Expert Witness (MSN Music)'s Scores

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For 232 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 98% higher than the average critic
  • 0% same as the average critic
  • 2% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 17.7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 91
Highest review score: 100 Run Fast
Lowest review score: 70 Brighter
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 232 out of 232
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 232
  3. Negative: 0 out of 232
232 music reviews
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    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
    Cataloguing the perks of power he sounds as geeky as Mark Zuckerberg, and because grandiosity doesn't suit him deep down, the sonic luxuries of this world-beating return to form have no shot at the grace of The Collede Dropout or Late Registration. But because he's shrewd and large, he knows how to use his profits profits to induce Jay-Z, Pusha T, the RZA, Swizz Beats, and his boy Prince CyHi to admit and indeed complain that the whole deal is "f***in' ridiculous."
    • 93 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Some Girls [Deluxe Edition]
    Where the regular album is musically quirky and lyrically either risky ("Some Girls," "Far Away Eyes") or generalized ("Respectable," "Beast of Burden," damn right "When the Whip Comes Down"), the bonus disc is musically classic-Stones and lyrically small-scale.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down
    This doesn't rock, and it shouldn't. But it rollicks, skanks, and two-steps just fine.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Channel Orange
    The musical craft on this almost sampleless album is so even-keeled that there's no song here as forgettable as "There Will Be Tears" or "Dust" either.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Good Kid, M.A.A.D City
    The atmospheric beats Dr. Dre and his hirelings lay under the raps and choruses establish musical continuity, shoring up a nervous flow that's just what Lamar's rhymes need.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Jama Ko
    Two melodies reach back centuries. Strong-voiced frontwoman Amy Sacko delivers the word. And although the ngoni is a mere lute, Kouyate gets more noises you want to hear out of his strings than any two jam-band hotshots you can name.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
    A succession of enjoyable songs with plenty to offer.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Like a Rose
    Slowly you'll realize just how rare it is for a major-label Nashville hopeful to put this much care into every song even if you're not convinced by the one that connects whipped cream and whips.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
    An album that's damn catchy after all.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Greatest Story Never Told
    Saigon don't play. He's a social realist and a realist moralist who makes his seriousness work for him.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Same Trailer Different Park
    The finest lyricist to rise up out of conscious country since Miranda Lambert, if not Bobby Pinson himself.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Bad as Me
    The three strongest tracks on Waits's most rocking album ever all feature not just Keith Richards but Tom's drummer son Casey.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Your Turn
    Six songs-with-lyrics, each with its own vocal signature although there's not a proper singer to be heard, and six instrumentals, some straight and some avant and one a loving yet crudely irreverent "Take Five" cover, converge toward the same goal: demolishing your musical illusions.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Undun
    What I get from the album as a whole isn't a feel for the fictional Redford Stephens. It's the pop refrains, Euro orchestrations, and simplified drumming absorbed by a sound that shows no sign of standing pat.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Kindred [EP]
    The six tracks divided evenly between his 20-minute 2011 return and his 30-minute 2012 stride forward, cohere almost seamlessly as the album they become when you don't have to turn any plastic over.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Grifter's Hymnal
    The follow-up is his party record, and deeper as a consequence, dark and hilarious and gone so fast you're too busy tapping your inner foot to cavil about pitch or timbre.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Annie Up
    A lark evolves into a business proposition as an album of 10 inspired three-minute songs eventuates in an album of 12 expert three-and-a-half-min​ute songs.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Suburbs
    With beats this straight and stolid, you'd better keep the anthems coming, and they do, almost.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Beautiful Africa
    she recorded her fourth album with Polly Jean Harvey adjutant John Parish, and musically they get results.... But non-Bamanan speakers may well find that her supple vocals are no more engaging should they follow her unremarkable spiritual tribulations in English or French.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Bouger le Monde!
    Though capable lead vocalist Ricky Likabu and startling high tenor Theo Nzonza don't soar on record the way they do live, both lift audibly out of the wheeled conveyances from which a gang of polio survivors articulated their humanity and launched their inspired hustle.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Let England Shake
    Creating a suite of well-turned if unnecessarily understated antiwar songs, she's a gifted, strong-willed minor artist bent on shaking England in particular.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Body Talk
    From "Don't F***ing Tell Me What to Do" to "We Dance to the Beat," her songwriting in that vein is as strong as anybody's. Scattered across her three 2010 CDs is one great album. How I wish this was it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Who Kill
    She deploys her superb music to address an issue so pressing few can stand to think about it: who kills who?
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    How I Got Over
    I love sampled beats. But 90 percent of the time I'd rather ride Ahmir Thompson's hand, feet, and brain.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Kaleidoscope Dream
    He's major now, and musically, this locks in top to bottom.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Halcyon Digest
    Conceive it as DJ electronica that makes its point, starting all partial and halting before gathering itself to a properly modest climax. Except that it's played by a live band. And has OK lyrics. Smart, nothing‑-pretty darned intelligent.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Come Cry with Me
    Displaced Canadian "middle child" cultivates honky-tonk misery so extreme it dallies with the absurd.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cosmogramma
    Part of its delight is how naturally the disparate parts fit together, but another part is how they add up to phantasmagoria if you let your attention wander (and don't be a tight-ass‑-you should).
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Stone Rollin'
    More Prince than Ray Parker Jr., he plays with himself to beat the band, and makes these 10 tracks bump and pulse.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Locked Down
    With one or two exceptions, this CD never lets up, epitomizing his biz-wise mastery of rhumba boogie and the second line. The two pop hits lead. The gris-gris tracks are songs not shtick.
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