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: 100 to hell with it [Mixtape]
Lowest review score: 0 Maroon
Score distribution:
6014 music reviews
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's neither exhilarating nor challenging, but it is a solid and energetic work, imbued with an unambiguous love of old-time rock.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    While it’s a step down from both "VV" and his Danger Mouse work, it at least might be his definitively stoned record.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    He’s a unique talent, no doubt, and has once again made a work on his terms. It’s at times an exasperating listen, but that’s kind of the point.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sparks and fireworks go off all over ‘Typical Music’ too and, bar a few inevitable misfires, there’s plenty to gasp at.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The lustiness of his Bob-cat yowl on warm and well-weathered numbers such as 'King Of Spain' makes 'The Wild Hunt' a refreshingly clean listen....Ambitious? No. Delicious? Yes.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    His music has always had as much empathy as it has had political fire, and it’s the former that dominates here. ... It makes for a record that can occasionally get exasperating in its lack of momentum. ... Yet it is also album that leaves plenty of room for nuanced, compassionate songwriting that never loses grip of its sense of empathy.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    For the most part, ‘-‘ feels like a warm but cautious hug from a sensitive friend – Dessner gives Sheeran space to say what’s on his mind without trying to crowd him. ... But most of ‘-’ is doggedly one-paced, an often drawback of Dessner’s mellow production stylings.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sure, there’s a residual whiff of mediocrity here, but Carl’s clearly found something else in himself as part of this new gang, and as Dirty Pretty Things’ music grows in assurance, it appears Pete will remain a solitary man for some time yet.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    They’re not reinventing the wheel, but pulling the Harley out of the ditch.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The initial feeling that this album is destined to be one of their many jokey, disposable ventures dissipates slightly as Osborne’s near-peerless ability with a brain-alteringly great riff takes hold.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    At best, these are semi-finished rejects from 'The W'...
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's thrilling. It's pantomime. It's what Ross does best.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Many of the guests are of the squeaky-clean variety--Ella Eyre and Sinead Harnett will be deemed edgy by almost no one – while two Lianne La Havas-sung numbers tackle bossa nova (‘Needn’t Speak’) and slinky disco (‘Breath’). Still, Rudimental know when to light the fireworks.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ‘A Written Testimony’ is a 39-minute, 10-track project that offers all the usual Jay Electronica tropes: complex rhyming patterns, double and triple entendre, lyrics across various languages laid over psychedelic production with minimal drums. Electronica excels on a technical level throughout. Yet, while this is the most anyone has heard from him musically in over a decade, there’s a sense of reticence throughout the LP.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The comparatively featureless pessimism on the rest of the album makes for an oppressive and often dull listen. It’s a shame, because underneath it all, Lord Huron are making lusher and more varied sounds than ever.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    So, even the fact that these 29 tracks, including 3 remixes, have sometimes been re-produced, re-jigged and finely honed production-wise doesn't diminish the original effort involved.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Alas, it tails off towards the end, and TBS never quite shake the feeling that other people are doing this sort of thing far more thrillingly elsewhere. [20 May 2006, p.33]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    As I Am sees the piano songstress breaking free of her saccharine chains and delivering a streetwise, smoky set of real soul.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    While they’re not bringing anything musically innovative to the table, they’ve re-packaged the sounds in a way that feels distinctly 21st Century. It’s extremely good fun and presented without pretence – and that feels like enough.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    On a scale of Speech Debelle to Klaxons, they're more towards the Gomez end of the list. Definitely loveable. Largely inessential.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    'The Private Press' isn't a remarkable record - it lacks that startling and instinctive excitement capable of pushing music into the realm of the era-defining.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Musically it’s akin to the recent Neon Neon album, but Kilfoyle’s musings on romance and class are all his own.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ‘Quarter Life Crisis’ moves between moods that translate to bright, Day Glo colours (‘Kid Genius’) or dark goth accents (‘Die Alone’). But the former can often turn grating.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What saves that song ["Slow Motion"] , and indeed the album as a whole, is Monica Martin's honeyed voice; it's full of soul, even when the arrangements aren't.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Zooming sheets of spacious wind-tunnel prog and raw, solo-spattered soul. Commercially, it's suicide. [26 Jun 2004, p.55]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It looks like a Mariah Carey album, it sounds like a Mariah Carey album.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The results are lush, psychedelic, often funky and always immaculately produced. But compared to, say, Cosmogramma, it sounds unadventurous and polite, as if Alias has grasped the sound of Fly-Lo et al rather than the spirit.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A horrible, hysterical splurge of splenetic punk rock, processed beats and whimsical experimental chaos. Which is no bad thing. [5 Feb 2005, p.51]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It’s another tension that helps to define ‘Girl With Fish’ — a sense that nothing holds so much weight that it can’t be taken elsewhere in the next moment. While that idea perhaps keeps these songs from being as memorable as they could be, it does occasionally work, shaping the album into a really nice cut of slacker-noise.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stateless is impeccably executed, but also unsettling to the point of off-putting.