New Musical Express (NME)'s Scores
- Music
For 6,014 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
55% higher than the average critic
-
4% same as the average critic
-
41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: | to hell with it [Mixtape] | |
---|---|---|
Lowest review score: | Maroon |
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 4,234 out of 6014
-
Mixed: 1,627 out of 6014
-
Negative: 153 out of 6014
6014
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
-
- Critic Score
Alas, it's unlikely that the applause will stretch to actually wanting to listen as the looping metallic effects, heart-attack drums and seemingly played-backwards female vocals confuse more than impress.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While their true believers might not mind the record’s overall lack of variety, for anyone new to the band there’s little on None The Wiser to separate them from the indie-rock chaff.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jan 21, 2014
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sadly, The (I)NC have mistaken the ultra-safe sound of maximum R&B for the scream of revolution. [24 Jul 2004, p.49]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
Too often, ¡Tré! falls back on a formula--fast, box-ticking choruses fashioned from chords you can count on the fingers of one hand--that Green Day have pretty much stretched to breaking point.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Dec 10, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
If it’s your introduction to them, there’s likely just about enough to convince you to dig a little further. ... But if you’re a survivor of the ‘00s indie scene, there are no new tricks here that’ll stump you. The by-the-numbers feel of ‘Four Leaf Clover’ makes us feel like the unlucky ones, and ‘Tesco Disco’ should have been left in the reduced section.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Sep 4, 2018
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It does little to either push Turner forward or tell these stories satisfactorily.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Aug 16, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Gone are the fizzy sun-drenched hooks and pint-chucking riffs, and in their place are mawkish vocals, melodramatic breaks and dreary lyrics.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Apr 8, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There are far too many children’s voices, snatches of birdsong, glissandi of saccharine strings, and always the half-heard, half-sensed thwack of Frisbee upon social media manager.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jul 1, 2016
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
'Plans' is produced within an inch of its shiny, whitebread life and the Cutie seem to have lost their faux-naive subtleties, becoming the non-thinking man's Coldplay along the way. [27 Aug 2005, p.74]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
Their rootsy rattle'n'roll fails to connect with anything more grabbing than a vague lyrical nostalgia.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jan 18, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Their default position is to panel it: hard-driving Zep-worship so unvarying in its pace that Everyday Demons comes on like one long undead riff plus a lot of yawled guff about about being an ‘Evil Man’ with ‘Demon Eyes.'- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
An affectionate, fuzzy-felt melodic alt.country rocking affair with sugarcane barbed lyrics. [26 Jun 2004, p.54]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
A slow slog through a murky alternate dimension, from a band who made their name on vibrancy and experimentation, Inside The Rose is frustratingly lacking in both.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Mar 22, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
All we learn from these wispy solo offerings is that Lemonheads songs are not improved by persistent cassette hiss and background noise.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Feb 3, 2012
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted May 2, 2012
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Sep 30, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Amid the smartly rendered pastiche of this debut, Bainbridge references Prince and Janet Jackson, yet turns those joyous sounds unpleasantly arch.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Mar 20, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Mostly it's just a heavily lacquered drone, an album so restrained as to sound almost calculated. [29 Jan 2005, p.58]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
Sounds like an even less energetic Alicia Keys. [24 Jun 2006, p.43]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
It’s hard to see where Bugg goes from here: he’s either a man still in search of a niche or, more worryingly, locked into the wrong one.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Aug 31, 2017
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Tongue-in-cheek humour is Pump’s biggest selling point, but many of the album’s 16 songs (most of which have a running time of just over two minutes) feel like little more than regurgitated punchlines or uninspired variations on themes already set up and adequately executed on the rapper’s early tracks.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Feb 27, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sure, 'J.Lo' is competent, but like Lopez's voice, it lacks sincerity and warmth.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Despite some positives, Gesaffelstein isn’t able to recreate past glories, nor advance on them--or even successfully reinvent himself. By the end of it, you’re mostly left feeling confused and underwhelmed.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Apr 8, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Through this, In Plain Sight has a frustrating tendency to lean on cliché; there’s a nagging feeling of déjà vu in listening to a record that has been made thousands of times before.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted May 24, 2019
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jan 18, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Honesty is often lost in overproduction, both in the music and in his lyricism. It is listenable, summery and occasionally thought-provoking, but tired in its laboured pushes for emotional sincerity.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Apr 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Occasionally they hit an addictive groove, but you'd hope so given that the songs are each five to 10 minutes long. Messy, and not in the good way.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Mar 22, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ant's famous sartorial attention to detail doesn't extend to the music here, as experimentalism meanders into the bizarre and unlistenable.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jan 22, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Many of the songs deal in wavy synths and trap beats, but a few tracks show an appetite for experimentation that reflects poorly on the rest of the album.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted May 1, 2018
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
With only three 'songs' to speak of here, 'All Watched Over...' smacks of another great British songwriter having their melodic nous chewed away by electro-moths. [7 Aug 2004, p.49]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
They peddle the same sort of fake-rustic rootsiness that seems to be colonising our era: all these flatpack off-the-peg dreams of Ruritania that iPad-stashing mid-lifes have taken up as a counterpoint to their rabid technophilia.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted May 2, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Even at best, though, something rings false about Better Than Heavy. It never sounds like a self-funded album made by angry people.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s only on the closing ‘Money Money’ that he sounds like any sort of rebel at all, upping the pace dramatically for a chunk of smoke-spewing Motörhead ‘battle rock’, railing against the seditious lure of materialism.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Oct 16, 2018
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
It’s all so methodically planned that even standout radio-wave surfer ‘Take Back The City’ and producer Jacknife Lee struggle to stamp fresh life into this mega-selling formula.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Sep 6, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Their preoccupation with '70s British metal finds them wandering dangerously into gobilin-and-ghouls prog-rock territory. [5 Jun 2004, p.54]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
An album that not only fudges golden opportunities, but finds this band's whole modus operandi laid embarrassingly bare. [15 Jan 2005, p.42]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
With their crashing guitar riffs and vague, faux-poetic proclamations, Lost Under Heaven sound more like Imagine Dragons with a Goldsmiths degree.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jan 15, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
'The Sound of Silence', the Simon & Garfunkel cover, is easily the best song on the record, despite Draiman singing his parts like he’s The Count from Sesame Street.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Oct 18, 2018
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The man who made the 's 'Dare'--can't add enough bells and whistles to stop the tunes from sounding like they've been faxed over from one of Stock & Aitken's duller days at the office.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Labrinth may work wonders in the background, but he's far too anonymous on Electronic Earth to mark his card as much of a solo star.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Apr 17, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sure, it’s worth making the effort if you’re already a Segall Stan or a White Fence mega fan, but beyond that? There’s little here to latch onto that’ll make your stay worthwhile.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jul 20, 2018
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
Unfortunately, as a musical portrayal of the long-lasting echoes of WWI, its ideas are far more interesting than their execution.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jan 8, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
However much he hollers, Dave McCabe can’t escape sounding bored, and his often-schoolboy lyrics have begun to actively jar.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
A hundred miles off, and they might as well be a thousand. [16 Sep 2006, p.37]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
The Mountain Will Fall sounds, at best, like a decent mixtape made by someone with pretty good taste. Thing is, you can probably make one of those yourself.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jun 21, 2016
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
In their relentless slavery to the groove, the songs fall hopelessly flat. [12 Feb 2005, p.51]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
It sounds like Aerosmith, with plenty of hard-rocking blues swagger and lighters-aloft balladry, but most of the tunes are rubbish.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Nov 5, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
A saddening case of brick production, paper soul--here the Quins are little more than twin airbags.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sadly, the Norwegians promptly undo much of their good work by interspersing the bombastic rocking with acoustic cobblers like ‘Lovescared’ and the sort of excessive, pompous emoting that even Pearl Jam tend to avoid these days.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Feb 26, 2014
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
When he emerged from his stupor, he announced that he was giving up rap to make a guitar album. Which brings us to ‘Rebirth’, a shlock-rock record so absurd it makes Alien Ant Farm seem like a legitimate musical venture.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
And it sounds... bloated and uncomfortable. Time for another re-think.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ultimately, Glow will live or die on the strength of its singles. On this evidence, Tensnake seems to be missing that key part of his blueprint.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Mar 11, 2014
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Amusingly, Los Angeles nu-metal types Orgy look like Duran Duran after being chewed on by giant robots. The problem is, as this hugely stupid sci-fi concept album grinds on towards the 30th century, they sound that way, too.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
A muddled album that claims to love pop, but seems thoroughly averse to having any kind of fun.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Aug 20, 2021
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
[Danger Mouse's] electronics in ‘Lucid’ detract from the caper and the sub-Lily Allen skank of ‘Jelly Belly’ is ill-advised, while ‘The Running Goblin’’s harpsichord mires it in a midden of shtick.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
Her debut had some killer pop singles like 'Black Horse And The Cherry Tree', but on Drastic Fantastic her talent and quirks have been mostly hidden under a gloss of studio production and bland AOR.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It quickly grows dreary when there’s not a knowing smirk to match the intensity.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Aug 7, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
On the whole, this is a mixed bag. ‘LP1’ shows a more grown-up side to the former One Direction member, and cherry-picks from pretty much every genre that’s in vogue right now. The problem is that it doesn’t tell us much about Liam Payne.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Dec 6, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Overall, U2 have built a stadium rock cruise liner they’ve zero interest in rocking, and Experience is 50 minutes of very plain sailing indeed.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Nov 29, 2017
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This barrage of generalised morality is cozened by overwrought production that sees the sun-baked reggae backbone of his previous efforts stripped out to make way for a confusing hotch-potch of styles and an overwhelming sense of desperation.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Combin[es] the chummy West Coast country pop of The Thrills with the plink-plonk pub piano philosophising of Embrace. [3 Jun 2006, p.33]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
Sticking to the formula followed by fellow Welsh emo posers Lostprophets and Funeral For A Friend, the generic metalcore verses and overblown choruses are all present and correct.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
Sadly, it seems that with 'Audioslave' these people who were involved in some very exciting rock records in the 1990s, now seem happy to be making some bad ones from the 1970s.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Benjamin Power, on his first record as Blanck Mass, isn't really breaking their spacey, rushing mould, instead slowing it down and ironing out the thrills.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jun 30, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This isn’t a country album at all; rather it’s an excuse for Diplo to wear some razzle-dazzle Nudie Cohn-style suits and fancy cowboy hats.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted May 28, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Listening to 'Blue' is like meeting your first girlfriend ten years on, and realising that the things you fell in love [with] are long gone. [19 Jun 2004, p.56]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
The record peaks with its first two songs.... The rest is Condon shirking off the grandeur of his earlier arrangements with his simplest songs yet, but without showing he’s got the songwriting chops to move on.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Sep 22, 2015
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
More often than not Origins falls flat, with insipid choruses and melodramatic refrains. Big, bold and a little bit naff, this is another bread and butter album from a mindbogglingly huge group.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Nov 15, 2018
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Although Cruz’s downfall comes when he acts the player (‘Break Your Heart’, ‘Dirty Picture’), it’s obvious his real talent comes when he exchanges vocal manipulation for balladeering as on ‘Falling In Love’, and disregards romantic cynicism for a rather hopeful ‘The 11th Hour’.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The more this album wears on, the more it feels a world away from the band who once grabbed attention with that charming and vibrant 2003 album. ‘Lovers Rock’ features moments that will satisfy those who’ve stuck by the band this far, but it ultimately feels like The Dears are running out of gas.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted May 18, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
File this under 'disappointing'.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
They appear to be sincere in their sloganeering so you’ve got to admire them, but, really, the message of a song like ‘New Orleans’ gets seriously undermined by the shiny Busted balloon it’s caught inside.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This album was their biggest and best opportunity to change that perception, but no matter how many freight-loads it ends up selling by, it hasn't succeeded.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted May 24, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
They've stuck the bleeps on autopilot, the beats on cruise control, and can only be bothered writing a handful of half-decent tunes. [5 Feb 2005, p.50]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
Resembles the Arcade Fire if they were from the Renaissance era and rubbish. [23 Jul 2005, p.50]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
There ain't too much here that's going to add to her legacy. Rather, there's the unmistakable sense of someone treading water, with even the OK bits here sounding uninspired.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jun 27, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Problem is, there's a dearth of ideas here that means the whole shebang clings to cloying, torturously repetitive pastiche rather than doing anything particularly innovative.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted May 23, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Placebo have been plumbing the same vein for so long, they've slipped into self-parody and come out the other side with their lipstick all smudged.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Sep 23, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Faux-feminist tracks such as 'Dirty Mind' are more Austin Powers than Phil Spector, too self-conscious to hit the heart-bursting heights of the originals, too much a pastiche to forge anything new. [15 Jul 2006, p.37]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
The band now find themselves caught between soft rock and a very hard-to-love place indeed.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It would be alright if they believed this stuff, but it's all done with the detached sneer beloved of hipsters worldwide. They're faux-hippies, not real ones.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jun 27, 2011
- Read full review
-
- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jul 2, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The first disc here was made with several different collaborators certainly doesn't lend cohesion.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Feb 1, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
For the most part, the album is sickly sweet and filled with cliché lyrics. ‘Treat Myself’ is a frustrating listen, especially given Trainor’s track record for writing ear-worm pop songs.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Feb 11, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There's 100 reasons to worship the Beastie Boys. But, plugging in a wah-wah pedal and writing an album of indulgent jazz-funk instrumentals is certainly not one of them.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
For the most part, this album, with its Avatar references (‘Lost Freestyle’) and hilariously bad Kim Jong Un punchlines (from ‘Tanasia’: “Chillin, we’re starting to think about children / And bringing them in the world with Kim Jong Illin'”), just sounds dated and like something Nas didn’t need to release.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Jul 23, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Laura Marin and Quinn Luke cram excessive lyrics into songs such as 'Shake', creating stodge instead of sleekness.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted Feb 1, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Welcome To The Walk Alone may have the skeletal blueprint of pop genius running through it like words in a stick of rock but it verges on insulting.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The sort of glossy folk-pop that makes you want to usher Alice down the rabbit hole, and roll out the cement mixer. [10 Jun 2006, p.41]- New Musical Express (NME)
-
- Critic Score
In music, there are few things more tiresome than an artist obsessed with the idea of authenticity – they usually forget how to have fun. And this is a trap that Rag’N’Bone Man’s second album ‘Life in Misadventure’ falls straight into.- New Musical Express (NME)
- Posted May 6, 2021
- Read full review