Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 1,599 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 Chemtrails Over the Country Club
Lowest review score: 25 The New Game
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,361 out of 1599
  2. Mixed: 176 out of 1599
  3. Negative: 62 out of 1599
1599 music reviews
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    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    American Tragedy
    The downside is that along with heart and brains, Hollywood Undead has filtered out any sense of humor from its music, which makes American Tragedy virtually impossible to listen to for longer than a few songs at a time.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Some Kind of Trouble
    Despite all the work put into his workmanlike pop, it ultimately comes off as agreeable, but not memorable.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The King Is Dead
    The King Is Dead clings so closely to formula that it doesn't sound like homage or even truth; it sounds like the studious but unconvincing work of an extremely gifted mimic.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Charleston, SC 1966
    It's all familiar stuff - too familiar - to warrant sustained attention.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No Boys Allowed
    In glimpses it reaches that goal--like in maybe half of the sticky and finessed "Breaking Point"--but it's undone by the album's many other contradictory messages.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Beginning
    Consider it a musical Snuggie for tottering Valley party girls--it will feel marvelous in the cold, drunken and lonely hours of the night.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am Not a Human Being
    It's unclear whether the creative languor stems from the inherent commercial pressure of being the Young Money meal ticket or whether Wayne has exhausted his ideas after compressing a career's worth of songs into three years.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Going Back
    Collins takes on 18 tracks in an outing as understandable as it is unnecessary, a high-priced karaoke spin for the ersatz prog-rock-percussionist-turned-master-of-the-'80s-pop-single.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Interpol
    As meticulously as these sounds and instruments are recorded, as beautiful and haunting as they sometimes sound, they don't add up to more than one or two truly memorable songs.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Surfing the Void
    Klaxons, if you're going to shout in our ears a bunch, can you at least have something to say?
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nightmare
    With imagery haunted by death and lyrical allusions to alienation and angst, Avenged Sevenfold's fifth full-length is almost impossible to appreciate unless you fit the prime demographic: tormented teenage boys.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    100 Miles from Memphis
    Nearly every song overstays its welcome; what may have felt like a bunch of great jams in the studio grows tedious over the course of 12 tracks.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pulse
    The singer has no trouble making herself at home in these cuts, but the flimsy material can't quite conceal her hit-hungry desperation. Braxton fares better in the album's slower, more sensual songs.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rise Up
    Unfortunately, the slick, overproduced headbanger music feels anachronistic and wouldn’t seem out of place on a Korn album. While Cypress Hill remains one of the greatest groups of all time, “Rise Up” mostly flops.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Emotion & Commotion
    Imagine Phil Mickelson in a round of putt-putt and you'll get a sense of what's on the line for Beck's first studio album in seven years.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Slash
    Team-ups with Ian Astbury ("Ghost"), Chris Cornell ("Promise") and Wolfmother's Andrew Stockdale ("By the Sword") produce familiar sparks but die out quickly. And a ballad with Adam Levine of Maroon 5, "Gotten," aims for "November Rain" but ends up pretty soggy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Volume Two
    As impressively specific as those sonic ideas are, though, Deschanel's songwriting here is less distinctive than it was on "Volume One." Too many of the tracks bleed together in a well-appointed mush of major-minor melodies and hand-me-down lyrics about the inevitability of heartbreak.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Addiction
    The album is a pointedly minimal production, though -- most tracks are simple guitar-bass-drum affairs with a few tasteful harmonies that put the surprisingly durable hooks up front.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Falling Down A Mountain
    If the style is intact, though, the songs here seem a bit lackluster; only the relatively jangly "Harmony Around My Table" and the Velvet Underground-ish "Peanuts" (think of O'Hara in Moe Tucker's role) really stand out from the tasteful mid-tempo blur.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mudvayne
    Mudvayne has by and large returned to what it does best (or at least do frequently) on its new self-titled album.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shock Value II
    Many of the same vices that plagued the first installment of "Shock Value" keep the second edition sodden as well: Tim's precise, micromanaged beats usually outshine his random collection of vocal collaborators.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Just Like You
    That spitfire spirit carries over into the most electrifying moments of Just Like You, a batch of tuff-girl tunes for the torn-fishnets set, but too much of it sounds impermanent, like so much Manic Panic rinsing down the drain.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Dreamed A Dream
    Boyle is perfectly comfortable singing actual hymns like 'Amazing Grace,' though her take on them is pretty much on a level with any local church's choir star. She's at her worst when she pushes harder; she doesn't know how to build drama, and her throat seems to constrict as she reaches for bigger notes.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Raditude
    The weird aftertaste of Raditude isn't that Cuomo has so surrendered the oddball charm of his band's first two albums, though. It's that his late-career pursuit of mindless, opulent fun is so transparent that it almost taps a deeper vein of interior sadness than anything on "Pinkerton."
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Play On
    Play On exhibits a distressing lack of dimension for a singer with Underwood's obvious abilities.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Out Of Ashes
    As a rock star side project, though, Dead by Sunrise has an unlikely fault--it's not nearly indulgent enough.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crazy Love
    The album's polished, middle-of-the-road approach isn't exactly for everyone, but its agreeable heart doesn't hit any sour notes, either.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Music For Men
    The singer cuts loose only as '8th Wonder' winds down, building to the kind of fury that causes one to wonder what this album could've been with less polish and a lot more Ditto, unfiltered.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is Us
    A competent but very late-adopted pop-trance slurry.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sonic Boom
    The 11 new songs, Kiss' first since 1998's "Psycho Circus," hardly deviate from the band's time-proven formula.
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