cokemachineglow's Scores
- Music
For 1,772 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
51% higher than the average critic
-
3% same as the average critic
-
46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.8 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: | Art Angels | |
---|---|---|
Lowest review score: | Rain In England |
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 1,444 out of 1772
-
Mixed: 270 out of 1772
-
Negative: 58 out of 1772
1772
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
-
- Critic Score
Love Letter is more like a respite, a detour from the beaten path we should just be glad exists, and something to cling to when the next porridge of jizz and tears, The Return of 12 Play: Night of the Living Dead, drops wetly on our heads.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 23, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
La Sera aren't quite up for that challenge, but their debut finds them rising above the careful posturing of their peers and creating something inarguably lovely, which, for now, will do.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 18, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Tryptych is something of a good trade convention, showcasing just how Demdike's samples become reborn with a strong modern edge. You feel like you're privy to seeing something here that's all set to sweep across the market.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 17, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Over time Napa Asylum reveals itself as remarkably cohesive and more than willing to cede points of entry every few tracks. Still an exhausting experience, sure, but one that's often thrilling, and well worth the effort it requires of us.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 16, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
If Mogwai are looking for new routes to explore then Hardcore is a strong first venture.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 16, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
White Wilderness gives Vanderslice's listener something to fixate on other than his often-good lyrics. As a consequence, despite its predictably moderate tempos and unchanging volume, it's a sign of progress, of potentially great things to come, and Vanderslice's most immediately welcoming record in half a decade.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 16, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's an accomplished, knowing work that only seems to have its head in the corner.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 15, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The People's Key is not a bad album. In fact, boil the meat off these tracks, and you'd probably have the skeleton of a quite good album.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 14, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
S/T II is that moment cupped in one's hand and blown like dandelion specks at an especially delicious breeze-it is, simply and thankfully, a record by Akron/Family as plain and as forward as we should expect.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 11, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This EP sounds, in many ways, like a showcase of new equipment and technology, proof that White just might be one of the best pop producers working right now. However, the songs might be too cerebral, lacking the brevity, structural simplicity, and dare I say petulance that made "Lust For Life" so easy to fall so hard for.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 9, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
They've struck a balance, similar to Terrible Two, that's instantly accessible, consistently surprising, and extremely satisfying.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 7, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
I'm elated to report that Zonoscope is a more than worthy successor to Colours, adhering to the tried and true follow-up formula of introducing just enough new wrinkles to their method to keep the proceedings from being a rehash, but containing plenty of the rapturous pop hooks that drew us to them in the first place.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 7, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There's a bright side to Tennis moving beyond the measures of this LP: while tackling newer songmatter, delving into their return to land, maybe their songwriting habits will similarly shift gears with a degree of scrutiny that steps up to the plate and complements everything they brought to Cape Dory.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 7, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Half-baked and juvenile, sloppy but cheerful, fresh and joyful, the Beets may be plugging a gimmick, but at least they're doing something with themselves.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 4, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It is explorative, enchanting, wide-reaching, and so hopeful it ignites a tender pain all its own.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 4, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Albums like Kiss Each Other Clean and The Age of Adz are so giddy with compacting layers and counter layers into the already mapped-out confines of their pre-existing aesthetics that they come across like snowflakes: each one is beautiful and unique, except that the detail is too small to see and anyways there's about a billion of them shits and you have to shovel the walkway and hope public transit isn't delayed. It's distracting, basically, because nothing gets a chance to breath.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Feb 3, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Kaputt is the sound of an artist released from his back catalogue and his own notions of how a song should be sung, or written. It is a mighty, mighty piece of work and really worth celebrating. In my mind, this is Destroyer's best album yet.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Jan 24, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
On Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, Mondanile introduces his voice as an element into his solo music, and in turn takes one step forward and two steps back; though his songs are perfectly adequate, the reference points and production are easier than on any previous Ducktails release, and they suffer for it.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Jan 24, 2011
- Read full review
-
- cokemachineglow
- Posted Jan 20, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Rose still has plenty of time and room to grow, and across Own Side Now she sounds at times in search of a singular voice yet also utterly confident in her band, her arrangements, and her songs.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Jan 10, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Deerhood vs. Evil is just simultaneously astounding and utterly familiar, correct, and right.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Jan 10, 2011
- Read full review
-
- cokemachineglow
- Posted Jan 10, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Wonder Show of the World, his eleventh release in half as many years, is everything for which we hope in a new Bonnie "Prince" Billy release: creeping yet expansive alt-folk; an ever-strengthening voice; erotic imagery ("The smell of your box on my mustache") paired with thoughts on family, never uncomfortably; a stark, doodled cover; a doting collaboration.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sufjan's proficiency with larger-than-life arrangements has always been one of his strongest qualities as a musician, and across The Age of Adz he wields that proficiency, brazenly, like a kind of weapon.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Oct 22, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Each time the album so overtly flips over, the same brief blushes of goosebumps, the same visceral highs, the same infectious, clapping percussion: I straight up have a crush on this album.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Infinite Love is a prickly, antiseptic listen. Surprising and interesting, to be sure, but hostile to expectations and ultimately as unsentimental about itself as it would be of any cultural artifact.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The record builds a whole new feeling of intimacy, and it's a ravishing enough record to, in its final breaths, break free of its own confines.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Instead of being doomed to tread a certain set of glossy, shoegaze-littered paths, and in that doom come off desperate to change, they search within their well-worn sound for a collection of songs with no aspirations to be anything more than the best at what they are. Now that's some progress.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While this album is far from The Hour of Bewilderbeast part two, it does represent a return to Gough's more stripped-down formula of simple, ramshackle pop songs built on electronic and symphonic detritus.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
They may not yet have a strong enough aesthetic to make a great album, but they've made a unique, highly promising one that might soon create something which can bring Gonzalez's academics into the realm of something softer. In the way his best songs and covers were, and still could be.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's a deeply felt, lively record that stands tall on its own merits, and further proof that Tucker's talent is bigger than that which can be expressed through one band's sound.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
By showing a willingness to diversify their sound while cutting down on bloat, Phosphene Dream is easily the Black Angels most listenable record to date. It also suggests that they're keen on that most outmoded of concepts in the blog era: career longevity.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
How To Dress Well is certainly not the only contemporary act to use nostalgia as the basis for an aesthetic, but Krell's ideas about the past and our relationship to it seem to be considerably more sophisticated than those of his peers.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Because even though Silver is not quite the taut, energetic half-hour of power that the band's promising EP had me clamoring for, it still has some pleasant surprises up its sleeve. And most importantly, it offers sporadically brilliant flickers of what I loved about this band in the first place.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 15, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Flockaveli is delivery-driven, then, in the best possible sense: it is a chorus of proficient, varied flows, avoiding the pitfalls of impotent swag music and pugnacious garishness.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 15, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's never pretentious, showy, or fake-tough; it's just Shad, doing what he does, and it sounds earnestly great.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 15, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Franklin Bruno and the Extra Lens provide a welcome respite from the false but persistent mythology of Darnielle as a solitary genius; Undercard gives his songwriting some breathing room and a refreshing dose of collaboration.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 14, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It works as an introduction of sorts to this young band, who have a surplus of great ideas (and, hey, it's a free download). But it's little more than a starting point, a segway, an ice-breaker, to the much meatier discussion that Ashes provokes.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 14, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Everything in Between is the sound not just of potential realized, but of expectations exceeded.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 13, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Kanye West had to do him; and lo and behold, he has. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the most cohesive and assured record in mainstream hip-hop since Jay-Z sketched his Blueprint (2001).- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 7, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Though it's their first time out, Weekend has created a record that bellows out of speakers, that bites and sometimes doesn't play fair. Though uneven in areas, Sports packs a sucker punch. Best sit still and brace yourself.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Dec 1, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Rather than anticipating something new, Small Craft on a Milk Sea ultimately feels like one of the final surges of a style and format that Eno himself is outgrowing.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Nov 22, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Warpaint is Chillwave rendered Actual via the performance of actual instruments, rendered Credible via the presence of an actual rhythm section, full of big austere drums interwoven with deeply locked-in bass lines, and rendered Sexy via the music's performance by real life, actually sexy, adult humans.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Nov 1, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Wayne's ebullience is too curdled to be all that interesting on its own –- not to mention that he can do so much better.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Oct 27, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's this aura of creepiness that makes The Grand Theatre one of the band's best albums to date.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Oct 26, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Down There, David Portner aka Tare's debut solo joint, is a further dot on the still-empty dotted line of Animal Collective's career, built on a span of eight or so albums through which these guys have willfully, lovingly defied expectations and definitions and even maybe their own individual talents.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Oct 25, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It sounds like a Manic Street Preachers album, which alone renders it still better than all of the similar arena rock you can name.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Oct 22, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Like any Books album, The Way Out is best embraced as a headphones record, but it could also work at a party, on a morning commute, over dinner, under a squeaking bedframe--it's the poppiest ambient album I've heard in some time, surprisingly accessible given the band's track record.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Oct 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Belle & Sebastian are in transition, as they were in the early 2000s, and I can only hope that we don't have to wait another four years for the likely superior follow-up.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Oct 21, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
[The title track's] the only track on Disc Two, said to have been influenced by hip-hop mixtapes, and it serves as a microcosm for Working for a Nuclear Free City in general: overstuffed with ideas and ADD to a fault, but never, ever boring.- cokemachineglow
- Posted Oct 20, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Lucky Shiner is a good argument for the album as a conceptual whole, and for a musical environment a bit slower than the singles-based landscape that birthed Gold Panda as an entity to be reckoned with.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
One of Stern's greatest strengths is that she never relies on any tried and true shorthand when it comes to self-expression.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Salem evokes the seismic thrill of a good Gucci drop alongside all of Nico's ghostly beauty within the very framework and timbre of their productions. The result is no less than one of 2010's most exciting debuts.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Crush is cold and hard and calculated. I mean, it's clear it's supposed to sound like that, but I have a hard time getting into it.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It feels self-contained, wholly its own, and this is what allows it to hold up such a pristine and vast mirror to the scenes that surround it.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There are a couple of Young's obligatory, wandering acoustic ditties to water down the already short track list, and Lanois' soft touch seems to render antiseptic even those few moments of feedback and reverb.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Halcyon Digest is bliss, it is Deerhunter's best album to date-their first not to belie some raptorial need to plum my ears with mooching loudness.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This EP is thus a fine, if also slight, document that showcases the duo's serious potential-and hints, perhaps, at how it could be used to produce a more ambitious set of songs as he approaches his next album--more than it fulfills the promises of Pallett the almost solo performer/arranger.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Swans always understood better than most post-punk bands that the crushing, wall-of-sound repetition pioneered by Glenn Branca could be taken to its logical, nihilistic extreme in rock-n-roll.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Even the forecast backlash from fans of the trance era can't dent Barking's relentless enthusiasm, and given the sufficient exposure and time, everyone should be able to party to it. It's just that for an Underworld album it sounds distinctly un-Underworld, and more like someone's asked Smith and Hyde to ghost-write a Now! compilation.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There's a stunning balance between fluid variations and deviations that in total feel like improvisation and the strictly confined, loping-in-circles gait of traditional hip-hop-a process which then lends itself to being described as simultaneously dynamic and hypnotic, loose and hard, jam and the jam.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Their latest, Castle Talk, isn't a staggering improvement on that front. It feels--and, in its middle section even more than on Power Move--not so much a cohesive, self-contained album as a collection of Screaming Females songs that will sound very good live.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's true the band has made a radical decision to turn down the volume on the wall of sound they've been building up since their debut, but in doing so they've turned up something else they've been fond of for so long: measured nuance.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Of Montreal will always appeal to anyone looking for a world to get lost in. Is it too much to ask for him to visit ours once in a while?- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sleep Forever will likely hold minimal appeal for anyone not already on the bandwagon built by Crocodiles' high-profile forebears, but I'm guessing Crocodiles wouldn't have it any other way.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Majesty Shredding is an energetic return to form for Superchunk, and they've retained the sound that made them indie stars on records like No Pocky For Kitty (1991) and Foolish (1994).- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Somehow the mistakes she made before-experiments with Swedish folk tunes, reggae-pop, and fringe-aesthetic miscellanea, having achieved varying degrees of success with each attempt-have become character-building idiosyncrasies she now seems borderline faceless without.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
They've proven themselves able to change drastically in the past--so, even though Minotaur is one of their lesser works, I can't help but hope that a band as consistently transcendent as the Clientele will continue on into the future.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Familial's far from brilliant, but you-snotty brat of the Radiohead generation, lapping up the languor of both Wavves' bong-odored holidays and the admittedly strange sight of Matt Berninger's kid on his shoulders-would do well to turn the dial of your irony meter from "post-post" to "zero" for a half an hour or so.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
My problem with the rest of Memphis, then, is simple: it too often falls into retreading thoroughly explored pop without truly making it their own.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Down to the near-microscopic details, down to the faintest rough edge on his smoothest vocal landscapes, down to the last moments on the final track: it's a self-sustaining, well-rounded album that stands well without Bon Iver-especially without a drum solo.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Grass Widow have channeled a number of distinct influences, tones, and anxieties into an eccentric and strangely cohesive album. Past Time solidifies that there's nobody else out there right now who sound quite like them.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
I think All Delighted People is more fun to talk about than listen to even though I have trouble discerning what it is I'm trying to say.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
They've rapidly become the standard bearers for the funkiest of instrumental soul, and III suggests they could keep doing this thing for several albums before it even begins to approach boring. We should all be as similarly stoked.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's a staid achievement-a soundtrack to unwillingly letting go of the unsustainable, both figurative and literal.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
"Murder," "skimask," and "gangsta," all appended with the word "shit," are the terms in which Gibbs characterizes his oeuvre. Str8 Killa is all of those things. It is also breathtaking in its execution.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The starburst drum-fills, the jackknife stabs of guitar, the vocal melodies bronzed with catchiness-all of it soars, nodding at vitality, as though the aesthetics of joy might, if stressed enough, smother sadness until it's finally gone for good.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
I'm not sure what this one will sound like when the heat lets up--but what matters for now is that Beach Fossils have crafted a breezy and charming debut that renders such questions, at least for right now, unimportant.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Rick Ross would like you to know he has sodomized women in Acapulco. Lord knows we all aspire to such Olympian heights, but in that admission lies the crux of the impotence of Rawse's extensive discography: this is all pretty unnecessary.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The result is a mellow, atmospheric album that still manages to embody the delicious, self-absorbed, fuck-all bombast currently making mainstream rap so exciting.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This is exactly the subjective realm that MAYA taps into: it puts its listeners in a position where opinions are formed in large part by predetermined prejudices. Of course, this is true for most music in general, but what makes MAYA tacitly brilliant is that it forces us to engage with those prejudices in a way that pop music typically does not.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Kozelek appears to have returned to himself with Admiral, though the draw here is that (oddly, after so many years) he's finally discovered he can actually really play the guitar.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Backstreet spawn aside, it may finally be settling in that Sir Lucious Left Foot does gather itself around Big Boi enough to make it the best OutKast-related release since the duo dropped Aquemini a dozen years ago (we can debate its merits next to the incredible six tracks or so on the bloated Stankonia, sure). For a Kast fan, this is life-affirming.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It is during this fifteen-minute stretch that the album transcends its familiar, blokey, mad-for-it Mancunian template and, though you've heard all these tricks before, achieves something charming, familiar, fucking good-and this is the level on which Delphic needs to operate more often if they're going to wring a lasting impression from this sound.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The lyrics are less interesting, the songs are uneven, and while ultimately Expo 86 sounds like Wolf Parade-and sounds good, even-it doesn't feel like Wolf Parade, if that makes sense.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The monolithic nature of the album feels necessary, but like any sustained chord, every other song tends to have less interesting undertones.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Typically heavy subject matter aside, Mason actually seems more content in his skin than he has in some time, and anyone who has previously garnered enjoyment from the Beta Band or King Biscuit Time will unquestionably find something to dig within Boys Outside.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
With Total Life Forever, Foals have objectively identified the shortcomings (shouted vocals, claustrophobic song structures) of their first album, and erased them while keeping their trademark mathematical riffing intact.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Two of Drake's favorite topics on Thank Me Later are I'm young and I'm rich stated with precisely that level of eloquence and imagination; should we start calling him the Justin Bieber of rap?- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Loving Body Talk means finding pleasure in the perfect execution of pop conventions; it means recognizing the click.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Destroyer of the Void isn’t a bad album, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect well upon Blitzen Trapper’s changes as a band.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Tokyo Police Club have readjusted their approach-a much leaner, Strokes-ier brand of indie rock, which allows them to continue to play to their strengths while conveniently avoiding the missteps that held them back before.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While he may be fundamentally un-reconstructed, Pink’s clearly a more polished revisionist, more polished than he’s ever been, and while it may not be conventionally recorded, Before Today still feels punchily archetypal.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Becoming a Jackal is downright convincing-maybe sustaining-even these few weeks after first hearing the thing. I'm surprised, though maybe I shouldn't be, by just how cool and atypical that feeling is.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While not punch-for-punch or track-for-track the heavy-hitter "War Elephant" was, or even offering the tonal variety of "Born on Flag Day," the consistency has come into its own doleful focus, the lyrics have reached a blisteringly high point and for any/all flaws, and, in the end, it just leaves me holding the broken pieces of my face in my fucking hands.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This stuff is genuinely, earnestly satisfying, in the same way all great pop music is: these songs, simply and purely, sound fucking great.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Said new record is what one would expect: wholly similar to their first three records in that it’s got three possible hit singles, a useless Side B, and is proudly derivative of at least six other bands. They are amusingly impervious to trends. So long as you can get your head around the fact that it’s, y’know, Stone Temple Pilots, this, their self-titled sixth full-length, is far better than any pointless reunion album needs to be.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Saint Bartlett, Jurado's ninth album and a perfect place to start for the uninitiated, succeeds mostly because it seems to attempt nothing in particular.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
In a technical sense it sounds, like everything Murphy produces, pristine.- cokemachineglow
- Read full review