Entertainment Weekly's Scores

Select another publication »
For 3,519 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 81% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 18% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 78
Highest review score: 100 The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
Lowest review score: 0 Playing With Fire
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,085 out of 3519
  2. Mixed: 407 out of 3519
  3. Negative: 27 out of 3519
3519 music reviews
view
per page
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Bright Yellow Bright Orange
    Smart, sitting-room songcraft barbed with bright guitars. [21 Feb 2003, p.150]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Our Shadows Will Remain
    [An] especially forceful and cohesive album. [12 Nov 2004, p.120]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Woman I Am
    Her fourth album ditches modish pop-country for old school songs about cheating and her pistol-packin' great grandma. But she shines brightest on the autobiographical title track. [15 Nov 2013, p.79]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Nov 14, 2013
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Weather
    Weather reflects a bracingly tough-minded attitude toward love. [18 Nov 2011, p.103]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Nov 15, 2011
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Stephen Malkmus
    This is silly stuff, obviously, but it's a welcome return to the giddy wit that had dimmed as Pavement tried to contort itself into a conventional rock band.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Demon Days
    Spookier, blippier, and more on edge. It's also not as cohesive. [27 May 2005, p.136]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    We are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
    We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is full of half-heartfelt, half-hilarious songs that capture the rush of being young in a noisy new century.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Favourite Worst Nightmare
    While their second set... may not be as revelatory as the first, it's nearly as good, and suggests they may eventually live up to the most impassioned accolades.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Back to Love
    Back to Love is as solid as any of his previous six albums, but its high points are the three tunes ­co-produced by Babyface.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
    Though the album trips lightly from slinky roller-skate jams ('Fences') to near Brit-rocky rave-ups ('Lasso'), the underlying vibe is both retro and somehow outside of time--like a memory made sweeter than the real thing it recalls.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Stag
    Stag might have been a drab discourse on gender politics, but Ray's rocking songs earn her honorary riot grrrl stripes. [3/16/2001, p.68]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dressy Bessy
    Ealom is one cool customer, and her bandmates know their best music arises from showcasing her in all her multitracked glory. [22/29 Aug 2003, p.133]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    You Are Free
    When Dave Grohl's scruffy drumming enters, themusic finally lives up to the second half of her stage name. [21 Feb 2003, p.150]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Rising
    Springsteen's words may be weighted with the aftershocks of death, but the music, ironically, is animated; unlike ''Joad,'' ''The Rising'' is a pleasure to hear.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Come Away With Me
    Her voice is supple and precise, her touch on piano lovely.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Burn Piano Island, Burn
    The Blood Brothers' take on hardcore incorporates all the shouty vocals, savage guitar riffing, and hyperspeed drumming you could ask for, but throws in two--sometimes counterproductive--vocalists, and loopy lyrics that aim for surrealist poetry and usually miss, badly. [11 Apr 2003, p.78]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Renaissance
    His music now seems as fresh and necessary an alternative to rap's mainstream as it did when Tribe first arrived. Welcome back, old friend.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Shadows in the Night
    Shadows doesn’t so much reimagine these songs as Dylan-ize them in exactly the way you’d expect.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Do You Like Rock Music?
    Even as the band never quite achieves the transcendent moments of its influences, standouts like 'No Lucifer' and 'Waving Flags' touch real greatness. [Feb 15 2008, p.65]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Chloe and the Next 20th Century
    The student has become a maestro. [Apr 2022, p.106]
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Fade
    A set of spare, slow-building dream pop that doesn't blast like a furnace as much as it hums like a hair dryer.
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Jan 23, 2013
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Great Destroyer
    Indie rock's maturing avatars of tense lethargy paint life as an epic fade. [21 Jan 2005, p.88]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Echoes of Silence
    Tesfaye's velvety melodies infuse his trippy minimalism like incense smoke, getting lost only on the too-woozy title track.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Just Us Kids
    The protest songs on Just Us Kids, particularly 'Cheney's Toy,' will hog all the attention, but they're the least of this roots rocker's treasures here. It's James McMurtry's brilliant character sketches that really shine.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Rooty
    But sound for sound's sake isn't what makes the disc work; it's the recurring female singers, who add forlorn soul to the rhythms.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    OOOH! (Out Of Our Heads)
    The Mekons have found a placid pasture for old punks. [6 Sep 2002, p.86]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Dreaming Fields
    "Pretty" in the best sense--with meticulously observed lyrics: tales of wronged women and dashed hopes without mawkishness or cynicism. [27 May 2011, p.79]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted May 27, 2011
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Essence
    Her folkiest, gentlest album, Essence is a steamy slow-crawl... [8 June 2001, p.74]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    OK Cowboy
    A wicked, old-school set of club-ready, throw-your-hands-up electronica. [10 Mar 2006, p.69]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Gaslighter
    By blending early-21st-century pop savvy with the storytelling that made country music so crucial to the American canon, Gaslighter is all fire and nerve, performed by three women whose musical bona fides are rivaled only by their rock-solid backbones.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Caution
    On her 15th studio album, the breezy, pleasingly defiant Caution, she finds a freshness that’s been missing from her recent material.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dilate
    For those patient enough to endure it, Dilate is an anesthetic high without the drugs. [4 May 2001, p.71]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Ride
    The collaborative approach yields some of the most potent music of the group's career. [7 May 2004, p.86]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Coast Is Never Clear
    Rarely has such a meticulously constructed album sounded so effortless. [21 Sep 2001, p.84]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Human Performance
    Nearly every cut on Human Performance--from the quaking paranoia of the album opener “Dust” to the brooding resignation of the closer “It’s Gonna Happen”--finds Parquet Courts exploring fresh sounds and reaching new heights in the process.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Writer's Block
    The balance of sweet and sad is just right. [16 Feb 2007, p.76]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Why Should The Fire Die?
    Steeped in tradition... but also flirts with pop immediacy. [19 Aug 2005, p.144]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Townes
    Earle, Townes Van Zandt's foremost disciple, gives 15 favorites the kind of carefully considered settings they deserve.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Silent Alarm
    A post-punk mishmash of angular guitars, pulsating bass, and tricky time signatures. [8 Apr 2005, p.64]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Adore Life
    Overall, this is an an album that feels on the brink of falling apart. It doesn’t, but it’s exactly that tension that’s a pleasure all its own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Love Songs For Patriots
    As before, there are hints of redemption and humor even in Eitzel's most downbeat tunes. [22 Oct 2004, p.96]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    These Days
    Wretched excess? Not at all: These might be better thought of as four distinct, tight, hugely fun albums. [20 Oct 2006, p.82]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    De-Loused In The Comatorium
    The songs explode with creativity, fusing jazz riffs, tribal rhythms, hardcore bursts of noise, and addictive rock hooks into one of the most compelling discs of the year. [18 July 2003, p.73]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Electric Version
    Electric Version may be a bit less delirious at times, but it's still christened with that same sort of mystical, pop-hook abracadabra that results in happily ingratiating tunes. [9 May 2003, p.76]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Point
    11 irresistible sound collages that feature driving beats, amiable guitar acoustics, and a quadraphonic sense of aural play that encourages rampant headphone abuse. [15 Feb 2002, p.68]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Facts Of Life
    The band brings its coolly distant, new-wave pop to 'Life,' building on the rawer sound of their 1999 debut. [4/6/2001, p.120]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Stage Names
    Thanks to the fuzzy-folk-rock vibe, Names never feels like an undergrad lit class. [24 Aug 2007, p.133]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    City of Refuge
    Produced by Decemberists collaborator Tucker Martine, City of Refuge frames Washburn's smoky-sexy vocals with lush string-band arrangements that make the occasional touch of Chinese zither seem natural.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
    We Shall Overcome lets us revel in the sound of a man who no longer confuses unplugged with uninspiring--and who isn't afraid to mix in some merriment with the message. [28 Apr 2006, p.134]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Alligator
    The twilit melodies and Matt Berninger's gossamer vocals will haunt your troubled dreams. [22 Apr 2005, p.64]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Here With Me
    The granddaughter of Hank (and daughter of Hank Jr.) earns her second chance with a series of unabashedly personal testimonials that reject pop modernity (and bypass Dad's rabble-rousing) in favor of classic lyrical grace.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Universal Audio
    Skip to track 7, then hit play. [1 Oct 2004, p.74]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    La Foret
    At times quaintly dreamy, at others spastically nightmarish. [22 Jul 2005, p.78]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Love Is Overtaking Me
    Love Is overtaking Me is just another reason to mourn Russell's far too early loss.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Wakin on a Pretty Daze
    His fifth one feels light as smoke, with happily strummed melodies that drift past the eight-minute mark. [12 Apr 2013, p.72]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Apr 5, 2013
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hot Thoughts
    This 10-song collection is dominated less by taut rhythm guitar than by synths, handclaps, and kickdrums. ... A band that never gets sick of adding tools to its bag of tricks.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    At My Age
    [A] finely honed collection. [29 Jun 2007, p.136]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dig in Deep
    The album’s best moments aren’t when Raitt & Co. get lost in a nasty groove. Deep also features some of the most personal songs Raitt has ever recorded.... And it’s on those tunes where Raitt’s signature rasp and world-weary perspective cut deepest.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Murray Street
    Sonic Youth find a balance--between formlessness and structure, melody and cacophony--that's eluded them for a while. [28 Jun 2002, p.142]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Asleep In The Back
    A full hour of dense, moody gloss--difficult listening without the tuneful base that keeps Radiohead anchored. [29 Mar 2002, p.72]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Love Me Back
    True to her nickname "Mini MJB" (as in, Mary J. Blige), she's the best kind of R&B paradox: the vulnerable diva.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rather Ripped
    It's the arresting delicacy of the quieter, dreamier tunes that'll really rip up your emotions.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    It's Blitz
    Subbing out an instrument and switching up the tempos that way is a fairly radical change. Still, the result feels unexpectedly familiar.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Heavy Light
    A rush of indelible non sequiturs - vibraphone solos, ripsaws - gives it all an unexpectedly thrilling buzz. [Mar 2020, p.99]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Mar 2, 2020
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Brothers
    Six albums in, the Akron, Ohio, duo's backwoods-Zeppelin shtick remains paramount, but on Brothers, there's a new kind of shrewdness, too: real songwriting, and real hooks, beneath all that mondo riffage.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Jarvis
    Cocker's caustic observations cut deepest when married to hummable tunes.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Post-Nothing
    The cacaphonous bursts of garage-rock fuzz on this young Vancouver duo's third album are the stuff of a thousand beer-soaked basement parties--shambolic, sweaty, and happily unrefined.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Haha Sound
    Trish Keenan's woozy vocals conjure cloudy dreamscapes, and the music will leave you feeling vaguely fashionable, the same way that Stereolab's sophisticated synth work does. [15 Aug 2003, p.76]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Colours
    Ditch languid yoga jams like ''Calm the Storm'' 
 and skip straight to the kaleidoscopic beat tornadoes ''Stare Into the Sun'' and ''Stop Mary.''
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Family Man
    A rowdy, heartfelt country disc that would've made his late father, Waylon, proud. [16 mar 2012, p.69]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Mar 20, 2012
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Next Day
    A few tracks lack clear antecedents (see: the Jack White-aping “You Will Set the World on Fire”), and some simply lack cohesion, or at least enough melody to anchor them. But Day is also an excellent reminder that Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, and the lunatic who sang Christmas songs with Bing Crosby have all been coexisting in the same brain for decades.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Banga
    Banga feels like both a return to form and a renewal.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Blank Face LP
    At 72 minutes, Blank Face does sometimes sag under its own ambition. ... But with an impressive range of sonic and lyrical styles and numerous highlights, Blank Face LP stands as one of 2016’s most engaging rap projects.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Weight of These Wings
    There’s something pleasingly organic, though, in Weight’s cohesiveness; it asks for patience and rewards it, weaving true tales of regret and resilience into one fiercely honest, gloriously flawed whole. Bless this mess.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Songs In Red And Gray
    Infinite sadness, hypnotic beauty. [28 Sep 2001, p.74]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Under Construction
    With each album, Elliott has grown more confident and individualistic, not to mention more bizarre.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lay It Down
    One of popular music's great voices is being flattered by his surroundings in a way he hasn't in a long, long time.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Aerial
    Considering the length of her hiatus, this is a remarkable surprise.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ungodly Hour
    It's undeniably pretty: stacked with the kind of clean harmonies and gently syncopated R&B that doesn't so much demand ear space as sidle up to it, unassumingly.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    AM
    Five albums in, they may not be a buzz band anymore, but they've become something much more interesting: a good band.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Contra
    With the band now a known quantity, sophomore album Contra inevitably lacks the slaphappy dazzle of breakout singles like ''A Punk'' and ''Oxford Comma.'' Still, the album, recorded in Brooklyn and Mexico City, stays largely faithful to the sound they've built.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Get Behind Me Satan
    Get Behind Me Satan is surprising, all right, but not always in the right ways.... Too many of the tunes--and Jack's lyrics--are undercut by lurching, half-finished arrangements. [10 Jun 2005, p.105]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    23rd Street Lullaby
    There's an inviting, appealing earnestness to Scialfa's bruised-soul folk rock. [18 Jun 2004, p.85]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Mouse And The Mask
    A hip-hop tour de farce. [14 Oct 2005, p.152]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Morning Phase
    This isn't just good Beck, it's best Beck.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Life is Good
    Too many tracks here recount his salad days in the era "before Air Jordans."
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Picaresque
    [Meloy's] lyrics skip across history... and overflow with mellifluous rhymes. [25 Mar 2005, p.71]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    They Want My Soul
    Soul's got some new tricks, too, mainly a subtle but noticeable shift toward smoother, keyboard-heavy pop. Unfortunately, not every track leaves a mark. No matter: When a band like Spoon is offering any chunk of itself, you take whatever you can get.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016
    Acoustic Recordings spools along as if conceived as a work unto itself, not a crazy quilt of quiet odds ‘n’ sods.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    High Dive
    The music winds and soars and sidles. [9 May 2003, p.76]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Scale
    Herbert sneakily subverts Scale's apocalyptic thematic thread into something warm and danceable. [2 Jun 2006, p.83]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Fear Inoculum
    Granted, it’s a bit of a slog: six of Fear Inoculum‘s 10 tracks spiral past the 10-minute mark. However, these tunes don’t resemble multi-part, Yes-style “prog epics” as much as rock songs stretched into the longform vistas of post-rock, psychedelia, experimental music, minimalism, and jazz.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Nuclear Daydream
    A dark, Velvet-y set. [22 Sep 2006, p.95]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Push the Sky Away
    The peak of Cave's 15th album with the Bad Seeds is a multidimensional walkabout through sonic shadows and fog. [22 Feb 2013, p.74]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Feb 20, 2013
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Lese Majesty
    Shabazz Palaces let a little fresh air and whimsy slip into their dense melange of whispered rhymes and slack-jawed space beats. [9 Aug 2014, p.67]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Aug 5, 2014
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fur & Gold
    Fur is, indeed gold. [17 Aug 2007, p.73]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Wilderness
    Languidly pretty. [21 Jan 2005, p.88]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Sycamore Meadows
    Sycamore Meadows is ultimately pretty uplifting, exuding a laid-back, Tom Pettyish tunefulness.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Humble Quest
    Morris' full breadth is encapsulated on Humble Quest, and it's far more ambitious than the title suggests. The 32-year-old's third studio album mines a rich yet relatable personal life
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Paramore
    At 17 tracks, Paramore's self-titled release seems like it should also be a textbook victim of its creators' self-indulgence--but in fact it comes off like the great Blondie-indebted 21st-century new-wave album that No Doubt were trying to make with 2012's Push and Shove.
Page: