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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    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lost In the Dream
    An album that would sound as though it could have been made anytime in the last five decades were it not so immaculately produced, recalling Dylan and Springsteen and pretty much all of Almost Famous without ever descending into pastiche or mere homage.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Underside of Power
    It’s disarming, actually, how an album this heavy can be so kinetic, so compulsive, so--the word seems wrong, but funky.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All at Once
    There’s an ever-so-slight lack of the precariously raw noise that made Ugly so thrilling, but the crisp, imaginative songwriting redresses the balance.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nerissimo
    Nerrisimo is indeed a dark piece of work, but it’s all the more sublime for it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    DJ-Kicks
    Halo expertly shuffles musical microclimates like a card shark elbow greasing a three card molly hustle.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Weird and Wonderful
    Sure, a lot of this has been done before, but not often with this level of assurance and class on a debut album.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    untitled unmastered.
    For all of its discordance, there is both the degree of palpable cohesion belying To Pimp A Butterfly and the unorthodox narrative of GKMC that lures the listener close.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Poison Season
    There’s enough allure in Poison Season’s oddities to make it highly listenable.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shaking the Habitual
    Shaking the Habitual is an entity entirely unto itself; a warm chaos that drinks you in.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hitchhiker
    It’s just a guy bashing out some songs with a friend back in the Seventies--yet it’s a kind of reverse Best Of: a hits collection of songs before they were ever known, now released after all but two of them are firmly fixed in the Young cannon.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rook
    It has resulted in a not-completely enchanting experience, but an involving and worthwhile one nonetheless. Explore for its many corners of interest.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Keepers of the Light
    Keepers of the Light is a rarity for a double album: its indulgence (seriously, 144 minutes?) rarely grates, and its individuality doesn't cramp its funkiness.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stranger to Stranger
    Stranger to Stranger’s effect is most potent when there’s some interplay between a complex, danceable groove and a salient philosophical offering.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Life...The Best Game In Town
    Here, all percussion devastates; it pounds away at the insides of Life… The Best Game In Town like a beast caged, packed ready for shipping. Let it loose and all hell’s coming your way.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    50 Words for Snow
    Whatever the case, 50 Words...demands to be listened to as a whole.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions
    Even for those who already have both of the previous volumes, Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions is a fascinating look at one of America's greatest writers.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
    It’s the closeness and the honesty which makes ‘I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning’ a thing of awe.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Brigade
    It's all tension and release, with barely a second wasted to gasp for air amidst the squall of a band on invigorating form.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Third
    Both ancient and futuristic, a mildewed signal from a more advanced culture that failed to survive the ice age, Third doesn’t make you pay attention to its desolate contours, but rather stare out of the window, creeping panic causing your mind to dart in a million dark directions at once.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Central Belters
    Central Belters isn’t so much a practical collection of music, more a monument to an inspirational career.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We Stay Together [EP]
    Andy Stott seems to be evolving with each new EP, and scales new heights with this one.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Relatives in Descent
    The band's fourth and best album to date, there is no denying his prowess as a Nick Cave for a new generation, even if, ironically, Casey is closer to Cave's than the rest of his band or most of his audience.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Stay Positive
    They turn critics into gibbering wrecks unable to write proper reviews and leave us forced to just string together our favourite lyrics like a damn teenage girl scribbles Tokio Hotel choruses onto her bed headboard. But, y’know. Hairier.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bleach: Deluxe Edition
    Ironically, this package was always going to be one for the completists, but those who’ll actually get the most from Bleach are still the "Nevermind" fans left feeling alienated by the gnarled triumph that was "In Utero."
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sleep Well Beast
    Is it a worthy addition to their canon, though? Absolutely. The things that make this band a real treasure can all still be found here--the slightly beat-up romanticism, the pessimism of the secret optimist, the big, bold beauty of the melodies, the detailed imperfect perfection of the music.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Lost Tapes
    The Lost Tapes isn't an easy album to listen to, but then that was never the case with Can. Nonetheless, as the years pass and more bands form, by default their influence grows, which makes this a fascinating addition to any collection.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I See You
    Ultimately, though, this is a more than solid album from a band who it was once assumed had given up. While nothing will compare to the band's exceedingly unattainable debut, it is refreshing to see the band learn from their mistakes on Coexist and create something new and intriguing, but still ultimately them.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
    Ordinary Corrupt Human Love is a waypoint in an increasingly divided world of niche cultures and categorisations, and it’ll capture the imaginations of those secure outside their comfort zones while further alienating detractors. Mission accomplished.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Helplessness Blues
    Fleet Foxes might have put a lot of worry into the making of Helplessness Blues, but thankfully it was worth it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mezmerize
    Perhaps they're settling into their identity... Fast and furious often, melodic often, powerful often, diverse always.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Purple
    This is a beyond-commendable comeback, so much better than it probably has any right to be.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Benji
    Benji contains some of the most evocative songs about mortality and youth that have ever been written.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    For Hero: For Fool
    Where Subtle use many words to convey many things, I will use one: perfection.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Moon
    As fan-boy pleasing as this is, and as great as some of the songs are, it still feels a little like sneaking a peek at a director’s first draft, or rummaging through a scribbly, discarded diary.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Singles Collection: 1979-2012
    With the likes of 'European Super State' and 'In Cythera' emitting a clubbier vibe amidst their industrialized beats to bring The Singles Collection... up to the present, it serves as a timely reminder why Killing Joke continue to be held in such high esteem.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Semper Femina
    It’s her attempt to understand femininity, and that occurs here in poetic and often quite abstract fashion. Evidently, for Marling, femininity is less fickle and changeable than mesmerisingly mysterious.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Transangelic Exodus
    Furman has not lost his terrific way with a tune, a rhythm and a lyric, this time often paired up with odd sound effects or quirky instrumentation that just make it all the more compelling and moreish. Although the subject matter can be heavy (and all the better for it), it is presented in fabulous slowly-building pop tune wrapping.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Smother
    It'd be reductive to try and describe a timeless album like Smother as a step up from its two predecessors, or even as a surefire Mercury contender--although it is, on both counts.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Have One On Me
    It is a stunning and ambitious piece of work; one for the ages.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Veckatimest
    Really, the only fault of this record is that its most arrestingly beautiful minute is its final one: everything that comes before, however brilliant it is at the time, pales once that choir swells, just for a few too-fleeting seconds.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I'm All Ears
    Depending on your taste for that kind of home-brewed, distinctively British weirdness, I’m All Ears is either a massive leap forwards or a sad lurch towards the middle-ground.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Quarantine The Past
    In other words, it’s exactly what a Pavement retrospective should be - a heavily slanted, palpably enchanted slab of richly flawed anarcho-pop.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bitte Orca
    Bitte Orca isn't a record that'll reduce many to tears, except perhaps of awe. But when something's so astonishing in every other respect, we can allow for that.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Devotion
    Devotion contains just enough variety to make for an enticing listen.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kicking Television: Live In Chicago
    When the band truly comes together, there's a lightness of touch and a winning intimacy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Journal For Plague Lovers
    Overall, Journal For Plague Lovers is a strident comeback that would have been a worthy direct successor to "The Holy Bible" had circumstances been different.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Weather Station
    There are moments of ‘saneness and plainness’ on the album, but these are only short, giddy moments. The great bulk of material on it plays under the assertion that one conclusion, or one reading of a situation is impossible. Great works contain multitudes, and that is exactly what you’ll get here.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
    On the first spin this is a set of highly listenable light pop tunes. However, this is by no means insubstantial and some real gems begin to reveal themselves.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grass, Branch & Bone
    In spite of all of this [still packed with his slow tempos, slurred sadness, and dour imagery], Grass, Branch and Bone stands as one of the easiest to inhabit of all of Joyner’s albums. Happily, it’s also as rewarding to explore as anything he’s done.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    All Things Under Heaven
    All Things Under Heaven is on another level.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chemistry Of Common Life
    Truth be told the record is hard to quantify - it's so dense and layered that attempting to describe why it works just makes it seem contrived, while it's success should measured by the fact that it sounds anything but.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crimes
    It’s got something for everyone, providing everyone is at least a little fucked in the head.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
    It's an absolute must-buy release.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Old Ideas
    He filters these gifts of poetry and keen observation through his bruised, romantic outlook, into a fully-formed album that sounds as if it was always in there, waiting to see the light of day. Or the darkness.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Celebration Day [Live]
    Celebration Day is a fitting title: it's an enchanting tribute to the eternal power of rock, no matter the age of the music or the performers themselves.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pure Comedy
    Despite the running time, it should be noted that Pure Comedy moves at a clip; only ‘The Memo’ and its cold boardroom-speak textures belabour the narrative a little too much on a record that’s all about stretching out an exact, unwavering thread.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ys
    It’s a vivid and beautiful painting that you can walk into; a magic window into another world that I'd be happy to get lost in, and never come back.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Elemental
    There really is very little out there like this, and Demdike is a very acquired taste. If you've got the stomach for it then Elemental is their banquet - 18 nightmares you'll want to revisit.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gave in Rest
    Far from being just a gifted synthesiser experimenter, then, Sarah Davachi is increasingly establishing herself as a multi-faceted explorer of the many liminal terrains of minimalist music. Gave in Rest is a work of disarmingly simple, yet often extremely profound, beauty.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Enter The Vaselines
    Anyone who owns the 1992 Sub Pop compilation The Way of the Vaselines might be thinking there's nothing for them here, but beyond the re-mastering adding significant depth to Dum Dum (the difference it's made to the EPs is negligible to my admittedly rather damaged ears) there's also a second disc of previously unreleased material.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's Harvest
    These 17 vignettes glow with Cold War paranoia, picking up where Threads, the most scarring piece of TV ever made, left off. It might also be the duo’s most accomplished album yet--and that’s coming from someone unable to remove the Hi Scores LP from his stereo.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Strange Mercy
    Much like Actor, it's the contrast of tendernesses in both the red-raw and Elvis senses of the word, that marks St. Vincent's music out as something more sophisticated and enthralling than it might first appear.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Astroworld
    His third studio album, Astroworld, feels like the grand opening of a vision that took a half-decade to perfect, still using the same psychedelic synth warps, diamond-cut drums, and reptilian hooks that initially skyrocketed him to stardom.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Bermuda
    Far from being disappointing, then, New Bermuda is comfortably good enough to blow even Deafheaven’s sceptics away.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Harrow and the Harvest
    If the results are as finely crafted as The Harrow & The Harvest, she can take as long as she likes with the next one.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chorus [Box Set]
    Chorus serves to highlight what a vital band Lush were. Understated and underrated yet undeniably consistent throughout their tenure. And with new material set to surface next spring, their story hasn't reached its conclusion yet.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    R.E.M. at the BBC [Box Set]
    Live at the BBC is obviously preposterously big (I'm kind of relieved not to have been sent the accompanying DVD), but actually that’s kind of fine in the digital era – it’s not that old fashioned beast ‘the live album’, but a whole sprawling history to immerse yourself in, eras hurtling by.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    High Violet
    An easy grandeur is present throughout, as is a sense they are following an increasingly individual, carefully textured path. It is a wild, vivid romance that The National make their own, and on High Violet it sounds just as striking, just as wild, just as vivid as ever.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Singles
    A surprisingly excellent singles band.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beyoncé
    For all this bravado, BEYONCÉ’s confessional moments are when you connect with it the most.... Flawed? Certainly. Boring? Never.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    R.A.P. Music
    This is jazz, this is funk, this is soul, this is gospel... but most importantly, R.A.P. Music is rap music, as fresh as it comes.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On the Line
    On the Line is yet another beautifully-realised and impeccably-delivered effort from a songwriter who revels and beguiles us from floorboards and pavements that few other songwriters would dream to tread.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Before Today
    This isn’t a few Eighties synth presets stuck through a distortion pedal--it’s music that resonates far beyond a simple aping of well established precedents, often managing to be funny, sad and thought provoking in the space of a single track.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Parklive
    So it wasn't because Blur gave the most outstanding performance of their two-decade career that justified their rejection of what I'll call the Seymour route. It was the timing, the sense of 'crowning achievement', the feeling of poetic justice. As a document of that, Parklive is worth your money.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Action Time Vision: A Story of Independent U.K. Punk 1976-1979 [Box Set]
    Action Time Vision... covers a seminal time when anything seemed possible and a special kind of never to be repeated excitement hung in the air. For those reasons alone this box set is worth anyone's time and money.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wind's Poem
    This is a terrifying, wise album.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kaputt
    Bejar's reckless approach to romance is almost certainly one of those things you'd live to regret, but that's the appeal of great artistic endeavours: when the writer can pull in his audience so completely that we experience all the adventure while risking none of the consequences.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Yonder Is The Clock
    As it stands, it’s an emphatically rich and addictive work. It does sound a whole lot like Dylan, yes. But it’s a whole lot of excellent itself, thanks very much.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It Won't Be Like This All the Time
    It’s a determined, seductive experience, brimming with belief and completely torching everything they’ve done before. As of now, The Twilight Sad are basically untouchable.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010
    We could go on about how great this compilation really is until the cows come home, the Thurston Moore sampling 'Heaven's On Fire' possibly explaining why such documents as Passive Aggressive are essentially vital in rock and roll's present transitional phase.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lesser Matters
    It has the same majesty and ethereal wonder contained in the best works of the Flaming Lips, Boo Radleys, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain and Mercury Rev.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fantasy Empire
    It’s a visceral, pulsating entity, echoing with tinnitus.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    And Nothing Hurt
    It might be six years since the last album, but it was worth the wait.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Warm
    These are ultimately, however, personal stories that are elevated by their universal nature.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Meshes of Voice
    A melodic and lyrical versatility runs strongly but the atmosphere created around the words is beyond a mere accompaniment.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Silent Hour/Golden Mile [EP]
    Yes it may be comfortable and familiar, but Silent Hour/Golden Mile is never samey.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Singing Saw
    As a whole, Singing Saw is Morby’s best work.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Serena-Maneesh
    By marrying the subtle ethereality of bands like MBV with the swashbuckling pomp of a modern-day Iggy, they are a band at once single-minded and confused.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Before the Dawn [Live]
    There are moments where the live dynamics allow the songs to hit a few more buttons than the studio recordings did, but ultimately it was an overwhelmingly visual show and it feels like everything here is lacking its USP, no matter how good it is.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    What's Your 20? Essential Tracks 1994-2014
    It’s one for the wider music aficionado too though, a fine opportunity to appreciate the best band of the past 20 years.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Great Pretenders
    A great, and fun, album.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Blue Cathedral
    An album that is both abundant in depth and variety, as well as in terrifying walls of noise and gaping chasms of silence.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cancer4Cure
    When you combine this teeth-gritting lyrical intensity with El-P's boundary-pushing production and stupefyingly capable poetics, it's little wonder that, for all its darkness, paranoia and rage, Cancer For Cure emerges as one of the year's most endlessly re-playable records.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ecate
    This is both the album Ufomammut completists will have been awaiting and the best album for new listeners to get their ears stuck into.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lovers
    When he steps away from alt-country-rock (or whatever you want to call Jeff Tweedy et al) Cline tends to veer towards a more experimental jazz sound and this is where Lovers really surprises.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Is Happening
    This is Happening might not take us as far as Sound Of Silver, yet at times it’s still an exhilarating journey with ample opportunity to revel in another idiosyncratic lesson in the art, and joy, of sonic bricolage.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Snares Like a Haircut
    After 40 minutes you’re still not totally sure what it is you’ve listened to. This could be great, messy pop music, or just as easily be something you dreamt, dozing in post-coital bliss with a detuned radio in the background. Whichever it is, you’ll just be glad it exists. If, that is, it exists at all.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Electric Lady Sessions
    As a whole, perhaps unsurprising to those well-versed in the band’s skyscraping sonic feats, Electric Lady Sessions is an affecting appetiser with riveting moments strewn throughout the 12-song compilation.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Etch And Etch Deep
    An album-long search for new ways to express old thoughts, and far from any prescribed formula of tempos and buggery that would entail techno or drum n’ bass or other electronic information media.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Silent Earthling
    It takes some talent to blend elements of metal, prog rock, classic electronica (Brian Eno has been an acknowledged influence, and Rogerson will be releasing a collaboration with him in the near future), techno and hip hop into an album, but Three Trapped Tigers have pulled it off so convincingly here that it makes some of their previous material look unfairly clunky in comparison.
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