Boston Globe's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Every Hero Needs a Villain
    That theme stays consistent, but our heroes are far from complacent. Indeed, much credit goes to 7L, whose inventive productions provides cannon fodder for the rappers to blast apart with witty punch lines, clever metaphors, and agile flows.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghost on the Canvas
    An impressive array of musicians - Chris Isaak, Brian Setzer, Billy Corgan, Dick Dale - help make it a fitting tribute to Campbell's accomplishments.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love's Crushing Diamond
    Despite comparisons to Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens, Lee creates folky, orchestral, synth-pop soundscapes that are uniquely his own. Where similar music can sound overproduced, Mutual Benefit has an organic, intuitive quality, more like a hearth-side jam session with friends in a woodsy cabin.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Our Bright Future
    What has marked Tracy Chapman's work over the course of her two-decade career is her emotional intensity and clarity of vision, and both are in evidence on this fine new disc, her first in three years.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All Ashore
    Punch Brothers have crafted a deeply meaningful and downright gorgeous record that takes the world for what it is, but doesn’t use that as an excuse to give up.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Favorite Picture of You
    In other words, classic Guy Clark.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Researching the Blues
    After 34 years of recording, the brothers think it's their best collection yet. Again breaking the artistic rule, they may be right.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Raising Sand
    Raising Sand is the stuff of which music lovers' dreams are made: an unexpected collision of two distinct but complementary worlds that transcend the sum of their parts to create something unique and mesmerizing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Almanac
    At first it sounds like scratchy old vinyl, but actually it's the crackle of fire that leads off the warm and sumptuous new album from Brooklyn's Widowspeak.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Super
    What drives Super, though, is the duo’s overarching vision, which helps the album flow together like a night at a club: one that Pet Shop Boys exist inside and above, simultaneously.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Closer
    Country star Keith Urban's sixth release gives lie to the idea that angst is the best fuel for songwriting. On this lean but enjoyable eight-song set, Urban and his fellow songwriters are mostly in high spirits.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Embryonic
    Embryonic is not as strange as "Zaireeka,'' the Lips' play-four-CDs-at-the-same-time experiment, but it's up there. On the other hand, Embryonic is completely absorbing. It grows on you in a way that the earlier records simply cannot do.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Working Man's Cafe
    Sonically, Working Man's Café is also a triumph.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    III
    It makes for an often remarkable synthesis of the visceral and ethereal. The nine streamlined, artfully structured songs are patient and less dense, frequently relying on the separation between beats for power.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Second Hand Heart
    Less overtly than elsewhere, perhaps, Second Hand Heart still demonstrates Yoakam’s peerless ability, album after album, to graft new shoots onto classic forms.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Contra
    The songs are meatier and dimensional, emboldened by whirling electronics, taut guitar solos, harder drums, disparate textures and moods, and a lyrical self-awareness that perhaps life isn't just one big basement dance party.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where Country Grows
    With her second album, "Where Country Grows,'' Shepherd merges her deep-country style with a contemporary country sound, setting a modern groove to her rural Alabama persona.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Is Your Love Big Enough?
    The pleasures of Is Your Love Big Enough? are unquestionably immediate, but the real excitement is in wondering where her curiosity takes her next.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Real Emotional Trash
    Real Emotional Trash isn't "Slanted and Enchanted" or "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain," but hey, you can't have a perfect sound forever. Besides, there are more than enough old-school indie touches here to flash you back to the halcyon daze of '94, or give you an idea what your older sis had on her headphones.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oxymoron
    This isn’t a blockbuster--no Drake cameo, no Dr. Dre co-sign--but that’s the beauty of it.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Underneath the Pine
    Underneath is crisp, clean, smooth, and smart.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Channel Orange
    Channel Orange stands strong on its own merits.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bare Bones
    Bare Bones is a beautifully slow-cooked album that encourages us to look on the bright side. Not a bad message these days.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bob Dylan in Concert: Brandeis University 1963
    Dylan has never sounded more convincing--and any true Dylan lover will have to seek out this album.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bankrupt!
    As on 2009’s “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” the elite pedigree of these bright, well-mannered Frenchmen shows in their impressive aural plumage.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Banga
    [Banga] is a classic Patti Smith album in that it mixes pop panache with punk sensibilities and poetic ruminations.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Bermuda
    What’s surprising isn’t that the band takes such leaps, but that it nails its landings so surely.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    R.E.D.
    Ultimately, it's the love songs that make the biggest impression on this nicely balanced disc.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates
    The sincere, average-Joe appeal of Just Who I Am--the whole to which Chesney's various personas add up--will likely resonate with fans in the back row of the stadiums he favors, long after all of the records slide down the charts.
Page: