Boston Globe's Scores

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For 2,093 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 66% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 31% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 72
Highest review score: 100 City of Refuge
Lowest review score: 10 Lulu
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,670 out of 2093
  2. Mixed: 412 out of 2093
  3. Negative: 11 out of 2093
2093 music reviews
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    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    V
    Too often the trend-chasing sounds both tiring and tiresome; that weariness persists through the syrupy album-closing duet with Levine’s future “Voice” costar Gwen Stefani.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Barragán
    There’s plenty of occasion for beauty here throughout, but the band seems intent on disrupting the pleasant view.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Seen It All: The Autobiography
    Backed by mostly familiar trap music production, Jeezy is steady (“Been Getting Money” is especially fine), but hardly inspired.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Junto
    Basement Jaxx has an inclusive spirit that defines their approach to both making music and disseminating it, and that vibe defines Junto more than any single style or song.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Whispers
    There’s true beauty in this disc as Dico soulfully and honestly negotiates her way through the vagaries of love.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brill Bruisers
    The band has never sounded more relaxed, with a lived-in confidence.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Moonshine in the Trunk
    All of those elements [his clever wit, his skillful guitar playing, curiosity about human interaction, and his nice guy affability] are in place for his latest effort, Moonshine in the Trunk.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What Goes Around
    All told, the LP stands as a convincing counterargument against those who claim hip-hop’s ’90s golden era can’t come back again.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lights Out
    A power-pop record that’s unfussy in its pursuit of jingle-jangle melodies and circular choruses that linger long after they’re over.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sparks
    The circuits run deep, but Heap keeps the machines from winning; even when experiments spin out of her control--or produce the occasional inert result--it comes honestly from messy curiosity, not mechanical autopilot.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Smokey & Friends
    While the new versions have little chance of replacing the originals seared into our collective brains, both Smokey and his buddies certainly sound like they’re having a good time revisiting Hitsville.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Blacc Hollywood
    The popular rapper’s fifth record is an alarming regression and a head-shaking misfire.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Experiments in Time
    When the album finished, I immediately wanted to hear it again. And then again.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cellar Door: Terminus Ut Exordium
    An underwhelming middle stretch aside, this cellar is worth exploring.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Country Funk II: 1967-1974
    Finger-lickin’ good.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    LP1
    LP1 is the kind of soft-focus album that the late American R&B singer Aaliyah might have made.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss
    Be it personal or observational, O’Connor is definitely in charge on Bossy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Time Is Over One Day Old
    A good sound can only support wobbly songs so far, and the middle third of the album sinks into a deadly lull that suggests the band only sporadically knows how to pull off slower tempos.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They Want My Soul
    The brisk 38-minute, 10-song collection brims with sideways guitar pluck and twang, warbly keys, and earwormy tunes that demand immediate repeated listens.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pe'ahi
    A decade in, this duo is still drawn to the dark side and the beauty lurking beneath it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lese Majesty
    While there are songs of undeniable artistic invention (“Dawn in Lexor,” “#CAKE”) there are also moments of ostentatious indulgence, intellectual handstands that feel like ends in themselves. But then, that’s always a hazard with a band this original and audacious.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hypnotic Eye
    Hypnotic Eye offers the band mostly in lean, mean, garage-rock machine mode firing up the fuzz and swagger.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Breeze: An Appreciation of J.J. Cale
    Clapton shares some of his most transcendent guitar playing in years, especially the slide-guitar peaks of “I’ll Be There” and “I Got the Same Old Blues.” Most of his collaborations are inspired.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beck Song Reader
    Many of the contributors give the material a rootsy, rattletrap approach, creating a flat consistency that drags a bit. It’s not until the second half that Beck Song Reader comes fitfully to life.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    These Days...
    Instead of another Black Hippy declaration, These Days... sounds very of-the-moment.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Counterfeit Blues
    Most of the time, though, it argues for just how good Lund’s evocative, regionally rooted songs are, no matter their rendition.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    5 Seconds of Summer
    The lyrics leave no room for subtext--“Good girls,” goes the kickiest song’s thesis, “are bad girls that haven’t been caught”--and the gleaming instrumentation sounds untouched by human hands.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Trouble in Paradise
    Jackson is more adventurous here.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Never Hungover Again
    When Joyce Manor cracks open its sound the results are satisfying despite (or maybe because of?) being delivered in bite-size form.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nobody's Smiling
    With electrifying cameos from Chicago’s Vince Staples and song-stealing Dreezy, these vital, relevant tracks remind how good Common can be when he’s focused.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yes!
    Mraz’s easy charm has, over the course of his decade-plus in the spotlight, aged well.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    World Peace Is None of Your Business
    It’s a reminder that no matter how badly you might think he behaves, Morrissey still does not mince words. And his music is vital because of it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Strange Desire
    Even the infectious energy of “Rollercoaster” can’t quite overcome a demo-like lack of polish that keeps the songs earthbound even as they reach higher.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Machine Kills Artists
    Pithy where Melvins might have sprawled, Osborne’s solo songs still amount to M-80s lobbed at convention with reckless abandon and cockeyed aim.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Remedy
    Their catalog is crammed with albums that replicate the unbridled joy and communion of their live shows. Remedy is the newest one to do that.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Trigga
    Songz follows suit with these gratuitous songs about dominance and bedroom prowess. Unfortunately, he completely lacks irony and tips into caricature.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Coast
    Despite the time away, it sounds like the band has emerged with all of their tricks intact.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    1000 Forms of Fear
    Luckily, Sia also puts those pipes to good use on her own material, including her dynamite new album, 1000 Forms of Fear.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Common Ground: Dave & Phil Alvin Play and Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy
    Common Ground has the pluck and swing of a porch pickin’ party, with the Alvins swapping licks and vocals on a number of Broonzy classics.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twice
    The daughter of Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook continues to find the sweet spot between reggae and dub’s poppier elements and the sheer breeziness of her voice.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's Album Time
    It’s Album Time is mostly instrumental, and devoted to sustaining one long groove that touches down on disco, lounge, and chillwave.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Emma Jean
    Fields showcases a burnished voice that quakes and quivers with the wisdom only age and experience can afford.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Careers
    Riding in on a humid wave of 1990s guitar rock and ’60s girl-group harmonies, the debut from the new project of Frankie Rose and Drew Citron is pure ear candy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gamel
    Gamel melds past and future, resulting in a present joyfully reconfigured.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Paula
    While still frequently predictable lyrically, Thicke also occasionally takes a couple of steps away from his formula. But even cursory knowledge of their split makes this public and emotionally messy and revealing ploy for reconciliation teeter on, and sometimes fall over, the borderline into creepy territory.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PHOX
    On this debut, not a single note is out of place.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Once More 'Round the Sun
    The new music is more song-oriented, with a verse-chorus format versus some of the loosely knit, stretched-out mayhem of the past.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Is This Heart?
    What Is This Heart? often feels uncomfortably intimate, which cuts both ways..
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    X
    Taylor Swift bestie and duet partner, writer of songs for One Direction, management client of Sir Elton John, British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran comes into his own on his sophomore album x--pronounced “mulitply.”
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mutineers
    He still flashes his intellect--two songs are inspired by poets--but most of the album reveals a romantic and spiritual bliss that feels just as good as it sounds.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In the Lonely Hour
    The music does its best to couch Smith’s melodramatic overreach in swoonily supple adult pop, but only on “Like I Can”--a grand, reach-for-the-sky imprecation focused more on his rival’s shortcomings than on what he himself brings to the table--does it have enough conviction to counter what he is singing.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A.K.A.
    There is one half of a solid album in A.K.A., Jennifer Lopez’s first new release in three years.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ultraviolence
    Slavishly downbeat, it burrows even deeper into Del Rey’s torchy sensibility and rarely breaks its spell.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Last Dance
    More important, the intimate atmosphere and the effortless rapport between Jarrett’s radiant chords and Haden’s eloquently simple bass lines remain.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    While You Were Sleeping
    Compared to James’s 2013 breakout “No Beginning No End,” this one is bigger, thicker, less sensual but arguably just as sexy.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Stockholm
    She has her rock credibility to lose--and it’s in tatters after some of the mediocre material here.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lazaretto
    Songs don’t unfold in expected structures; they erupt, recoil, and then ride some jagged riff into another direction entirely.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nausea
    Despite the deluxe treatments, the tracks on Nausea tend to blend into a blur, and their richness sometimes seems at odds with Vallesteros’s maudlin charms. Fans of “Labor” may be left wondering if beige is really a step up from gray.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Meteorites
    Only a few tunes here--notably “Constantinople,” with brilliant Middle Eastern guitar by Sergeant--approach the energy of classic Echo tracks. Most are slow and labored with monotonously downbeat lyrics.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beauty & Ruin
    Even in Mould’s volume-crazy Hüsker Dü and Sugar days, his songs breathed; on Beauty & Ruin, they just exhale.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Platinum
    Platinum is a worthy follow-up; Lambert wrote or co-wrote half of the album’s 16 tracks, which bounce from humid honky tonk to glossy arena stage to rustic front porch with sass and ease.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire to Win
    The MC-entrepreneur smartly eliminates the bloated production that marred his latter-day work, yet the disc is undermined by a dearth of imagination and, ironically, ambition.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dereconstructed
    With these songs, Bains surely wants to make you think; he surely will make you shake.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Conflict
    Composition is just part of what makes pop music work, and the best tracks on In Conflict succeed on the arrangements and production as well as the writing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Feast of the Broken Heart
    Each song’s darker instrumental aesthetics balance the fun with an undercurrent of rumination.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Do It Again
    Like much of this mini album, “Monument” is not thumping music for the club; it’s the soundtrack for when you get home.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse
    What is unfortunately not elusive on the album are a clutch of interchangeable slow-to-midtempo tunes long on pulsating atmosphere--several with distractingly fidgety rhythmic tracks--but short on melody or verve.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Changing Light
    With a voice so capable of effecting pathos as the veteran K Records artist’s, the canvas on which it colors is almost beside the point, but while the tone remains largely lachrymose here, there’s extraordinary variety in its musical accompaniment.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Volume X
    Trans Am has proven more complex than most critical reductions would suggest, and its 10th album plays like a highlight reel of the band’s best facets.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin
    While the ambition and musical dexterity is admirable, the work doesn’t feel fully realized.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wine Dark Sea
    This is Holland in full bloom: singular and wild-eyed.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Upside Down Mountain
    Conor Oberst has long exhibited an affinity for reinvention. One thing remains consistent, however, and it’s abundant on his latest: a raw laying bare of emotion delivered with a poet’s ear for lyrical specificity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ghost Stories
    There is, of course, beauty to be wrung from sadness, and Ghost Stories has several lovely passages of outright melancholy.... But it can get a bit dreary and a couple of dollops of other emotions--anger, for one--could’ve gone a ways toward varying the mood.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blue Smoke
    This being Dolly, there are the occasional missteps (the silly “Lover du Jour,” the overly earnest “Try”). But even when Parton goes camp and piles on the gloss, there’s still a big heart beating beneath the album’s surface, much like the artist herself.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nabuma Rubberband
    This is the kind of artistic leap every band hopes to make.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Turn Blue
    The best tunes are the first and last in “Weight of Love” (where Auerbach unleashes a two-minute guitar solo of vintage psychedelia) and the Stones-like punch of “Gotta Get Away.” Otherwise, most songs merely drift away.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Unrepentant Geraldines
    Her fans will be glad to hear the muse has finally led Amos back to making the type of carefully crafted but pleasingly quirky pop music that helped make the singer-songwriter’s name in the ’90s.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shine On
    Twenty-five years into her career, Sarah McLachlan does what she does and you’re either out or in when it comes to the Canadian songbird’s pleasant, gorgeously sung, but perhaps not always exciting, adult contemporary pop.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nikki Nack
    Nikki Nack is ear candy, crammed with shards of looped instruments poking their heads above ground like skittish gophers and odd, counterintuitive vocal rhythms.... Unfortunately, too many songs have so much sugar-rush action, like the judder and clack of “Find a New Way,” that they fly apart.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sheezus
    Allen has been out of the game for a while, at least by pop standards, but she knows how to get back in the ring.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Never Learn
    Li virtually proves to herself that pop need not be soulless and manufactured.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Red Beans and Weiss
    His recorded output is sporadic, which makes his latest, Red Beans and Weiss (terrible title, terrific album) such a welcome pleasure.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Midnight Sun
    It’s an accomplished, enjoyable record from start to finish, regardless of references or lineage.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Everyday Robots
    Clearly influenced by Brian Eno (who appears on two tracks), it is an ambient snoozefest marred by listless mood pieces.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Indie Cindy
    The Pixies sound like a band again on Indie Cindy. From time to time, they even sound like the Pixies.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Most Messed Up
    Most Messed Up is a full-blown, album-length expression of the Old 97s’ vintage, railroad-beat careen stripped of all embellishments.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Without Fear
    Even better is Wilson’s return as a performing singer-songwriter on his second solo album.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Food
    As Kelis herself once said, “Tasty.”
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pop Psychology
    If [a band] goes back to the well once too often, it can be derided for stagnating. If it takes a left turn, fans may bemoan the change of pace. Neon Trees, the Utah band behind the unavoidable “Animal” and “Everybody Talks,” seem to have split the difference on their third effort.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lights Out
    You might expect a schizoid clusterbomb from Lights Out, but instead it’s an impressively seamless mix.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Home, Like Noplace Is There
    The highs wouldn’t feel so high without the lows here, which is a regular trope of the genre; but as with all tropes, execution trumps invention, and the Hotelier executes exceptionally.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Both
    The duo’s self-titled debut’s greatest strength is the pair’s hand-in-glove harmonies. Coupled with Mann’s gift for a pop melody and Leo’s penchant for spiky, urgent guitars, the end result is a best-of-both-worlds situation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Do To the Beast
    The Whigs seem only capable of reclaiming their turf in fits and starts.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I'm a Fire
    In many instances that willingness to change things up has resulted in a more conventional record, with well-executed but standard-issue, radio-ready country-pop.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Everlasting
    As gifted as she is, there is occasionally a reserved quality to her vocals and the production, with Van Morrison’s “Wild Night” not quite having the requisite boogie woogie.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wasted Years
    When everything coalesces to take the songs up a notch, especially on “Death Trip on a Party Train” or “Meet Your God,” they prove punk rock knows no age limit.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Future's Void
    When the fireworks gently pop and fizzle out in the last breath of EMA’s new album, it feels like the only way to close such an emotionally visceral set of songs.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carter Girl
    This may be the best record this Carter girl has ever made.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Rite of Spring
    It’s a tour de force. The work’s relentless, odd-accented, propulsive rhythms are a perfect fit for this band.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Arc Iris
    Arc Iris puts Adams through the paces, as a composer of mercurial melodies, a nimble singer, and a force to be reckoned with.
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