Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 1,598 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 Dear Science,
Lowest review score: 25 The New Game
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,360 out of 1598
  2. Mixed: 176 out of 1598
  3. Negative: 62 out of 1598
1598 music reviews
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    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    UGK 4 Life
    UGK 4 Life is the rare swan song that manages to be essential for the music alone.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Excitement Plan
    It's a lively, beautifully individualized collection of observations about the perplexing journey that is life on Earth.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cosmic Ocean Ship
    Yet if Todd makes it easy to poke fun at her earnestness, she also makes music that's hard to resist: Layering airy but precise vocal melodies atop hushed, largely acoustic arrangements, the singer offers up a crystal-clear distillation of the vintage Laurel Canyon sound currently in vogue among Todd's feather-and-denim cohorts.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    FLOTUS
    He's simultaneously explored meditative electronic beat music, and on the remarkable FLOTUS (For Love Often Turns Us Still), Wagner has drenched his baritone in vocal effects and, with two collaborators, woven downtempo beat music and his effervescent lyricism into something really magical.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
    Whether the specifics involve being needed or wanting to fly away, lusting for someone or letting go, "New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh" is a velvety, but still appealingly odd, exploration that feels more like a casual counterweight than a heady sequel.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Harry's House
    His lyrical approach has actually grown more idiosyncratic. It could be hard to glean much of a sense of Styles’ inner life from his early stuff, but these songs are rich with vivid and intimate details.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Game Theory
    "Game Theory" helps rescue a remarkably anemic hip-hop summer. [20 Aug 2006]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    3.15.20
    There’s something oddly reassuring about these songs — not just “12.38,” a laidback R&B slow jam about a drug-addled sexual encounter, or the sweetly romantic “24.19,” but all 12 of them, even those in which Glover sounds close to overwhelmed by his many misgivings.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tempest
    The record underscores his real strength, as a musical storyteller.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Piano & A Microphone 1983
    A fitting subtitle could be “Everything You Know About Funk is Wrong,” thanks to a couple of flat-out stunning solo performances on this session. This is not the Holy Grail of lost or shelved Prince albums.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blunderbuss
    "Blunderbuss" is, quite simply, a marvelous rock album.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Apologies To The Queen Mary
    The music reinforces Wolf Parade's edge-of-desperation outlook by refusing to offer the comfort of conventional pop music's reassuring repetition. Even if some choruses recur during a song, the music behind them is never the same as the last time around. [23 Oct 2005]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pain Killer
    As freaky as the production gets, Little Big Town’s crystalline vocals (and sturdy structures by Nashville’s craftiest songwriters) keep the music approachable, even tidy; it’s always heading toward a catchy chorus.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Loaded [Re-Loaded 45th Anniversary Edition Box Set]
    The release, available on the major streaming services and as a CD package with bonus DVD (featuring a high-resolution surround-sound remix and two other alternate mixes), offers rich perspective on the evolution of Reed's approach, highlighting an artist in transition, looking for a hit or two and adapting to a new decade.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2
    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
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Prodigal Son
    The result is a confident, and comforting, celebration of American roots music.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sour
    The referents are hipper than with previous Disney stars looking to break out of the Mouse House, and the language is coarser with F-bombs dropping every few tunes. There’s nothing offhand about these songs, though; each has been worked to a kind of exquisitely scuffed polish that suits the album’s hall-of-mirrors vibe.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Skying
    Taken in its full, cumulative glory, Skying ultimately dazzles, musically varied but singular in its ambition.
    • 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
    New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War)
    The result is a collection of demanding, disquieting and beautiful urban hymns that reveal their rewards on repeated listenings.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hey! Merry Christmas!
    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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Wounded Rhymes
    She's a mediocre singer with a very interesting voice, a fan of classic handmade pop and the ways laptops can serrate it, and a writer obsessed with sex and with sexing up obsession.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Placeholder
    What arrives is a virtually seamless country rock album, with verses moving fluidly into choruses that travel unimpeded across sparkling, architecturally sophisticated bridges. ... Duffy doesn’t leave a single loose thread on “Placeholder.” Highly recommended.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Brighter Than Creation's Dark
    The result is a sprawling, 75-minute immersion in the dynamic between Patterson Hood's Neil Young/Tom Petty-influenced folk and rock and Steve Cooley's mix of Rolling Stones, stone country and Band-flavored folk-rock.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Wild Flag
    The problem is that too many of these songs just don't swing - they happen and then they're done, but they don't stick in the head.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Love On The Inside
    This is adult contemporary music that's enough fun for the kids and true-blue country without any trace of flag-waving or bigotry.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    We're New Here
    The duo lends each other gravitas and levity on this very curious but ultimately immersive LP.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Nashville
    At 66, Burke might have lost some vocal force and fullness, but his singing is agile, elastic and, most important, packed with sorrow and humor that pull you in no matter what the genre.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Four the Record
    This successor represents a further evolution of her talent as both creator and interpreter.
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