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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    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Weirdness
    It doesn't have the kind of force and power that would show the kids how it should be done.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    My Name Is Buddy
    Although serious themes are threaded throughout, it's light compared with Cooder's last work, the "Chavez Ravine" account of cultural displacement, politics and baseball. Maybe for that very reason, this is a better listen.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Cost
    The tempos are more uniform, and the huge arcs of all those ballads, hoisted high by fiddle, abstract guitar fragments and Glen Hansard's scratchy tenor, feel surprisingly safe.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    West
    For most of the album, [the music] remains resolutely deliberate and restrained, without her usual soaring and rocking release.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard
    Ambitious and sprawling, a mud-caked journey to transcendence.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Some Loud Thunder
    Flaws aside, "Some Loud Thunder" is a highly original and weirdly accomplished work worth hearing.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Not Too Late
    Nobody's rocking the boat too much, though Jones does seem to be trying to dig a little deeper into the heart of the material.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Good, The Bad & The Queen
    They sound like a seasoned team, an understated unit where nothing dominates and everything contributes to enhancing the moods of Albarn's songs.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wincing The Night Away
    Mercer's a knotty lyricist, favoring arcane language but not old-fashioned storytelling, so it's sometimes hard to trace what's going on beneath all the ambience.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
    It's this mix of little quirks and big beats that makes "Hissing Fauna" so much fun. But it's the way Barnes pushes himself, both to tell the truth and to try new things, that lends these songs a heavier, more compelling edge than most contemporary baroque-pop.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Freedom's Road
    At times his path is too consciously down the middle — "I'm an American, and I respect your point of view," "freedom's road must be under construction" — but his intentions are good.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Bird And The Bee
    Standing so close to cuteness is dangerous, but these two keep their noses clean.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hip Hop Is Dead
    Like many of his previous efforts, lyrically and conceptually, it's second-to-none. But musically and in terms of execution, it doesn't always hit the mark.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    More Fish
    Though "More Fish" lacks any real coherency, amid the flotsam is a marvelously random set of songs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Inspiration
    With his rumbling, slurring baritone and unyielding force of will, he rhymes with a preacher's power, only he's proselytizing from the corner, not the pulpit.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Sweet Escape
    There's such effortlessness in the confident pop music making here you get the sense she could keep knocking out hits this way in her sleep.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Eminem Presents: The Re-Up
    A glorified mix-tape... sprawling with lots of throwaway songs and loaded with interludes
    • 89 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hell Hath No Fury
    There's a cold efficiency in how the Clipse delivers songs built on street-corner cockiness and billfold bluster. It's all shamelessly amoral, but the Clipse wouldn't be such savvy hustlers if they didn't know how to sling with style.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Light Grenades
    "Light Grenades" refines the band's attack modes: melodic and muscular, gentle and intense.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Kingdom Come
    If he wants to save hip-hop, as he claims, Jay-Z needs to think beyond his usual game. He has the smarts and experience; perhaps his next comeback will show more royal ambition.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
    It's almost too much, really, but Waits doesn't release albums very often, so you can make it last.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Doctor's Advocate
    There's nothing here as catchy as last year's hit "Hate It or Love It," but there's no shortage of good hooks or vigorous rhythms.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    An Other Cup
    Can the dedicated Muslim now known as Yusuf Islam, for that matter, recapture the welcoming seeker's voice he plied so well in nonsectarian hymns such as "Morning Has Broken"? The answer gently conveyed here is yes, despite a few zealous missteps.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    9
    There are not as many revelations as on Rice's acclaimed 2002 debut, "O," but it still can be sonically thrilling.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing
    At its best the music's hybrid of country roots with pop and rock strains is lively and enjoyable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Public Warning
    Though Sov hates the comparison, "Public Warning" does recall Eminem's early work. It's uproariously funny, for one thing, with a cutting anger lurking just behind the jokes.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Pretty Little Head
    Adding some range to the offbeat persona she presented in 2004's "Get Away From Me," McKay comes on as a Harlem Holly Golightly, a twentysomething social activist with a disarming mastery of pop vernacular -- pop in the broadest sense, embracing cabaret, show tunes, old standards and a bit of '70s rock in the vein of Elton John and Cyndi Lauper.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Endless Wire
    The album is inconsistent -- sometimes impenetrable, sometimes enlightening -- but always engaged.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Once Again
    "Once Again" seems almost monotone on first impression, diminished by the middling tempos that weigh down many a ballad-driven album.... But peel back the layers of this suburban soul, and you'll find … more layers.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Black Parade
    What makes "The Black Parade" so exciting isn't anything rock is quite used to.... My Chemical Romance expresses the next generation's quest by redrawing the boundaries of reality itself.
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