cokemachineglow's Scores

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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: 100 Art Angels
Lowest review score: 2 Rain In England
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,444 out of 1772
  2. Mixed: 270 out of 1772
  3. Negative: 58 out of 1772
1772 music reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Wondershow Of The World
    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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Trees Outside The Academy
    It doesn’t pretend to hold a candle to the big-dogs and game-changing double albums that cacophonised your youth, nor does it want to.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Rich Forever
    While sonically it's different from anything else on Rich Forever, it's a product of the same insecurity machine that produces the rest of the tape's insistent cajoling.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pilot Talk
    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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    C'mon
    C'mon doesn't break much new ground for Low in the way that their last two records did, and that's clearly not the goal here.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Autumn Defense
    Circles (2003) was heartier fare, just as starry-eyed and unabashedly romantic but more focused and elegant. It’s a better record, to be sure, but that doesn’t make The Autumn Defense a bad one.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Til The Casket Drops
    What they have done on its proper follow-up is neither lazy nor hollow, merely undefined, making no clear promises on future plans.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Temper
    It’s a sad, wonderful tone he creates, but one too shy or just too gracious to stand up for itself.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Among the Leaves
    It's not his best record by any stretch of the imagination, but it's one I'll reach for more casually and consistently than his recent stuff.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Neon Bible
    A considerably more gothic affair than Funeral, a set that sometimes screams “overcompensation!”
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Midnight Boom
    It’s the instant gratification--the sheer consistency of fun--that makes Midnight Boom so irresistible to begin with. It is what it is, basically.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    UGK 4 Life
    UGK 4 Life leaves listeners wondering where they might go next, and even if sated with one last release still lamenting that those further steps—gargantuan or tiny, toward greatness or overreach, whichever—will necessarily be solo, uncontrasted by that inimitable, nimble, lascivious whine we’ve lost.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wild Go
    The tracks are at their most compelling--which is to say: very compelling--when they're listened to in isolation from one another or liberated from the album's initial lineup. The greatest favor you can do as a listener is to allow the same open air and breathing room the songs allow themselves.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    American V: A Hundred Highways
    It’s a pleasant collection, comfortably consolidated and comfortably nice, despite the lack of anything earth-shattering.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Howl Of The Lonely Crowd
    Howl of the Lonely Crowd is a strong, seasoned indie-pop record that'll sustain the cult while opening up yet another avenue for the curious to stumble across one of the more tragically ignored bands of their time.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Great Destroyer
    The thing that lifts The Great Destroyer just above an album like Trust is that it is more spirited: there’s a hint of revival here.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Yours Truly, The Commuter
    To say Yours Truly is stuck in Grandaddy territory isn’t exactly a dig; that band produced four consistently solid records, and it turns out Lytle is as competent on his own as he is with friends
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Universal Audio
    Universal Audio is a triumph in pop standard, simultaneously reminiscent of all the clichés, soundtrack archetypes, and euphonic exigencies of pure melody inherent in the mainstream pop of the last two decades. Yet it’s still a fully realized, consistently rewarding, original work.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pale Young Gentlemen
    The Gents waltz their way through these ten sturdy, mid-tempo numbers rarely striking a bum note.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down
    Earnestness is so damningly difficult to nail down, but Fink and his cohorts come as close as anything this year, displaying an aptness for cloying love songs minus the puppy dog eyes.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Grind Date
    De La Soul [are] wise enough to keep the filler to a minimum, thus presenting a more consistent product than that offered by their followers/peers.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Boys And Girls In America
    A dozen listens through... and I can’t help but think the band has done better in past.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cookies
    Most of Cookies proceeds in similar fashion, with crunchy, showy riffs supporting clever hooks in the name of two-and-a-half minute pop nuggets that the late John Peel would have likely appreciated.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Destroy Rock & Roll
    What you should go to Destroy Rock and Roll for is highly enjoyable, competent, reasonably inventive, energetic techno.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Alegranza
    As an amalgam of mind-warping melodies and high-minded concepts, Alegranza! is more than deserving of our praise. Then again, El Guincho could have avoided the album’s key missteps by cutting down on the obvious Afrobeat tropes and experimenting more with traditional song-oriented vocals.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    With The Lights Out
    The three audio discs... are a mixed bag at best.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Humor Risk
    If McCombs' first release this year evoked a sense of baroque horror, this one does loosen up, offering at least a few degrees of clarity in a catalog more defined with each passing year by its creator's desire to subvert the tropes of his genre and refuse anything resembling an easy reading.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Is Is [EP]
    As a stand alone work this is one of the most convincing collections that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have produced thus far.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Devil's Walk
    It's okay to mourn Apparat's past and question his trajectory. Just don't ignore what rests at the center: a record that, if nothing more, soaks in the present moment.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    East Of Eden
    For East of Eden to be such an assured sophomore release, Victoria Bergsman has a kind of steely reserve to take herself further out of the picture on records to come.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Way Of The World
    The Way of the World is just one more Mose Allison album: exceptional in it’s own right but entirely expected.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Class Clown Spots a UFO
    Class Clown gives us what is most best and most constant about the band--their sonic restlessness, shambolic hooks, broken glory--and nothing less.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Concretes
    Too good to be merely forgettable or a waste of a decade's worth of building and planning, but too uniform and flawed to stand out as a major achievement or even one of the year's best.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dub Egg
    Zimmerman's toned-down delivery and seeming refusal to belt out his lyrics, combined with the slow, slow sprawl of the tracks herein, make Dub Egg an exhausting and arid listen, even when its tracks are so individually satisfying.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wilderness
    Wilderness is nothing if not consistent, and even its dullest points are palatable given the right mood.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Black Dirt Sessions
    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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    It's the Arps [EP]
    What could come off as a gimmick, however, instead plays like a focused foray into day-glo disco.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Heaven Is Whenever
    None of the songs quite scale the heights of a "Stuck Between Stations" or "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," but it's to the band's credit that Heaven goes down considerably easier than Stay Positive (2008), fortunately bereft of the obvious clunkers that rendered that album's Side B such a slog.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Intuit
    Intuit makes sense, easy enough; it elucidates Knopf’s part in his more popular band, as if that were a secret, and it tentatively allows a familiar songwriter some more control, some new ground.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Collapse into Now
    If there's any band that's completely earned the right to gracefully knock themselves off, it's R.E.M. It only took them fourteen years.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Carboniferous
    While previous records had some fascinating collaborations, perhaps Carboniferous hits so hard because it pares things down to the core trio a bit more.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Obscurities
    Fourteen tracks may seem slight for someone with that kind of longevity and creative drive, but if it means we get a listenable, often times surprising collection as opposed to a bloated vault dump, then I'll take this over something more "complete" any day.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Songs For Silverman
    Musically, Silverman is his best effort since Messner.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Living With War
    Young's best record since at least Mirror Ball and probably Ragged Glory.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Take Me To The Sea
    A few duds aside, the album succeeds as an ecstasy pop update on the Blood Brothers’ delirious chaos and nobody who purports to miss that band should ignore it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Acolyte
    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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Parc Avenue
    Parc Avenue often strays too far into excess and departure for departure’s sake to enjoy the brand of a songwriter’s tour-de-force.... But as a fully realized and lovingly sculpted aesthetic, there may be few stronger full-length debuts waiting in this year’s wings.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Someone To Drive You Home
    The songs, sometimes overtly formalist and stylistically unadventurous, are invigorated by the enthusiasm and character of their delivery.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Down There
    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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Recession
    Relistening, the porousness and vapidity of the material makes it pretty obvious that rapper Jeezy’s personality is one note, gruff and brash, forever and ever. But in the album’s waning moments, 'My President' erases any genuine qualms, sporting the record’s best Toomp impression.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Get Awkward
    This means that even though Get Awkward starts at a frenetic pace and pretty much keeps slapping you about the face for the next half hour--there’s hardly a song that goes above 2-minutes-30--it doesn’t feel like an assault.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Humbug
    The hooks don’t sink in quite as quickly as compared to prior Monkeys’ efforts, but there’s also a lot more going on, and the newfound emphasis on atmosphere prevents Humbug from having the Side-B blahs that were prevalent on "Favourite Worst Nightmare."
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Together We're Heavy
    Heavy comes across more a shtick than Beginning Stages ever did.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hippies
    Good songs, great times, and maybe it's a bit too long and short on variety but whatever. Plus, this record actually came out months ago and none of the songs have soured yet. That's something.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A Place To Bury Strangers
    A Place to Bury Strangers is a record with excitement hardwired to its musical structure: the elements of these songs are so individually pleasing that, when the band shifts them against each other, the effect is a sense of constant cataclysmic upheaval. Each new variation is giddying.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    We Are Young Money
    We Are Young Money is like a microcosm of Wayne’s career: often frustrating, frequently brilliant, and thoroughly, lovably weird.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Channel Pressure
    More than anything else, Channel Pressure is a triumph of studio craft and evidence that the group has as much potential as producers as they do as composers.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Rated O
    It’s not that Rated O isn’t a good album. At least half of it is one of the best albums of the year. It’s that Rated O is just good enough and in a straightforward enough way to make you miss the Oneida that was about joyous, staggering confusion.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Before Today
    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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Riot On An Empty Street
    At this point, we can assume with a fair amount of certainty that they won't be throwing a diverse masterwork our way any time soon, and if the most we can ask for is a consistent run through low-tempo folk, Riot is probably as good as they're going to give us.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Compass
    If there’s one major complaint to be made, it’s that Compass is simply overlong. These fourteen songs are proof that there is far more longevity in Lidell’s work, even if at over fifty minutes too many moments seem frivolous or forgettable compared to the striking highs.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Share the Joy
    Share the Joy represents growth for Vivian Girls, though they're not totally there yet.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Blues Funeral
    Blues Funeral generally succeeds because Lanegan knows exactly what his audience wants and is willing to play to his strengths.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    In Ear Park
    In Ear Park sounds so much like Grizzly Bear that it’s difficult to recognize, at first, that it does occasionally retain the bedroom DIY aesthetic for which Department of Eagles are known, especially in the sense of its canned percussion, and at the album’s best it keeps the music attempting the scope and lushness of Grizzly Bear.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Six Cups of Rebel
    The record's understandable missteps are minor in comparison to its joyful evocations, and though Lindstrøm seems to be attempting to approach new territory, he does it in considerate measures and comes away with something that still makes perfect sense.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    I Am A Bird Now
    For what it lacks in consistency, I Am A Bird Now gains in being, even at its most tedious of moments, an interesting and thematically compelling listen.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    4everevolution
    As seventeen-track records go, it's edible, and should qualify him for another wave of buzz when the Mercurys come round next year.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Friend Opportunity
    This doesn’t seem so much a pop internalization of Deerhoof’s unique talent as it is a kind of album-costume where they adorn the talents of other bands.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Fields
    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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    All Delighted People EP
    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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Eating Us
    Eating Us works as a pop record and tends to be only as good as its songs, as opposed to the monochromatic statement of purpose that was "Dandelion Gum." Luckily, these are some pretty good songs.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Tomorrow, In A Year
    Finely wrought themes aside (replete with a careful balance between Darwin the man and the grand ideas he unlocked), it flunks the cohesiveness test, libretto or no, destined to sit forlornly on the shelves of most of the people who sent it to the top 10 of the Billboard electronic list, unplayed and unloved.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Summer In Abaddon
    While Summer in Abaddon features Pinback’s by now trademarked sound and cryptic lyrics with a few nice developments, it falls victim to a sort of malaise of consistently indistinguishable mid-tempo rockers on the second half of an album that starts very strongly.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Pick A Bigger Weapon
    In making these songs more personal and more intimate, they’ve managed to make them more poignant, and even if the quality of the overall album doesn’t match the brilliance of the four or five phenomenal songs here, nothing is so cantankerous as to really offend.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Smile
    The inherent awesomeness of Boris is essentially intact.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Lost Marbles And Exploded Evidence
    Lost Marbles is no more inconsistent than most respectable bands’ A-side albums, and attains greater brilliance on a number of occasions than they could ever hope for.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Call It Blazing
    What they've done is only pretty good; it's clear what they can potentially do is far more amazing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Scars
    While a Basement Jaxx album used to feel like a below-the-radar party for real heads, Scars could easily soundtrack a celebrity bash. That’s not the Jaxx’s fault, of course, though capitulation suits them.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    4
    4 comes off like a minor work by a band of unfuckwithable talent. Which I guess is another way of saying the law of diminishing returns applies here, but you can only expect the band would ride a plateau before moving forward again.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Undercard
    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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    theFREEhoudini
    Ultimately, this is the most potent fuck-you that Themselves could give to the thoughtless body of rap that casts their shadow: undeniable greatness in the form of progress that doesn’t look back once it has torn free from its material limbs.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Constant Future
    Parts & Labor have turned what might have been the crippling loss of an essential member into just another development in a long and respectable career.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Only in Dreams
    While I wish that Only in Dreams offered more adventurous songwriting or a more varied sound, it's still an achievement in its emotional tenacity.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Admiral Fell Promises
    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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    OK Cowboy
    Turns out that OK Cowboy is a good deal like the better house sets you’ll hear at a take-your-pick hot-house European club: pretty exhilarating, though once you’re licking the dry salt off your partner’s cheek you realize that only parts of it are truly inspiring, though all of it was pretty hottt.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    In Ghost Colours
    The way In Ghost Colours exploits my affection for synth pop and empty, detached vocals, I should be knocking down Dan Whitford’s door trying to get a strand of hair, but the album unfortunately loses its resonance on subsequent listens, its sheen lessening to a duller shade with each closer inspection.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Push Barman To Open Old Wounds
    Push Barman truly captures the trajectory of the band’s seven-year career in about two hours, and it does so in a way that does the band justice.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Belong
    After all, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart never promised reinvention, and Belong is another solid soundtrack to summer afternoons lounging on bedspreads, making collages, flashing back to one's own days as a teenage outcast-however far in the past they may be.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    By The Throat
    It’s not only an addition to 2009’s unassailably fantastic class of ambient music, but in a way is unique to that class for the menace with which it’s threaded.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Microcastle
    Smartly, Microcastle stops short of alienating, an adjective more than a few scribes have lobbed at "Cryptograms."
    • 66 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Vantage Point
    Ultimately, Vantage Point will not shock or surprise you with the same exhibitionistic ferocity as their debut but it will engage you with its emotional range and scope.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Brother Is To Son
    It’s one fat, grotesque record. A used-car salesman’s pitch during the Apocalypse.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Anniemal
    What makes Anniemal such a strong pop effort is its refusal to drop its high standards for production, melody, and hooks.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Alpine Static
    Alpine Static unquestionably contains enough rock fireworks to warrant repeated listens.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Security Screenings
    If Surrounded by Silence was Prefuse 73 beside himself, or even ten steps behind himself, Security Screenings is a commendable return to the path blazed by One Word Extinguisher and its subsequent outtakes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    The Sister
    The Sister is another fine record in Nadler's growing catalogue, yet one tied more to the well-trodden tropes (lyrically, stylistically) she's built her name on than we've grown accustomed.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Broken Dreams Club
    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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    And I Love H.E.R.: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
    It may be hell for him, but it’s compelling listening for anyone smart enough to shitcan the Kanye comparisons long enough to sit down and give this record the attention it deserves.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Dead to Me
    If surf-rock is, at least for the time being, dead - or something that only feels briefly alive in scattered moments - then Girls Names is the last whiff and remnant of its spirit, whispering under the door and darkly skulking in the corner shadows.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Chemical Chords
    this is nothing amazing but after the understandably sombre "Margerine Eclipse" (2004), the studious "Fab Four Suture" (2006), and Laetitia’s cerebral study into duality of the self on "Monstre Cosmic" (2008), it is refreshing to feel the joy.
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