Drowned In Sound's Scores

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For 4,812 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Parades
Lowest review score: 0 And Then Boom
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,477 out of 4812
  2. Mixed: 1,220 out of 4812
  3. Negative: 115 out of 4812
4812 music reviews
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    No Tourists
    ‘Timebomb Zone’s ugly rave onslaught strikes first – you feel the stretch of a wince appear. ‘Champions of London’ and ‘Boom Boom Tap’ follow up with a one-two punch; you never saw it coming. Maybe ‘Give Me A Signal’ would be a late highlight, and it is, unless you’ve heard ‘Higher State Of Consciousness’ more than once, or ‘Poison’, for that matter. You never stood a chance. The only reasons to recommend this record over its predecessor is that it’s shorter and doesn’t have Sleaford Mods on it.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Natural Rebel
    Ashcroft's vocal, which once soared and demanded your attention, sounds languid and forced to the point where one is left wondering if he can muster up any will power himself to sing what are by and large, trite soundbites that could have been written on any number of post-it notes.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Where Wilderness Grows
    Only ‘Carrion’ remotely rocks in any way, but only through a lukewarm shower wash.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Mania
    M A N I A won’t suddenly ignite a revisionist outlook of Fall Out Boy’s career, but it does leave you pining for the earnest giddiness of their pre-hiatus material. This is a feeble gesture of benign, stadium-sized pop that’s been cynically constructed, artificially beefed-up and saturated beyond the point of listenability.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The House
    The agony is there, but none of the nuance or substance that would make you empathise or relate with it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Wrong Creatures
    Wrong Creatures is just disappointing.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Low in High School
    The saddest thing is that all the emotionally flat crooning and awkward lyricism is set to the most blandly serviceable of arena-rock backing tracks complete with by-numbers horn and string parts (the orchestra being the last refuge of the uninspired rockstar), performed by session musicians who’ve honed their craft from stints backing the likes of Alanis Morissette and Billy Corgan. The net result makes The Killers look like Throbbing Gristle.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Thrill of It All
    Nobody expected Smith to reinvent the wheel on his second album, but anything is better than limping along on a flat tyre.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Younger Now
    This is a thumpingly disappointing and consistently milquetoast set of songs riddled with lyrical banality, done-to-death melodies and wispily thin production.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Now
    What was promised to be Twain's 'very, very pure' album is anything but. ... A terrible album.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Hearts That Strain
    All in all, the album is unremarkable, showing only rare flashes of lyrical prowess, and melodically unadventurous. Bugg fails to push boundaries and flounders outside his recent comfort zone, resulting in a record that fails to impress, delivered without vigour.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Harry Styles
    In trying to be all things to all fans, all critics, all expectations, all click-bait corners, Harry Styles has failed to make a defining statement.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Black and White Rainbows
    Black and White Rainbows seems to have been produced by the committee who did the backing tracks for the original Guitar Hero--every edge sanded smooth, compliant and utterly indistinct. There are no dynamics to be found on this LP, only ‘on’ or ‘off’.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Divide
    He has made the most anodyne and bland pop album possible.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Lemon Memory
    It’s crushingly disappointing from a band that can sound so much better.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Hang
    The orchestra tries so desperately to stage this cool retro show, but there are so many glaring holes in the script.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    W:/2016ALBUM/
    Nothing goes anywhere, and yet every song is so long. It’s painful.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Hardwired...To Self-Destruct
    By track five Hardwired has already showed off all its tricks, and I find myself quite tempted to show my discontent by going to listen to Slayer instead.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Heavy Entertainment Show
    The feeling [is] that nothing here belongs to Robbie Williams, that he’s officially completely interchangeable, that he’s become trapped in a maze of his own making, and all of the noise seems so very quiet now.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Big Mess
    Big Mess is hardly much more than ten stabs at reclaiming a relevancy that was only marginally theirs to begin with.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    No Scare
    The all-over-the-place sounds don’t remotely go together, and not even in a good way.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    By Default
    Not everything on By Default is misogynistic, mind, it’s just that when the lyrics aren’t threatening or creepy, they make [any] sense.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    These People
    Perhaps the worst crime is that Ashcroft never even gives that wonderfully expressive voice of his a proper workout; he hasn’t written anything here that demands he really go for it. Instead, These People is an album that’s so safe, it’s almost dangerous.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Hymns
    In the end, Hymns is quite a listless journey.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A Head Full of Dreams
    The head feels weighed down with unresolved torment, the smile forced and awkward, the colours garish and messily-applied.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Positive Songs for Negative People
    At his best Turner can be immensely charming and gloriously witty. Sadly, these facts only makes the dreary, alarmingly soulless retreads that populate most of Positive Songs for Negative People all the more depressing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Bahdeni Nami
    Bahdeni Nami is nothing more than a dull and flat dance record, dressed in the trappings of the 'exotic' and 'worldly'.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Glitterbug
    In all of this, it's not that any one song is outright horrific (okay, 'Pink Lemonade' is pretty unbearable), more that the entire experience is a chore.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Day Is My Enemy
    Liam Howlett and the boys embrace their psycho circus schtick on The Day Is My Enemy to the point of suffocation.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Happy People
    The ten tracks here convey no pleasure, and lack any form of belief in their own urgency or desire to be adored.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    III
    This is a largely irritating and fairly hollow unit shifter, that despite its upbeat nature feels like a cynical move to market.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Sweet Talker
    There's barely a narrative other than posturing. It's not really an album, more a relentless ad campaign.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Listen
    Nothing, not even their own past as a middling indie-pop crossover act, is sacred, and it’s sad to see The Kooks attempt to conjure past glories and fall flat.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Great Divide
    I only wish that they had given us something with a little more substance rather than the bland mess we’ve been left with.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    L'Aventura
    Sébastien Tellier has a tendency to tackle substantial topics, and it often smacks of dilettantism.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Hunting Party
    It screams often, confused, like the mess that it is.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Peroxide
    If this is peroxide, it’s a heavily diluted solution; there’s certainly nothing caustic here, and scant evidence to suggest, as she protests to be the case on the title track, that there’s anything burning in her heart.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Melophobia
    It’s a confused effort, with the songwriting faults, misguided lyrics, and the foolish sidelining of Cage the Elephant's greatest weapon (Schultz’s voice) torpedoing the vast majority of tracks.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Fade Away [EP]
    Fade Away is the sound of a band clinging to the lost potential of their past for buoyancy, trying desperately not to drown in their own aimlessness.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    We Need Medicine
    It's completely inessential at best, or a cynical cash-grab at worst.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2
    2 of 2, then, is an incredibly frustrating experience.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Diving Board
    The Diving Board feels like an album made by somebody who’s spent the last few years performing the same set list night after night in Vegas.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Snapshot
    Their debut is just minute after minute of hollow pandering.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    BE
    What’s not so easy however is appraising something so overwhelmingly awful and so lacking in merit as BE without sounding like one of the smug, condescending middle class intelligentsia.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    I Love You
    Lyrically, the album only deteriorates into further embarrassment.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    @Reverend_Makers
    Many demons are slain at the altar of the Reverend in the course this album--wit, eloquence, incisiveness and originality to name but a few.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Music From Another Dimension!
    This is a bad album. The power ballads have some good elements. You might sing one of these songs at karaoke one day. You should not listen to this album in its entirety.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    British Lion
    Sadly, the quality of song writing and accompanying musicianship--i.e., everyone except 'arry--is mediocre at best.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Napalm
    Napalm is a long ass 18 track slog, and the pointless thug boasts scattered throughout the album.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Music Is Better Than Words
    This is an utterly pointless record with no artistic merit, creative spark or genuine ambition whatsoever.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Tipped Bowls
    Taragana Pyjarama is unstimulating, oddly soothing in an anesthetized way, hypnotic in the most guileful sense.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dry Land is Not a Myth
    There really is nothing of great merit to this album.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Form & Control
    Form & Control's only real highlight is its title track... But when it's surrounded by so much dross, it's hardly redeeming, and getting loaded may well be the only way to endure the rest of this tripe.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Hotel Sessions
    The bulk of the problems lies with the performance itself, and the material chosen.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Rad Times Xpress IV
    In many ways it's a hip joke of an album.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Trust Now
    This is a piece of chewed-out gum; with no viable nutrition, no flavour and no joy. Do yourself a favour and spit it out.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Famous First Words
    There isn't really an awful lot else to say. Famous First Words might not be the worst record you'll hear this year, but it's certainly one of the most pointless.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Curse Our Love
    Yet none of this is enough to relieve the air that everything on Curse Our Love has been intentionally dumbed down to make it as easily digestible as possible. Above all this album's great many sins, this is what offends the most.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Light After Dark
    A voice like Maguire's deserves infinitely better than the calculated dross on display here.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Do Whatever You Want All the Time
    To truly grasp the vigour of Do Whatever You Want All The Time, do it yourself. Grab four mates, pick up some instruments and go nuts. Just don't cut an album from the sessions.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Who You Are
    This is dead-eyed pop with aspirations of being your comfort food but turns out to be a starchy soulless slop.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Anna Calvi
    What Calvi's debut is a mixture of sprawling guitars that teeter somewhere between Tortoise's mathy noodlings, Deerhunter's brownish hue, Hendrix's fade outs and Howling Bells' shimmering grunge-gaze.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Come Around Sundown
    Come Around Sundown is musical wallpaper for those who purchase such amenities from the likes of Tesco or Asda. It represents little more than a giant turd amidst a sea of mediocrity, several million of which will shortly be appearing in homes near you.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Sex Dreams And Denim Jeans
    Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans really should have been released a couple of years ago when Uffie was at the height of her fame. She should have struck while the iron was hot. She’s missed the boat completely now.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Sweet 7
    All in all, it’s a shambles. Incarnation No 4 lacks the interesting feminine insight of Rihanna’s latest, the flamboyance and ‘balls’ of Lady Gaga, the nous of Annie, anything approaching the vocal talents of Beyoncé or the nonsensical slapstick fun of Girls Aloud.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Almost Alice
    As a creative artefact however, its merits are limited, and does little, if anything, to contribute to Tim Burton’s creative vision.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Presidence
    Pursuing new directions and seeking out new sonic soundscapes is all very well, as is jamming and wailing for 30 minutes and holding 17 hour gigs. However to merely shove over two hours worth of randomly selected work onto two discs with no attempt at continuity or direction is lazy at best.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    For the Masses
    This aggressive tone is a constant throughout and pretty much breaks new boundaries in sounding absolutely ridiculous.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Phrazes For The Young
    There are moments which hint at Casablancas’ underlying skill as a writer on Phrazes, but there’s such a ruinous deployment of disparate ideas that they never form a cogent whole.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Raditude
    In general, the choruses are forgettable, the guitars are woefully exaggerated, and the quirkiness that made Weezer a band to be cherished now seems forced and stale.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Crash Love
    It's at the safest of removes; emote by rote, numbness by numbers.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Billy Talent III
    The intensity on Billy Talent III feels the same as the intensity of the band's live show, awkwardly forced and absolutely repellent.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Complete Me
    He's crafted a whole album so stagnantly repetitive that one listen gives the illusion of having already been subjected to the same song again and again and again and again.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Jewellery Quarter
    Don't you want to think? Don't you enjoy thinking? Or do you instead prefer listening to background whining? Are you happy to settle for this?
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Street Sweeper Social Club
    An attempt to relive the RATM era that falls far, far short of the bar. Save your money and go and listen to the real deal instead.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Music For The People
    Despite the so-called grandiose statements of intent such as strings, pianos and soul-trained female backing vocalists, this is simply a case of mutton dressed as lamb and those lambs eventually being slaughtered.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cage The Elephant
    It’s a fatal flaw that rears itself again and again as a bastardised version of blue-collar Americana is force-fed a mass-produced strain of bland modern rock throughout all eleven tracks.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Swoon
    Even a past-it Smashing Pumpkins ‘reunion’ with only Corgan remaining is more acceptable than this awful mimickery and that’s not a good place for a band to be.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    All The Plans
    It’s a horribly calculated, horrible slice of anthemic horribleness. Throughout, dreadful lyrics are in abundance, pianos are thumped and drums are bashed.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Everything Is Borrowed
    The result is like a musical cab ride from hell, a forty-minute endurance test of half-baked cockney cod-philosophy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    London Undersound
    This is not the sound of the London underground (although the album ends with that particular sound); it sounds nothing like London. Not the London I know. London Undersound was made by a Wandsworth-ite so rapt by his own fears and insecurities, that he has completely lost sight of the bigger picture.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Fabled City
    Every song is predictable, workman-like, lacking invention.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    And Then Boom
    Iglu & Hartly are collectively giving the nation a wedgy and nobody seems to even care, that is why this is the worst album of the year.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Melodia
    This is not just the band’s worst record, it’s also the worst record with any profile to be released this year.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Here We Stand
    Formula is strictly adhered to, and while pace may differ from one jolly strum-about to the next, the void where there should be a worthwhile tune remains.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Trash, Rats & Microphones
    The descriptive we’re looking for here is ‘shallow pastiche.’
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bittersweet World
    There’re dudes out there (Google them) who will try and tell you this album has some relevance, that it represents pop, that it’s important. That it’s good. They’re wrong.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Konk
    These odd moments aside, it’s tempting to suggest that never before have a band--and a band who, let us remember, this writer awarded a generous 8/10 for their summery, tuneful debut--managed to nail mediocrity so definitely between its tired eyes.
    • Drowned In Sound
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    These Are The Good Times People
    These Are The Good Times People is a mere shadow of its ‘90s counterpart that struggles to retain any of the President’s early charm.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Matinee
    Lyrically, things grate from the off, with cringe-worthy and rudimentary rhyming couplets being Peñate’s irritating stock in trade. By the end, everything has blended into a graceless, jaunty melange of up-down guitar strokes, bellowed vocals and mid-tempo skanks.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Chase This Light
    But most of all, these songs really blow, man. Way to top-load it with three half-decent tracks at the start.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    I Created Disco
    Leave this to collect dust in the bargain bin. Or, better still, the bins out the back of HMV.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Calling the World
    There’s just very so little of merit here--glazed pop-rock staggers into itself as the whole album washes past without you realising.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Timbaland Presents Shock Value
    He is annoying, simple as; his repeated ego-stroking irritates like a mosquito bite on an already sunburned forearm – it only adds to the pain.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Yours Truly, Angry Mob
    The sad thing is that while nobody expects Kaiser Chiefs to be re-inventing the wheel, we do expect a pretty rock-solid, perfect pop record. Yours Truly, Angry Mob most definitely isn't rock solid or perfect in any sense.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Life In Cartoon Motion
    Shame on the person who made this. Shame on the people who release, market and play this. And shame on anyone who buys it.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Weirdness
    Devoid of inspiration, lacking in any edge, this is pathetic.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Pick Of Destiny OST
    Not only are these not the greatest songs in the world, they're not even a tribute to them.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Pieces Of The People We Love
    The Rapture have kept all the ingredients from their previous successes, but they have forgot to ignite the oven.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    (One)
    Perhaps the worst aspect of ONe is how on autopilot the band sounds. Even the flat-out rockers – like the opener, 'Teahouse Of The Spirits' – contain no guitar pyrotechnics and come off sounding limp and perfunctory.
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