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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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar
    Plant has glossed all of this as “trance meets Zep,” but it’s more: a kaleidoscope that shows he still has much to say.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ritual in Repeat
    The performances finally have weight, if not depth.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ryan Adams
    Far from losing control, Adams sounds like he’s in total command.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    El Pintor
    A return to form, it brims with fresh ideas, in everything from the looser production to the chordal detours that suggest the trio is ready to tweak its formula.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tied to a Star
    Mascis doesn’t just go unplugged here; he pulls back the curtain to reveal a troubadour at his most vulnerable.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.”
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Baby
    Scituate native Casey Dienel’s third album under the White Hinterland moniker seems to construct itself as it goes, incrementally expanding from the bits and scraps of piano and multi-layered unaccompanied vocals of opener “Wait Until Dark” and culminating in the rollicking, if skewed, roll of penultimate track “Sickle No Sword.”
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Dotted Line
    The time away has done the California-spawned group good, as the conversation is familiar--intricate instrumental phrasing, pristine harmonies--but also full of fresh energy that lends everything from the buoyant gospel bluegrass of “21st of May” to the joyously bleary “Rest of My Life” an air of excitement.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 3
    Heard in its complete, unruly, sometimes crazed glory, Miles at the Fillmore shows just how furious the evolutionary pace of his music was at this point.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shakira
    Shakira is a more middle-of-the-road affair, but it’s also more revealing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Teeth Dreams
    The rock quintet wastes no time reestablishing its high-energy bona fides on Teeth Dreams.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mess
    The group deftly submits to the forms and tropes of electro-pop and vintage EBM.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Toujours
    The songs are sparer, she’s picked up a scratchy electric guitar, and there’s air around her low, enigmatic voice--like Nico, waking up on the right side of the bed.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lost In the Dream
    Tone is everything for the War on Drugs. You hear tone, a silvery shade of effortless cool, in the electric guitars that ring out in ricocheting patterns and in singer-songwriter-visionary Adam Granduciel’s expansive vocals.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kiss Me Once
    “Sexercize” could be the worst song the singer’s put out in well over a decade. It’s the album’s only genuine misstep, but it’s still perplexing, hearing a Minogue that can do wrong.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Supermodel
    Supermodel unfurls with bright, sunny melodies that bloom on songs that pick up where its Grammy-nominated debut, “Torches,” left off.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dean Wareham
    They recorded this in James’s studio in Louisville, Ky., and nearly each song has a compelling depth.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Take Off and Landing of Everything
    It’s not easy packing so many different styles of music into one song--especially ones that don’t stray too far from home in terms of baseline mood--but it certainly helps when so many of them fall between the five-and seven-minute mark, as on the sixth album from British act Elbow.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Slow Me Down
    While there are a few standard contemporary country tracks included in the mix--including a serviceable cover of Gavin DeGraw’s “Not Over You,” featuring DeGraw on harmony vocals--the tracks that stand out have a fresh appeal.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Guilty of Everything
    The 40 minutes of Guilty are a storm of shoegaze, noise-rock, and slow-core, surging together into something lovely and lethal.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Soul of All Natural Things
    At times a bit too slick and overproduced, her new songs are rooted in the same mysticism and concern for humanity that marked her early work, except now she’s updated her sound with contributions from musicians such as Julia Holter and Ramona Gonzalez from Nite Jewel.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    G I R L
    “Happy” is a strong ambassador for the mostly beguiling, sometimes meandering “G I R L,” Pharrell’s new album his first solo effort in eight years.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Slow Phaser
    Atkins’s songwriting has since mutated, so that even songs that would have fit on “Neptune City” (the remix-ready disco track “Girl You Look Amazing”) or “Mondo Amore” (the stomping country-gospel “Sin Song”) represent a progression.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Riser
    Those elements [musicianship, emotional integrity, and hard work] again make themselves known on his stirring seventh album, Riser.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blank Project
    Recorded in five days with producer Four Tet and musical duo RocketNumberNine, the disc maintains a raw, improvisatory feel.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Morning Phase
    Morning beautifully captures what makes this album so rich: that delicate divide between grandiose and intimate.
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