’ sharp drumming and the virtuoso guitar work the two are so good at, there’s not much left of what made Sleater-Kinney exciting.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 14, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Local Business isn't a bad album, but it doesn't completely pull itself off either.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Oct 29, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
For those who regard May Our Chambers Be Full as a contemporary gem, The Helm of Sorrow will occur as one of rock’s anticlimaxes. One shouldn’t ignore the winning elements of this release and how the contributing artists’ gifts are alternately put on center stage, but if Chambers is the benchmark for this combo, then one has to point out that what rendered it near-perfect; namely, the seamless synthesis of styles and energies, is on the whole absent here.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jan 15, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There’s some pleasure to be had here, but for all of those except those of us pawing the floor with anxious, somewhat embarrassed memories – and as the album cover even seems readily to acknowledge – this is perhaps a pill best left unswallowed.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 25, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While Major has a good solid handful of inspired moments, none of this material comes close to approaching the plane as that Fang Island were operating on before.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jul 31, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There are enough moments here to suggest that the band can find a comfortable middle ground between the two sounds that will suit both their aspirations and the desire of the listeners, let's just hope that next time around they find it.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Apr 25, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ákadóttir has made her own museum here, and each of the songs on the album are monochrome statues that we the listener get to walk around and view, but we leave the building indifferent to any real history and experience they represent. It’s like Night at the Museum, but without any of the magic.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 4, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Based loosely around a theme of karma and betrayal, it’s possible that the attempt to tie everything together lyrically came at expense elsewhere. The sequencing doesn’t help: following the Lykke Li-ish opener “Love And Other Drugs” and nuclear trap of “WUACV” (which stands for “woke up and chose violence”) comes a Barbie pink, seven-song sampler of other peoples’ sounds. We don’t get to see Maidza again until the three bangers crammed into the back half, which is very late.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 3, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Everything that made their self-titled debut forgettable has been brought back and laboriously run into the ground.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jul 6, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
What hurts The Don Of Diamond Dreams is how they get ahead of themselves with minimal regard to where they’re going.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Apr 27, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Its biggest problem is that, from start of finish, it feels strangely reserved.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Oct 14, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
We Must Become often hints at Joy Division's stylish brand of post-punk ennui, but by treating it as little more than a gimmick, Maus loses the urgency that makes Curtis's music so endurable.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jul 6, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Taylor takes that responsibility as a solo artist and runs with it, throwing everything and anything into the mix; there are the standard sounds you’d expect from him, but there’s also country, blues-based hard rock, punk and some rap-rock thrown in for good measure. And therein lies the issue with CMFT: rather than those disparate influences somehow mixing to become a whole, they’re left to stand on their own. The more you listen to CMFT, the more it comes across as ‘Corey Taylor does (insert genre here)’ rather than something cohesive.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 11, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It remains a frustrating record, though, since it does show Tegan and Sara attempting to pull away, ever so slightly, from the sickeningly shiny days of “Closer”, but they get in their own way in their efforts to be edgy or forward-thinking.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 2, 2022
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The tracks are still unmistakably Sonic Youth, but in a period where each album had a particular feel and tone, these tracks feel too disjointed to sit together too well.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 23, 2022
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It can become background music all too easily: while Silver's work will always have a degree of ambience to it, Exercises can completely disappear from your consciousness if you don't pay enough attention, especially during the last few tracks.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 2, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
On Gimme Some, Peter Bjorn and John abandon the experimental sound they'd been developing over the course of the last few years in favor of flavorless alt-rock that falls short of the bar set by Falling Out.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 25, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
By itself, Mountaintops is a big, dry album that doesn't move you anywhere.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Sep 14, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
As it stands, the rest of the record proves to varying degrees that it’s not necessarily reverb or effects that alienate--you can sound just as distant armed with nothing but clean instrumentation and an impenetrable air of disinterest.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 8, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Believer’s songs push and pull against each other, and the end result leaves one feeling like not much ground has been covered. It’s bolder than most new albums in recent memory, especially coming from a label as big as XL, but too often their sound comes off as a bizarre experiment. They are capable of more.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 26, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ian Parton is capable of more, and his poor decisions and lack of forward-thinking will keep The Go! Team from being more than a great live act unless change is sought for their next record.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jan 27, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
On paper, Horizons / East sounds like a return to form, but in the end, this is all miles from what Thrice were doing a decade ago. ... Thrice are going to have to try a little bit harder next time.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 11, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
By draining the grunge and punk influences from their sound and then over-producing every single song, Lucero have effectively become every Southern rock, blues-inspired bar band you've ever heard.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 20, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It sounds reaching, like the band is lost and looking desperately for an audience and a voice. I hope they start looking somewhere else.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 15, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While the fury remains, there a perceptible dip in quality in nearly every aspect of the Thermals’ formula.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 13, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
ATUM is the most controversial and strangest of all Smashing Pumpkins albums: a record that defies expectations but often disappoints in how prosaic and calculated it is.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 11, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Apr 13, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
So much of Still Living is lost to completely monotonous-sounding songs, and while they are mixed impeccably and follow a certain rhythm, it's hard to get through the entire album in one sitting.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Aug 24, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Libertines, with their second comeback, have chosen the other, “safe” direction, and sacrificed their integrity for it. Doherty sounds tired, abandoning nostalgia for kitschy gestures. Barât has fun, putting on his old jacket and playing rockstar, but he’s not rethinking his role as musician, or portraying growth as a songwriter.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Apr 10, 2024
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s a modest debut, and that’s the highest praise as O’Connell could ask for with an album this timid.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Aug 16, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The National Health is not a poor effort, it's just woefully undistinguished.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jul 2, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Poster Girl is a step forward in a somewhat more concise direction for Larsson, but it could have used some fine-tuning to fully commit to its vision. She has created an album that is unapologetically romantic and fun but lacking in consistency production-wise.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 10, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It sounds like he's trying to sound less weird, when he doesn't seem to understand that this very weirdness is part of what made him so endearing as a solo artist in the first place.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jan 31, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ultimately what this record lacks is any sense of audacity or ambition.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 1, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The most frustrating thing about these eleven songs is that it sounds as if Lidell is shackled by the aesthetic, and it’s totally self-imposed. He’s capable of more.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 26, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Caravan Château is undoubtedly a sonically interesting album to partake in. But Izenberg’s compositions don’t always lend him any favours. They are considered, and everything feels deliberate (despite how sporadic it may be presented to be), but sometimes they don’t wander in any direction that makes for engaging listening.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Aug 13, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It gets bogged down in the doldrums somewhere between the personal and universal, and ends without truly having reached either shore.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Sep 11, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
They sound like too much like themselves and too much like the others, and even if you discount the pinpoint instrumentation, it's depressingly calculated.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Apr 16, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s far from a miserable affair, it certainly passes the time, it’s just hard to imagine how so much talent in a room didn’t arrive with something that didn’t feel so staid.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Apr 6, 2022
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While One Second of Love contains this personal touch of sound, it isn't used to potential.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 12, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 14, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The experimental mindset is evident in moments of Right Thoughts, but only a select few, and like Tonight, it’s most prominent on the last few tracks.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Sep 11, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sticking to a playbook can be a great approach, but Diet Cig seem to be always aiming for “proficient”, while the “exemplary” boxes languish unchecked.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 6, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
God Forgives is consistently, pleasantly underwhelming: the plodding R&B-rooted efforts aside, there's nothing much to complain about.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Aug 1, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Songs like “Carpenter” and “Set the Fairlight” have some of that old-school Islands mentality, displaying Thorburn’s ability to write infectious grooves. But these moments are few and far between and easily overshadowed by the homogenous tones of “Natural Law Party” and the flighty “Marble”.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 16, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Apr 16, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
TEEN is another in a long line of mildly interesting but ponderous offshoots from already established bands.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Sep 21, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Beal appears determined to make his debut as inaccessible as possible. Intentionally crappy instrumentation holds the album back, stealing the focus from what is an incendiary voice--a lot of casual fans will be dumbfounded by this grating, uneasy listening.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 27, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 27, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
At least in name, Heavy Rocks seems to promise a return to form for Boris. It isn't. It certainly manages a return to sludgy riffed-based heaviness, but the spirit of the record's orange prequel is nowhere to be found.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 26, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
We have this perfectly pleasant and assuming piece of synth pop, neighing through a vocoder with the dying breath of the shamelessly beaten horse of retro-futurism.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 1, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
All the talent in the world can't cover up the fact that Queen of the Wave simply tries too hard and succeeds too infrequently.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 17, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Surprising title be damned, High Off Life can’t seem to help feeling like a rerun – albeit an enjoyable one.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 20, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Hopefully we'll hear something redeeming from Gonjasufi, because MU.ZZ.LE is a step in the wrong direction, or even worse, a step backwards.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jan 26, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Astronomy sounds like a healthy stroll down 90s Alternative Alley, and is as comforting as it is overly familiar; giving it a listen won't change your perspective on music, but it might make you pine for the good old days.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 6, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 8, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Nocturnes rates better as an album that sounds better with time, as opposed to Hands’ sugar rush appeal. However, it also retains an uneven quality that can make getting through Nocturnes feel like someone trying to drag the party on a little too long.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 30, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The timbre or the texture of the sounds they make is worth noting while working through Smilewound, but hardly worth returning specifically for.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Sep 27, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
With their influences in the right musical zone, we could be hearing some great things from Jacuzzi Boys in the future. Sadly, this release proves that they're not quite there yet.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Sep 21, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
If you're hoping for change here, give up now. Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager is also presented in five acts, and again has no real structure to justify them.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jan 13, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Maybe they don't care, but ultimately, without any variety or ingenuity on any future albums they might make next, Monotonix might be forever stuck in a rut with nothing to do but party hard.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 2, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s a shame nothing about it screams new pop culture staple the way the movie does. There are fine moments, but the highs don’t rise enough to offset the lows.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jul 31, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
All signs of growth are forfeit in an attempt to mimic the simple appeal of the material that got him here, right down to the title of the album; another installment in the Famous series, simply with The Album tacked on.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 30, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Despite the label hopping, the independent releases, the decade of time spent away, Wavves still hasn’t changed much.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jul 22, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 15, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
As an album, it's ultimately too bogged down by its professionalism and erraticism to come together very well.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Mar 8, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Like Silica Gel, Sushi isn't a bad album; it's just disappointingly mediocre, and I expect better than that from the psychedelic underground's clown prince of Cool Runnings and backseat-of-grandma's-Oldsmobile Top-40 jams.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Dec 6, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Time and time again The Luyas set themselves up in a soft kraut-like groove and fail to progress the song into something different, allowing it to fizzle out after four or five minutes.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 26, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It would seem then that Let Her Burn is Rebecca Black just flying overhead instead of victoriously soaring above the ashes.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 16, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Chopped & Screwed is an interesting concept that would certainly be fascinating to witness live. However, on record, it does not reach more than a curiosity frequently enough to make it worth many repeat plays.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Apr 11, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Wilderness isn't really a sum of its parts in that songs might sound okay, if not good on their own, but taken altogether it makes for an album that fails to make it off the ground.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 9, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
What Did You Expect has its moments, albeit brief ones.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 6, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
For everyone else, the predictable melodic twists and some truly awful lyrics will likely prove too much to endure.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 4, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
As brief as the moments of goodness may be, they’re lost in a sea of noise that becomes near indistinguishable when taken in one sitting.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Feb 19, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Garden Of Arms is a disappointment, but by no means a failure; next time Peter Wolf Crier need to not only focus on how to make interesting-sounding songs, but how best to execute them too.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Sep 21, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This album would not be selling or gaining attention if the band consisted of either of the aforementioned, proving that Share the Joy is nothing worth rejoicing.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 3, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Monthly Friend is serviceable indie rock at best, but it’s hard to meet it with anything greater than apathy and indifference.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 2, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Raven in the Grave isn't significantly weaker than any of it's predecessors, it's flaws are just significantly more obvious.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted May 18, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 22, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There's nothing wrong with seeking to accomplish the same things your heroes did, but when a band tries only to imitate a few aspects–in this case, detached singing, jangly guitar interplay, and lyrics about teen angst–without offering many of the other aspects that made that band great–like clever storytelling and interesting perspectives--it's always going to fall short. Which Come Of Age does.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 30, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Pedestrian may have similar mechanics to Yuck’s highlights underneath, but it’s stripped that fuzzy distortion and slathered in a thick layer of schmaltz as a replacement. The end result is a struggle, one that’s scattershot due to it’s need to include now-ancient methods to survive.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Jun 21, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sure, there is not a bad tune in the bunch, but the problem is that there isn't a particularly good one here, either.- Beats Per Minute
- Posted Nov 21, 2011
- Read full review