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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    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lazaretto
    A confident, brash, inventive collection featuring songs that lock into the psyche after only a few listens, the White-produced creation is lyrically and musically challenging and filled with many fresh avenues of exploration, even as it nods to key tones and ideas from throughout the history of pre-rap American music.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Comet, Come to Me
    The music, sculpted by players including blues guitarist Doyle Bramhall and L.A. roots rocker Jonathan Wilson, keeps finding life in fresh sounds.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sunbathing Animal
    As a whole, Sunbathing Animal sees the band adding more dimension to its wordy, sometimes abstract tales.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire to Win
    The sonic equivalent of a blooper reel with a few solid highlights edited in to remind us of the player he once was, the 11-song album mostly rehashes ideas he's ruminated on with more focus and skill in earlier work.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Diploid Love
    Brody Dalle's first solo album begins with a bang.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    A Letter Home
    Is it essential? Not really. Get Young's "Unplugged" instead. Still, underestimate this would-be throwaway record at your peril.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse
    This record really is enjoyably elusive.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Storyline
    At times this surprisingly strong album feels like a move away from country toward the kind of vaguely rootsy blue-eyed soul in which John Mayer specializes.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    To Be Kind
    Brash, polarizing, fearless and filled with a purity of vision that would make Col. Kurtz blanch.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Turn Blue
    A pronounced feeling of descent pervades Turn Blue.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Xscape
    Xscape offers a chance to once again be whisked back to his creative prime and recall the man before his flaws felled him, when he was untouchable.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    I Never Learn
    A compact, nine-song, 32-minute album that suggests an artist just hitting her stride, Li's new album seems to have pinpointed the locus of power in her voice.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Sheezus
    Throughout, Allen and producer-collaborator Kurstin deliver a dynamic, if lyrically flatulent, album, one that harnesses the full force of the singer's tell-all verbiage in the service of songs built for popular radio with an almost schizophrenic desire for commercial acceptance.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Everyday Robots
    For an artist who has capably proved he can do pretty much anything, Everyday Robots is perfectly modest in its ambitions. But it's still full of winning surprises--even if they aren't as worthy as a pub band sit-in.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Z [EP]
    Tthe album's reach is as powerful as its depth.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Rite of Spring
    The Bad Plus mostly set aside improvisation in an effort to capture Stravinsky's modernist vision, but in some ways it's never sounded freer.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Here Be Monsters
    Langford’s cynical humor is a fixture on Here Be Monsters.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Shakira
    Predictable and flavorless, these songs seem to realize a fear that unfairly gathered around Shakira in 2009 when her album "She Wolf" led some critics to suspect that the Colombian-born star was attempting to Americanize her sound (or had been coerced into doing so by forces in the music industry).
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Recess
    Skrillex is good enough to kill the Brostep monster he created. He just didn't quite finish the job here.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint
    Akinmusire generally resists the swaggering shows of force that can mark some young talents, but the record is loaded with strikingly expressive highlights.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    English Oceans
    The results are muscular and more experimental than you might expect.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Mastermind
    Ross seems on auto-pilot here.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    G I R L
    This is pop music, and it's all in good fun.... I just wish the recipe would have included a touch more poetry.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Morning Phase
    True to his transformer's nature, the sequel is better than the original.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Oxymoron
    Both heavy with bass and filled with memorable hooks, Q's long-gestating major label debut is tight in length and rich with intent.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Blank Project
    Here Cherry proves that comeback [2012's That Cherry Thing] was no fluke.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Somewhere Else
    The drama chronicled on Somewhere Else isn’t just rowdy, it’s borderline illicit.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Music Speaks
    There are signs of individual life here.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Haden Triplets
    Cooder’s production is fittingly raw, putting no phony gloss on these songs brimming with heart-on-sleeve honesty.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Salute
    Here they sag under the weight of too many wind-swept piano ballads and booming productions seemingly modeled on Katy Perry's "Roar."
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