Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 1,596 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 35% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Dear Science,
Lowest review score: 25 The New Game
Score distribution:
1596 music reviews
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Combined, the result is a dynamic, human album, one that's easy to fall in love with. Highly recommended.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Beasties' irreverence is what made them stand out in the first place; that their willful chaos continues to charm and mutate so many years on is the big surprise.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Following a pair of brilliant EPs, Shabazz attacks with Black Up.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What a beautiful record. Truly gorgeous, the kind that wins both hearts and awards--perfect for a dinner party, a drive along Pacific Coast Highway, or a good, healthy cry.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Embedded in a world of crashing, pounding pop music, Adams' solo rawness brings with it sweet release.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sometimes, a CD scratches an itch you didn't even know you had, and El Camino is that record.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A few private recordings have surfaced from the early 1960s, but none capture her essence like 1966.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Accelerando is a rambunctious yet nimble celebration of the groove that turns as much on the fulcrum of drummer Marcus Gilmore and bassist Stephan Crump as it does on Iyer's restlessly inventive piano.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It is one of the best of his career.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ace producer and longtime champion of underground hip-hop El-P walks a fine line on Cancer 4 Cure, crafting aggression with militaristic precision.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It's essential 2012 listening for anyone interested in popular music as art.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    While hearing the band tear through early takes on pillars from the trumpeter's electric period such as "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" and "Spanish Key," it's hearing the band upend some of Davis' older material that may be most striking.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Awash with beats, rhythms, electronics, the occasional guitar and Yorke's soaring if still mostly unintelligible tenor, Amok is a record to get sonically lost within, a work whose every measure teems with a quality and a precision that only musicians at the top of their game can touch.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    They've captured a sound as tangibly uplifting as pop music gets. The Mavericks are back and indeed, just in time.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bombino and his band have released a killer document not only for fans of North African guitar music; anyone who has ever appreciated a master player make magic on a Fender while a band, which on Nomad is augmented by a few Auerbach’s go-to session men, organizes structures behind him, will find comfort in Bombino’s music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Doris features instrumental interludes, expanded mid-song diversions and enough surprise to warrant repeated--obsessive--evaluation.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    If you've ever fallen in love with a Costello record, be prepared for a new obsession.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Genre jumping aside, it's the patterns as much as the riffs that are beguiling here.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It's an album we'll be looking at in December when it's time to single out the most powerful works of 2014.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Brash, polarizing, fearless and filled with a purity of vision that would make Col. Kurtz blanch.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mandatory Fun is a stone cold masterpiece.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    You want immaculate structure and production, there are plenty of albums available. You want the sound of life, of a voice summoning all its powers to shake a room and be heard, this recording is waiting.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    If you're looking for a freaky good time, Art Official is your ticket.... An exquisite Prince R&B album.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What could have been a random collection of odds and ends--or worse, a nostalgia grab--isn't so much a look at Wilco's alternate-history past as it is a glimpse at ground the band still has to cover.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rife with the kind of sublimely loose grooves achievable only through instrumental precision, Black Messiah is as vital as it is sublime.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    His voice raw, pitchy and quivering, Dylan croons his way through elegantly crafted songs with seeming disinterest in flawless takes or perfect pitch. Yet it's profound, thematically devastating and so well curated as to feel essential.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    For anyone remotely interested in how great art is made, [the deluxe edition] is the equivalent of an audio master class as Dylan works, reworks and reworks again the song until it sonically captures the energy, defiance, outrage, empathy, celebration and liberation embedded in the lyrics.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Producing the album themselves, he and the band also zero in on a perfectly period musical and sonic vibe for this outing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Nashville-based, label-defying group has cooked up eight effervescent originals and added its stamp to a couple of Yuletide chestnuts. ... Boogie-woogie, Tex-Mex, heart-melting pop, retro blues--it’s all here in one irresistible package.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Remarkable... a lovingly assembled production that rarely goes where you expect it to — but, like Solange herself, always puts across a clear sense of place.