Los Angeles Times' Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Joan Shelley
    Like her excellent previous album, “Over and Even” (2015), Shelley’s new one is a subtle venture that requires focused listening--put down your phone--to fully appreciate.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gaslighter
    “Gaslighter” turns out to be the Chicks’ most intensely personal effort yet, with song after song apparently inspired by Maines’ 2019 divorce.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Map of the Soul: 7
    The album is also a fantastic summary of BTS’ accomplishments so far, and charts a path forward in a tumultuous but exciting new era for K-pop. It’s an album about being in a band, about the relationships that form and get tested in the crucible of insane fame, all set to some of the most genre-invigorating music of their career.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Very Kacey Christmas
    The upstart singer-songwriter brings plenty of the same feisty outsider sensibility that’s made her first two albums so refreshing.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Ride
    Such guests hardly bring commercial cachet. What they add is a depth and dynamism that transcend genres, generations and language, transforming Los Lobos' trademark sound without throwing the band off its foundation.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Townes
    While Earle's gruff voice is endearingly effective on his own tales of moral outrage and social empathy, it tends to imbue Van Zandt's deftly detailed songs with an unintentionally dour undercurrent.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Silent Alarm
    "Silent Alarm" sometimes lapses into facelessness, but at its best it combines dynamic record-making and underlying passion with a rare focus. [10 Apr 2005]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    City of Refuge
    Though fans of her exotica may miss her outlining connections between Earl Scruggs and Chinese pipa standards, City of Refuge is the best kind of crossover--one that anyone can find comfort in.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Here With Me
    On her second album, Here With Me, the 28-year-old singer and songwriter extends the tradition of honest self-revelation she put forth convincingly in her excellent 2004 debut "The Ones We Never Knew," and this time she more openly explores the country music genes that are part of her estimable DNA.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    II Trill
    Bun B's second solo record is an impressive late-career triumph, one with a poignancy and resonance worthy of his dedication and devotion to the memory of his departed friend.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hot Thoughts
    Listen close and you can practically hear the frontman digging in his heels, pushing back on the idea of Spoon as a tidy lifestyle accessory.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Midnight At The Movies
    He organically forges those into an utterly distinctive voice that takes what's come before and artfully moves it forward with the power of a certain steel-driving man.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love Me Back
    She finds the plaintive center, the kind of soothing intimacy that almost seems like the way we'd sing to ourselves in times of trouble.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Front Row Seat to Earth
    Breezy and sunset-hued, the tone of the album is calm--a reassuring piano buoys the melody one moment, and, later, delicate woodwinds fade a song to black.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Rather Ripped
    It almost makes you wonder what would have happened if Television and Peter Frampton had worked together. That's a compliment. [11 Jun 2006]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    It's Blitz
    These songs contain O's most expressive singing yet, and the tension between her vocal performances and the band's playing results in music richer in emotion than anything the trio has done since 'Maps,' its breakout hit from 2003.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Collections, Vol. 1
    Teebs may not be as acclaimed as Flying Lotus or labelmate Thundercat, but he's making music just as inspired.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Blank Project
    Here Cherry proves that comeback [2012's That Cherry Thing] was no fluke.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tara Jane O'Neil
    Her new album features 11 songs, and there’s not a dud in the bunch.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Post-Nothing
    Vancouver duo Brian King and David Prowse throw themselves into every song as if it's the last one they'll ever play. That go-for-broke attitude carries their third album, which is less about the songs than the sheer joy of playing them.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Family Man
    Other textures are so skillfully woven in that it's not till the record's last moment that we see all that could've been.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Apollo XXI
    One of the most anticipated debut albums of the year is also one of the best.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Written In Chalk
    There's a sense of timelessness rooted in rural America, along with a stripped-down musical ambience, that makes this a worthy companion to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' "Raising Sand," for which Buddy was part of their touring band.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Next Day
    With 14 magnetic works, the album is so packed with vivid Bowie-isms that it seems like he's been storing away one plump specimen per year so that in the proverbial wintertime he'd be ready for a glorious feast.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    New Multitudes
    These concoctions have inherent charm both from Guthrie's typically pithy, sometimes deceptively trenchant writer's eye and from the foursome's fittingly earnest musical settings.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Banga
    Banga is both a return to form and her best album in many years.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tirtha
    Fans who look to Iyer solely for high-flying piano jazz might struggle to find familiar footing as the album's intricate sonic interplay takes some time to unpack. But Iyer's willingness to take listeners to places they've never heard remains something to behold.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tramp
    Much of that quiet sturdiness derives from Van Etten's singing, which anchors the music even as Dessner fills out his gloomy arrangements with dense indie-noir details.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! The Rolling Stones In Concert [40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set]
    The sound is sterling, Richards’ guitar soaring effortlessly over the nimble rhythm section work by bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Weight of These Wings
    Produced by Frank Liddell, Glenn Worf and Eric Masse, the music deepens that unsettled feeling with arrangements that feel raw--sometimes even incomplete--by current country standards. ... Yet none of this is the product of indifference or fuzzy thinking.
Page: