NOW Magazine's Scores

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For 2,812 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 43% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 The Life Of Pablo
Lowest review score: 20 Testify
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,287 out of 2812
  2. Mixed: 1,452 out of 2812
  3. Negative: 73 out of 2812
2812 music reviews
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    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stronger
    On her fifth album she mercifully avoids the monotonous dance-pop trend in favour of a timeless pop-rock sound that occasionally flirts with the dance floor.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    When The Deer Wore Blue
    It's more tripped-out and druggy, a looser version of the songwriting that gave Skeleton its immediate punch.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Born to Die
    Much of her music aims to capture elusive emotions, yet she ends up spelling them out with literal refrains, banal narratives and sexed-up histrionics that leave little to the imagination.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Metal Moon
    When the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach works best, Metal Moon sounds like little bits of all your favourite records glued together into one mutant disc.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Big
    Repeatedly tries to regenerate the neo-soul-pop formula of I Try, down to its beat pauses and rich, piano-driven arrangements.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bittersweet World
    No matter how glossy the production, it’s impossible not to notice that Simpson can’t sing well enough to carry an album, while her peppy, Avril-lite personality comes off as contrived and as obnoxious as Lavigne’s.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ...And Star Power
    For all the psychedelic brilliance, though, there is just as much noisy, self-impressed jamming that could have used editing.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There Are Rules
    On their fifth album, the Get Up Kids sound like a band who resent what made them popular in the first place.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mr. Impossible
    Mr. Impossible is easily Black Dice's most accessible album yet, but that's not saying much. It's still very uneasy listening.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stranger Things
    Aside from flailing a bit at the end, the London group’s third full-length hits its mark.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Symphonicities
    You expect the worst from Police faves like Roxanne and Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, since those tunes were tautly written, with minimal pop intricacy. But the RPCO adds an interesting melancholic layer to the former, giving it more drama, as orchestras tend to do.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Less You Know, The Better
    His newest album, on the other hand, is all technique and no emotion.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome
    He’s much better at showing off his record collection on the well-chilled "Ice Castles," which purports to be a James Pants mix disc.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    I Am...Sasha Fierce
    Unfortunately, the "deluxe edition" is bloated with filler, and the shorter "standard edition" omits some of the more creative songs instead of dropping the duds.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rock N Roll Jesus
    Convinced he's some kind of rock revivalist, he's more Bob Seger, Skynyrd and Hank Jr. than anything else here. That works in his favour for most of the album, aside from a few misses like the generically foot-stompin' 'So Hot' and the gospel-infused singalong 'Don't Tell Me U Love Me.'
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Atmosphere
    It’s rare to hate one half of an album so much while genuinely enjoying the other.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Law and Order
    Fun and charming in places, barely listenable in others.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shine On
    While occasionally generic, nothing on Shine On is as annoying as their breakthrough single, Are You Gonna Be My Girl.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Untitled
    At its best, Untitled sounds like a compilation of his previous work--a smooth-voiced crooner reading a sex thesaurus over R&B beats.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In the Lonely Hour
    Its formulaic songwriting and middling, lite-pop arrangements seem more concerned with top 40 appeal than with maximizing the richness and openness of his voice.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Happiness Ltd.
    Replacement guitarist Luke Paquin is serviceable but stays in the shadows, while vocalist Steve Bays sheds more of HHH's former skin on a sonically big record that offers only rare doses of the pulsating new wave punk energy they once emitted.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pray IV Reign
    With the exception of the exuberant 'Pop Champagne,' which was a Ron Brownz single before Jones hopped on it, Reign is a washout.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Dream
    While the dancehall-inflected 'Dirty Disco Dub' suffers from cheesy vocal samples, the second half of the record settles down into better but still well-trod territory reminiscent of better Aphex Twin and Brian Eno.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's World
    Sometimes it feels like he's competing too hard with the intensity of the big, expensive-sounding production--especially on the mid-tempo numbers.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Press Play
    A sprawled-out, futuristic tribute to Diddy's own celebrity.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tomorrow
    No doubt Kingston can write a tune that sticks in the ear like a small insect. But just like having an insect in your ear, once the novelty wears off, it starts to get irritating.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    1000 Palms
    Most of the album is kinda ho-hum and overly mild in tone, as is Pitts's voice.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Do Things
    While Do Things is "easy" music, music that sounds great on a boat in the sun or accompanying front-porch Coronas, it's not likely to stick with you after a listen or two.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Someday World
    Someday World is an fully realized blend of electronic and acoustic sounds that elevates the mundane, austere details in the lyrics into a state of ecstasy.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A New Testament
    They’re perfectly produced but less captivating than the moments of emotional specificity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Open Door
    Fans will be thrilled to know that, despite the replacement of main guitarist and co-songwriter Ben Moody, Evanescence's sophomore album is at least as unsubtle as its predecessor.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fork In The Road
    While the concept is inspired and resoundingly current, the jangly blues-bar rock seems an afterthought.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Amputechture
    After an album's worth of tiring, spastic jazzy post-punk that smacks of musical masturbation, chances are you'll really miss At the Drive-In.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Nine Lives
    This record finds Winwood on a clichéd existential journey into jazzy world music territory, which should play well with the over-50 soft cock rock set, who for some inexplicable reason don’t seem to mind six-minute sax solos.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The R.E.D. Album
    The features wouldn't be so bad if Game didn't yield to the wattage and personalities of his co-stars. (Again, he can rap when he tries.) Used as a constant crutch, however, they quell his ferocity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Union
    Lacking the jangly, well-crafted gems that made Morning Comes strong, the album sounds B-side-ish at times.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Northern Shore
    The band's adventurous use of sampling and beats pays off when supporting Andy Maize's vocal on The Herd, but the alt-folk arrangements tend to get melodramatic on quieter songs like I'll Be There and the tremolo-piano-treated title track.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Quicken The Heart
    Quicken The Heart, however, goes nowhere new and hardly bests its predecessor.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    We Can Do Anything
    The album repeatedly teases you with glimpses of the unhinged, earnest urgency that made the Violent Femmes semi-famous, and then flips into an annoying faux naive whimsy just as you’re starting to enjoy it.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ghost Stories
    We all love to revel in a real tearjerker (Someone Like You, anyone?), but these whiney odes are heartbreak songs minus the heart.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Unapologetic
    Sonically, the first half of Unapologetic picks up on the syrupy Southern hip-hop minimalism popular last summer, while much of the latter half is a grab bag of unwieldy balladry.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Black Panties
    Despite flashes of melodic and lyrical inventiveness, production-wise Kelly sounds like he’s chasing innovators The-Dream and Mike WiLL Made It, especially on the strip club tracks.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sleep Through The Static
    He’s crafted yet another replica batch of breezy, walk-along-the-beach jams [which] won’t matter to his fans, who keep coming back to their sandal-footed prophet regardless.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Mix-Up
    The Beasties have neither the musical chops nor the compositional skill... to hold listeners' interest for the length of an album.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Here We Stand
    Unlikely to win over any feminists, or win any literary prizes, Here We Stand’s main problem is being overlong and under-chorused.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Doo-Wops and Hooligans
    Cutesy lyrics with insipid rhymes like "You can count on me like one, two, three" abound on songs that play out less like a cohesive album and more like no-brainer radio references to Coldplay, U2, Michael Jackson, Sade, Feist and so on.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bangerz
    The capital-P pop star backs up her I-just-don’t-give-a persona with killer singing and decent songwriting, but keeps us waiting for a banger that never comes.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    We'll Live and Die in These Towns
    Fact is, the Enemy are better than that, and their debut full-length is also certainly better than some kind of classic Britpop rehash.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dignity
    The album's overall bad rip-off of early Britney/current Chantal Chamandy sound is a huge step backward.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Yours Truly, Angry Mob
    As on Employment, some songs spark with energy and others die in the first verse. Is a complete album asking too much?
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    We The Best Forever
    The Miami radio DJ and Terror Squad member takes few stylistic chances, making We The Best Forever a mostly tedious listen despite its flashes of lyrical invention.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Legendary Weapons
    The occasional bright spot (Ghostface's blistering verse on Meteor Hammer) is always counterbalanced by a low point (Trife Diesel's middling turn on Laced Cheeba).
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Push and Shove
    Still charismatic, quirky and iconic into her 40s, the singer grounds whatever style the band takes on with a trademark confident and longing delivery.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    You & I
    Fans of the Editors will certainly dig the dour pop 'Expectations,' while the album’s optimistic anthemic opener, 'Happy As Can Be,' offers the record’s most memorable moments.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Brass Knuckles
    It’s sure not a knockout, but it’s his hardest-hitting album yet. Just don’t call it a comeback.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Red Carpet Massacre
    So, Danja hooked up Duran Duran with some seriously dope beats and nasty Neu-ish grooves for Red Carpet Massacre, way hipper stuff than they even know. The downside is that Simon LeBon is still singing and writing all the lame lyrics.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Waiting For The Sunrise
    By rights, this should feel cloyingly sentimental, but Vandervelde’s musical virtuosity means it’s beguilingly exotic, particularly album opener 'I Will Be Fine'--an insomniac’s echoey hymn to the pre-dawn hours.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Senior
    The patient, thoughtful strokes here are sometimes interesting but rarely exciting.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Guilty Pleasure
    My Guilty Pleasure is a very listenable album, with plenty of high points, but overall it tends to fade into the background a little too easily.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Neon Icon
    Searching for depth in an emcee so obviously beholden to gimmicks is a fool’s errand, and if you give that up, you’re rewarded with low-stakes perfectly inoffensive jams.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Birthmarks
    Eschewing the indie rock tag, Born Ruffians are embracing a new diversified sound that reaches beyond the guitar-bass-drums trifecta, and for the most part, it hits the mark.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Chixtape 5 [Mixtape]
    There are a handful of feel-good moments. ... But it’s not enough to carry the bloated 18-song track list to a satisfying end. Instead it feels like getting caught in an endless kaleidoscope of solipsistic nostalgia. The effect is suffocating in its repetitiveness.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ARTPOP
    For all of Lady Gaga’s talking points, the fusion of art and pop has resulted in a lot of familiar dance-pop--more artful for its campiness than its musical innovation.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Winter Women / Holy Ghost Language School
    Bizarre lyrics, wooze-inducing dissonance and overly elaborate embellishments maintain Friedberger's genius-of-pretension title.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Timez Are Weird These Days
    Deep, wobbly bass, twinkling synths, crisp programmed drums and esoteric guest spots by Holly Miranda and Tegan and Sara's Sara Quin seem crafted with blogs in mind, ensuring the album's freshness in the moment but leaving it vulnerable once the hype dies down.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Stills
    What made the band so charming--their indiscernible vocals, the prickly, overbearing guitars, the lo-fi grittiness of it all--has been lost in the makeover.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Monsanto Years
    For an undisguised, heavy-handed topical Neil Young record, The Monsanto Years is actually engaging and mostly effective.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tim Robbins and the Rogues Gallery Band
    More a lyricist than a singer, he gruffly talk-sings through much of it, making it hard to grab hold of melodies.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    T.I. Vs T.I.P.
    T.I. vs T.I.P. suffers from its star's inability to commit to character.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Prism
    Perry’s ballads are so unadventurous and heavy-handed (chiming U2 guitars and slow-building, reverbed drums), they start to feel like caricature anyway. Her approach works better on the feel-good half of the album made up of top-notch roller-disco anthems.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2
    Cabaret with Drake has a catchy hook and gorgeously cheesy lyrics only Timberlake can pull off. The countrified Drink You Away almost works. The rest is forgettable.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Christmas Songs
    Bad Religion’s Christmas album is one of the most unusual in recent memory.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Calamity
    Unfortunately, unlike Deerhoof's complex sonic and logical experiments, the Curtains' material feels too spare, too underdeveloped, less like well-honed songs than fledgling ideas that'd benefit from the input of additional bandmates.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded
    Unfortunately, her adventurous side is rarely heard in the more radio-friendly jams, which are heartfelt and catchy but less inspired.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Future This
    The result is an album with chart-worthy songs that are uncomfortably familiar at times and a touch low on risk.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bangarang [EP]
    It's not a tasteful formula, but that doesn't mean it's not valid.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dusk And Summer
    The songs are pretty much middle-of-the-road, generic radio alt-rock devoid of any real personality.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What Happens Next
    At times, these preoccupations feel clumsy in their topicality, and it's hard to tell whether GOF's unthinkably long history as a Band That Has Things To Say makes this more or less forgivable.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Joyful Noise
    The results turn out to be lifeless instead of uplifting and accessible as they'd hoped.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    On Blonde
    Too bad the most inspired songs are all stacked together on the first half; the record loses steam halfway through.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Storytone
    Nothing here is going to become a live-show staple, but after an underwhelming covers album earlier this year, fans will be pretty happy with this solid collection of original works.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sheezus
    Her domestic bliss songs are predictably the most boring, the exception being L8 CMMR, the dancehall-esque, Auto-Tuned track in which she sings of her husband’s virility.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Invaders Must Die
    Flint and Maxim toss off innocuous, vague lyrics in the hope that something sticks. Nothing really does, and the joyless end result is flat-out exhausting.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In a World Like This
    Max Martin wrote the opening track on each of those early records, as he does here on their eighth. But even the anthemic title tune can’t hoist the group out of elevator-music territory.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Year Of The Dog... Again
    After a year of Kanye and Pharrell's Lacoste-sweater-vest raps, this gutter shit should find DMX welcomed back with a vengeance.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Casino Twilight Dogs
    It's all soaring, boring hooks, ringing guitars cribbed from the last two decades of sad bastard Britpop and wussy vocals polished to a sleek finish that makes them ideal fodder for Hollywood soundtrack supervisors.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Jackie
    Not for the first time, Ciara is suffering from a case of mixed-bag syndrome, a situation that seems even direr on the 16-track deluxe version, which has two unnecessary alternate versions of I Bet.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Release Therapy
    There's no cohesion... That said, Luda can still turn out solid tracks based on three qualities: clever lyrics, commitment to concepts and taste in beats.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Better Tomorrow
    Still their strongest effort since The W, but Wu-Tang Clan exhaust their fans' good will and nostalgia without a classic to show for it.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There's Me And There's You
    There are some great moments, to be sure, but there are too many spots where the lyrics induce cringing and the electronic interventions sound more like gimmicks than real song elements.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fantasy Ride
    The pros outweigh the cons on Fantasy Ride, but the overall experience might fall a little short for seasoned fans.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Grey Oceans
    Occasionally beautiful, often irritating.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ritual
    Producer Alan Moulder (Depeche Mode, Interpol) helps them cautiously move into industrial territory, as on Turn The Bells. But if McVeigh's methods irked you before, they only get worse on Ritual.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Magna Carta Holy Grail
    More of that raw Jay and less of the glitz could have salvaged the album.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hunters
    It all adds up to an energizing, smile-inducing debut.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tha Carter IV
    He's still getting more women than a taping of Ellen, but on Tha Carter IV – his most emo album to date – it sounds like what he really needs is a hug.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beat My Distance
    The record lags a little in the middle as the songs start to blend together. There’s enough differentiation that you don’t want to skip them altogether, but it’s a kink to work out on later records.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Revelations
    For the first time Audioslave sound more like a cohesive unit than a product of two groups spliced together.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Head Full of Dreams
    It's consistently uplifting and bright, and its best moments feature powerful orchestral sweeps, a surprisingly adept disco hook and even some gospel. But the lyrics are often so cringe-worthy that A Head Full Of Dreams comes off like that one friend of yours who's so positive you want to punch him.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Love Hate And Then There's You
    Love, Hate And Then There’s You isn’t entirely devoid of entertainment value--Stollsteimer’s misguided attempts to replicate the successful sound of the Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand, the Strokes and other alt-rock radio staples at the time these songs were conceived turns out to be quite funny, however unintentional the humour.
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