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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    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Let England Shake
    Her latest album marks yet another sea change, a clanging, clamoring work of art that's as disturbing as it is moving. Let England Shake is staggering, from its seasick melodies to its visceral imagery of soldiers falling like "lumps of meat."
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The King of Limbs
    Where In Rainbows was mellow but brisk - an album that felt on its way somewhere - these songs are eerie and insidious, creeping like shadows - and, often because of the haunting voice of Thom Yorke, the occasional chill.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Smoke Ring for My Halo
    The result is Vile's best record to date, an idiosyncratic amalgam of intimate performance and communal expression - and one that continues to reveal new layers upon repeated listens.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wasting Light
    Add in a clutch of terrific songs that perfectly balance leader Grohl's gift for pairing earworm melodies with both chunky power-pop guitars and thrashy screamers and you've got the most vital, stem-to-stern enjoyable Foo Fighters album in quite some time.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive
    Steve Earle's stellar new album, produced by T Bone Burnett, takes its name from the final Hank Williams single (as does the multitalented Earle's debut novel, out next month).
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rome
    The great, and only, disappointment with Rome is that once you've heard the album, you'll want to watch the movie it accompanies. Except there is no movie.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bon Iver
    "Emma" was gorgeous in its austerity, but its follow-up is staggering for its vision. Bon Iver's self-titled sophomore release will go down as one of this year's most arresting albums, drunk on its own impressionistic charms and oblivious to anyone's expectations but Vernon's.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Radio Music Society
    It is a stunning achievement in contemporary pop. Yet, unlike so much of contemporary pop, it's timeless.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Locked Down
    His latest is the closest he has come to making a masterpiece in a very long time.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Different Ship
    The result is a stunning reboot.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cancer4Cure
    A set of 12 songs overflowing with bile and sonic invention.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
    Apple has been here before, but it makes her new album no less arresting.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Way Down Low
    Way Down Low, is one of the greatest vocal albums I've ever heard.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sun
    Ripe with propulsive tempos, drum machines, and electronic embellishments, the album sounds like nothing else she's ever done.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Good Kid, M.A.A.D City
    The Compton MC's long-awaited major label debut is a breakthrough, as he both resurrects and reinvents West Coast hip-hop.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Love Surreal
    This sensual song suite about the ephemeral nature of love and what it takes to sustain happiness should end up among this year’s finest efforts.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Twelve Reasons to Die
    While outstanding songs ("The Catastrophe") stand on their own, this is a song cycle that demands to be absorbed whole.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Trouble Will Find Me
    Trouble Will Find Me is the Brooklyn, N.Y., indie-rock band’s sixth and most deft album yet, a haunted and lugubrious meditation on loss and despair.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's Harvest
    Tomorrow’s Harvest is as strong a return to form as it is stunning an update, with the Scottish duo refining their blend of nostalgic sonics and futuristic sheen.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    About Farewell
    It’s a brave account of how you can fall out of love just as easily as you fell in. Like the first blush of a new romance, it is intoxicating.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dream River
    With eight songs that unfurl to 40 minutes, it’s impeccably crafted and plays off a mercurial tension between Callahan’s voice--a parched yet resonant baritone--and the lush arrangements that envelop it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    My Name Is My Name
    Pusha T is at the top of his game with sharply defined autobiographical tales and defiant, self-aware verses. He often dazzles with his smooth, cold-blooded flow and connects on virtually every song.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP 2
    It is no mere rehash. If anything, the sequel is more intense than the original.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The River & the Thread
    It’s among her finest work in a 35-year career, assured and at ease, and one of 2014’s first great albums.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ultraviolence
    Slavishly downbeat, it burrows even deeper into Del Rey’s torchy sensibility and rarely breaks its spell.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    You're Dead!
    Less glitchy and bass-led than FlyLo’s previous work, it enters him in the canon of mystics and psychedelic journeyers who’ve sought to crack the doors of perception.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Soused
    Haunting, jarring, and oddly beautiful, Soused defies the idea of “easy listening,” but its singular vision and harnessing of the avant-garde makes it one of the year’s most compelling artistic statements.
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