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 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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    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    100 Lovers
    DeVotchKa creates music that explodes with the desperate passion of someone standing at the end of a pier, or lost in the middle of a desert.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Shine
    The songs are fairly compact and easy to follow. But they're far less easy to track and more interesting to live with than the work of most pop bards
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Grinderman 2
    Cave's skill at crafting work drenched with the blood and tears of human flaws remains unparalleled, and makes Grinderman 2 an essential rock and roll document.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Whole Love
    The result on The Whole Love is a work by a group of exceptional musicians who, four years into their collaboration, have melded into one.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Graduation
    The bliss that does surface on Graduation is all in the grooves, which range further than West has ever gone before.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Third
    Though several doses of this languid, tension-filled music get a tad draining, taken altogether it is a suitable sound for our troubling times, and there's an invigorating mysteriousness.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    They Want My Soul
    There's nothing cheap or flimsy about Soul. Each song seems constructed from the finest notes, honed to their perfect shapes.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Skying
    Taken in its full, cumulative glory, Skying ultimately dazzles, musically varied but singular in its ambition.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Weezer (Red Album)
    Though it tails off toward the end, the second Weezer-Rubin collaboration (and the band's third self-titled album, out June 3) is a rush, starting with a sustained, four-song soliloquy on pop music's allure.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    True [EP]
    What's best, despite its New York-centric vibe, those locals looking for a beat-heavy record to crank at full volume while stuck in Los Angeles traffic need look no further.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Hello Young Lovers
    "Hello Young Lovers"... ramps everything up with witty, even more densely packed compositions that are more pop arias than songs.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Rockferry
    Duffy's not a belter, but she boasts a cool power that is immensely aided by the cleverness of Rockferry's instrumental settings, which employ mostly acoustic instruments for a warmer sound that, in combination with Duffy's vocal prowess, stays sweet, soulful and satisfying.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Love Letter
    On Love Letter, he does away with the freakiness and lays down a full record of slow-simmered, grown-man emoting. And it feels like a wayward husband who's finally come home for good.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Keeper
    With Keeper, Doe beautifully balances a rocker's heart and a poet's soul.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Black Radio
    Anchored by Glasper's masterful, hypnotic work on piano and Rhodes, and filled with cameos by the likes of Bilal, Lalah Hathaway, Yasmin Bey (a.k.a. Mos Def), Lupe Fiasco and more, it's a sensuous and smoky affair.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    OFF!
    This is Los Angeles hard-core. Long may it rule.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Live @ The Fillmore
    Williams sings tunes... with such openness and character that it's like hearing some of them for the first time. [22 May 2005]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    OST
    Most tracks stir the pulse; a few evoke the film’s overarching tenderness. Rahman’s trademark sound is polyrhythmic, nuanced and utterly polished but without sacrificing an edgy contradiction that keeps all the songs spinning on their heads.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sea Of Cowards
    The group's debut oozed with chemistry, and that musical empathy has just grown stronger and tighter here. And both in songwriting and musical execution--the operative word throughout here--the Dead Weather has crafted the equivalent of a taut, expertly directed movie thriller.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Franz Ferdinand
    In a few tracks, you sense this band is still at the mercy of influences as it searches for its identity, but the best moments are wonderfully promising.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Greatest
    Never so flatly confessional as to be artless, her plaintive sentiments are still nakedly honest, strangely restrained yet unfettered. Still, Marshall's singing occasionally feels distant, negating the intimacy. [22 Jan 2006]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Vulnicura
    Vulnicura is a serious, heavy journey through a rough ordeal, a work certainly too deep to fully absorb so quickly after its release. Like many of her recent records, it's not toe-tapping beat-based music. But fans like myself will find much to love as we explore its many peaks and valleys.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Smart Flesh
    The soul-endangering threat of our current man-machine moment is unlikely to register.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Revolution Starts Now
    A couple of songs (including the goofy "Condi, Condi") seem out of place, but the heart of "The Revolution" carries the stamp of an artist and a patriot. [22 Aug 2004]
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Kelis Was Here
    Few artists could line up an ode to bondage right next to a love song so sweet that it could be played at a wedding or invoke Joan Jett right after sharing a cosmic trip with Cee-Lo. That's what Kelis does here. [20 Aug 2006]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Let's Go Eat the Factory
    As is the case with most Pollard releases, it's hard to pick a best moment, because catchy new favorites pop out with each successive listen, timed to explode in incremental bursts.
    • 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.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
    Tasty cuts abound here, but Sir Lucious is most enjoyable as a complete listening experience.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Ugly
    At 14 songs and 53 minutes, Ugly is a workout, and there's nary a moment in which Paternoster doesn't seem at risk of losing control to her guitar.
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