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
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Nouns
    Nouns showcases the appealing joy to No Age's process, the band attacking its music with relish and humor.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Lay It Down
    Featuring some of the Reverend's finest work in years, Green's latest is proof positive that as important as it is to show up, you still need to know how to lay it down.
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Stay Positive
    The sound is more varied and lighter on its feet with touches of harpsichord and banjo but anchored by the Hold Steady's signature: thick, humid arena rock, a high-pressure system of cresting guitars and pianos that injects these dramas with tension and embraces all their contradictions and ambiguities.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Hymn and Her
    Releasing another full-length effort less than a year later is unusual, but the accelerated pace might account for the infusion of freshness that makes Hymn and Her so arresting.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sex And Gasoline
    Along with peers such as Emmylou Harris and John Hiatt, who also launched their careers in the '70s, Crowell seems to have found the fuel to just keep getting better.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Year Of The Gentleman
    It's no surprise that Ne-Yo sings about women on his excellent third album, Year of the Gentleman.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Little Honey
    There's a raw energy on Little Honey--which arrives this week, a little more than a year after 2007's "West"--that's as refreshing as it is palpable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Renaissance
    Though he gripes that fans are always bringing up Tribe, The Renaissance is a showcase for Q-Tip's cool and empathetic consciousness.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Play
    Despite the fret board fireworks, this is an honest love letter to the art of making music.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Merriweather Post Pavilion
    Animal Collective still struggles with effective counterweights to its euphoric beauty--the attempt at romance on 'Bluish' is off-putting and some of the murkiness can exhaust and undermine--but it shifts so rapidly, with such conviction, that it's more fun to hunker down and surrender.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Ultraviolet
    Ultraviolet is brimming with the artist's down-to-earth candidness.
    • 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
    All I Ever Wanted
    All I Ever Wanted is a masterful rapprochement with the mainstream, full of cheerfully ear-snagging tunes, inventive production, exhilarating vocals and enough inherent Kelly-ness to put aside fears that her label bosses implanted blond electrodes in her brain to make her behave.
    • 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
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Fantasies
    There's plenty of apprehension in Metric's lyrics, but Fantasies isn't about wallowing. As Haines sings, "If somebody's got soul, you've got to make them move." Metric more than gets the job done.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Swoon
    If Swoon isn't quite this year's "Tusk," the Silversun Pickups are exploring fresh territory of their own and keeping it easy to follow.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    21st Century Breakdown
    Its musical and lyrical themes recur without fuss, and each track has its own strong identity that speaks to but isn't weighed down by the larger (and beneficially looser) narrative.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Epiphany
    Michele is more wry than most feel-good sisters, and never sentimental. She doesn't offer any solutions to the predicament of women caught up in sweet, rough love; like those blues queens of yore, she just takes you there. The journey is gift enough.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Veckatimest
    A feast for repeated listening, Veckatimest yields the kind of eccentricities a fan can spend months winding and unwinding.
    • 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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Street Sweeper Social Club
    Marrying firebrand lyrics with massive, pedal-pushing guitar riffs, SSSC (it sounds like a union acronym, doesn't it?) revels in the kinds of big, earnest gestures that emblematized 1990s alternative rock.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Far
    The fables and fantasy lives they depict are rendered in fairly understandable terms. Yet Far still shows the range that Spektor can travel within her dreamy world.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs
    Its songs cast the universal emotion as gentle on the surface, with a riptide, and some bubble with quickening desire.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Electric Dirt
    He sings of the land and of people who struggle to hold on to some small piece of it. It's especially powerful considering the ways in which he's transcended significant struggles of his own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Curse Your Branches
    Despite its undercurrent of outrage, Branches--which expands Pedro's folksy sound with creamy keyboards, processed drum beats and the occasional spritz of glam-rock guitar.
Page: