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 0.1 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
view
per page
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    I Am the West
    On his ninth album, the independently released I Am the West, he retreats to self-satisfied taunts about his legendary status, the enervated state of the Left Coast, and his rivals, both real and imaginary.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Yes!
    Eventually all this mellow reflection begins to resemble a retreat rather than an advance.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Draw The Line
    On his eighth studio album, Gray reclaims and reinvigorates his territory with Draw the Line, a polished yet ragged collection of complex love and exasperation melodies.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Not Without A Fight
    Producer Mark Hoppus (of Blink-182) helps the band remove all the air from the music, but the effect isn't stifling, it's reassuring. With no leeway available, it's not possible for the train to come off the tracks. The result is adolescence reconfigured as a highlight reel.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Fork In The Road
    The outcome is more noteworthy for Young's stinging guitar work, passionate vocals and his powerhouse band's accompaniment than for finely crafted songs that add considerably to Young's estimable body of work.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Amputechture
    The punishing nature of the fusion furiosity is relieved by more soothing vocal sections. [12 Sep 2006]
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Audio Day Dream
    His singing on "Audio Day Dream" is fine; it gets the job done. Yet what arrests your ear are Lewis' ideas.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The R.E.D. Album
    The R.E.D. Album orbits around contradictions like that. It might be the most compelling portrait of confusion we'll hear from a rapper this year.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    PlectrumElectrum
    He and band move through riffs, guitar solos and drum fills with a compact tightness that shouldn't surprise; Prince is a legendary taskmaster. The problem, though, is that half the songs, most obviously "White Caps," don't pop, don't scream for replay and should have landed on the cutting-room floor.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Unapologetic
    While the new Rihanna record may be at times sonically exciting, what resides beneath the new bass-heavy, Skrillex-inspired music is still a fast-food burger, one with a lot of extra sauce and some very disturbing ingredients.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Black Panties
    So-so cuts like "Right Back" and "All the Way," a meandering duet with Kelly Rowland, give the impression that the singer might've padded the album in his determination to get it out in time to capitalize on the renown he's established this year. But then he'll bust out a steamy slow jam as gorgeous--and as generous in spirit--as "Crazy Sex."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Destroyed
    All the songs are encased behind such stylish glass that it's hard to feel much of anything while listening to Destroyed, much less identification with the plight of the nomadic musician.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Break the Spell
    This is by-the-numbers arena rock, played with muscular competence by a relatively young band showing off its chops by executing successful formulas.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Discipline
    Discipline tries to service both Tyler Perry-loving moms and their gone-wild progeny, sacrificing Jackson's own vision in the process.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Bangerz
    Yet for all the attitude herehere's also "Do My Thang," a live-it-up club jam co-produced by will.i.am--Bangerz reveals that Cyrus isn't just a twerk-bot programmed to titillate (though there's always a need for one of those in pop music).
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    LotusFlow3r
    LotusFlow3r is the work of a musician who's still curious after all these years.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    We'll Live and Die in These Towns
    Thanks to Clarke's well-developed tune sense and his bandmates' primal need for speed, We'll Live and Die in These Towns doesn't sound the way life in a cubicle feels; if anything, it replicates the adrenaline rush of one of those YouTube videos in which a stir-crazy office worker decimates a copy machine.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Dignity
    Duff doesn't seem entirely comfortable and confident in her new image.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    How To Destroy Angels
    With its tick-tocking death-disco beats and its precisely designed blasts of digital fuzz, How to Destroy Angels might be the best-sounding work Reznor has ever done....Yet as songs go, tracks such as "The Space in Between," "Fur-Lined" and the seven-minute "A Drowning" rank among Reznor's least compelling.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Push and Shove
    At its best, Push and Shove channels some of the infectiously restless energy of "Rock Steady," the band's pre-hiatus farewell. And it further polishes a bold mix-and-match aesthetic that feels familiar today in part because of records such as "Tragic Kingdom."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Live Like You Were Dying
    McGraw's album leans heavily on the soap opera-ish tales that have brought him his biggest successes. [5 Sep 2004]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Waking Up
    Fortunately, on OneRepublic's second album Waking Up, they've internalized a lot of the things that made Timbaland such a compelling producer--that good sounds are paramount, songs should move in odd directions and many different ideas can constitute a hook.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    World Wide Rebel Songs
    What Morello lacks in subtlety, he makes up for in visceral feeling.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    ARTPOP
    There are other duds, including the clunky arena-rock goof “Manicure” and “Donatella,” an excruciatingly lame homage to her friend Donatella Versace.... But Lady Gaga approaches other fresh modes with more spirit, particularly in a handful of songs that pull deeply from R&B
    • 61 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Every Man Should Know
    Connick's music has none of the attitude the singer often summons outside the studio.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Monsanto Years
    This is Young the aged bellwether, raging about the state of the world with the focus of someone with little left to lose.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Prism
    Prism has neither fat nor pretense. In its own masterful way, in fact, Perry's new work contains as much of-the-moment sonic surprise as any other modern pop album this year.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Fabled City
    Morello's singing could inspire chuckles rather than revolution. But on The Fabled City, he and O'Brien have dressed it up enough to make it seem almost super at times.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    War Stories
    The result is a stormy set of dark, synth-streaked psych-rock jams that carries a whiff of tomorrow while looking back to the stomping proto-metal of Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2
    A 12-song sequel that comes on stronger than its ingratiating predecessor.
Page: