Paste Magazine's Scores

For 4,043 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 67% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 30% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 76
Highest review score: 100 Pacific Ocean Blue [Reissue]
Lowest review score: 10 Songs From Black Mountain
Score distribution:
4043 music reviews
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Though Kveikur is more anxious and busy than a lot of their past output, it still possesses the heavenly quality all their other records so admirably held on to as well.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    His harrowed and ongoing metamorphosis into a butterfly is the narrative he’s chosen and is the story he’ll likely will stick with for the foreseeable future, but untitled unmastered shows that the holes in his willed chrysalis might be more interesting than the beauty promised by the cocoon.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    By channeling her anxiety into wonderful, shaggy, relatable and supremely catchy songs, she’s made Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit one of the most compulsively listenable albums to come out so far this year.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Nothing feels even remotely stale, and many of these tracks manage to actually improve upon their original counterparts--no small feat, considering the fact that these are some of the finest songs ever written.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rise Again is an indispensable recording from one of the world's most important living artists.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    This album not only surpasses its predecessor but raises the bar for any band, indie or otherwise, mining the past for inspiration.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It retains the beautiful melancholy of For Emma, but in nearly every way, it's just more. More layered, more diverse, more interesting.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Teen Men is about as kicked-back and comfortable as a debut LP can hope to be, seemingly confident that it will be making itself right at home in the ears of all who hear it.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The result is an audacious delight, delivering aural odysseys that slither in and out of the territory of heavy-lidded dance-club bangers, junkie-punk ragers, symphonic Baroque-pop gems, plaintive guitar-rockers and myriad lessons from the Marc Bolan school of glam-rock depravity.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    On their debut, Friko have cemented themselves as one of the most distinguished up-and-coming voices in all of indie-rock.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    It’s an album custom-made for deep headphone listening, and Tuttle and his cohorts pack the stereo field with incident and instrument.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Second Hand Heart is put together like a great live set.... The album also realizes that rare goal of gaining steam and strength as it carries forward.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The album is ultimately the most cathartic and uplifting that songwriter Peter Silberman has crafted, indicating the demons he has long wrestled with may be tiring, if not nearing defeat.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Overflowing with a confidently relaxed cool and an absolute lack of pretense or veneer, Lo Tom’s debut somehow feels both enthusiastically self-assured and deceptively effortless.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    When Tinariwen plays gigs, however, they offer a raucous, rowdy live show that lends itself more to shimmying and grooving, rather then translating and contemplating. Live In Paris, even with its questionable sequencing and skip lags between songs, begins to explore that.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    LaVere could rest on her lyrics alone, which are witty and feisty enough to stand on their own, but by giving her band boundless license to indulge any whim or eccentricity, she has crafted a well-rounded album that is already among the year's best.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    YNA_AYT is without a doubt the best work of Sorority Noise’s still-nascent career, and an early frontrunner for one of the best albums of 2017. It is emotionally complex, yet full of uplifting melodies that feel designed to pull the listener--or at least Boucher--out of the dark corners of the mind.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    They show they don’t need to burn down what they’ve built and start over—they can grow outward, not just upward. These songs are some of the best and most inventive they’ve done, and they prove that Porridge Radio, while always burning brightly, are no mere flash in the pan.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    While it’s absolutely and unapologetically meant as an addition to the discourse on inequality and lack of diversity that’s been ruling Nashville and country music (country radio in particular) for decades now, it’s also a country classic, no matter which way you spin it. The genre’s best talents, both men and women, have gathered, and they succeeded in creating a multi-generational, monumental music event.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    For all its darker and uneasy lyrical content, this is still a record that begs to be blasted on road trips and at rooftop parties.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Brandi Carlile has always aimed high. On By the Way, I Forgive You, she aims higher than ever before, this time with her best songs and exquisite production on her side.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The War on Drugs have continuously grown into fuller and more realized versions of themselves. I Don’t Live Here Anymore is fitting for their newest form: revered musicians with over a decade of quality music under their belts who never lost sight of the prize.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Seldom have classical delicacy, rock attitude and pop vitality coexisted with such improbable ease.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    She found it in herself to make yet another gorgeous, melancholy, old-souled record.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Instead of offering up another vaguely-feminist cash-grab or a haphazard political patch job, Shopping continue to do what they do best, using their bass lines and unique perspective to provide a source of kinship, understanding and an outlet to vent general frustration.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The time-tested tracks not only showcase the band doing what they do best in notoriously long, dramatic, panic-inducing instrumentals but are also startling reminders on why the band was so vital and lead such a movement to begin with.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Each and every song sticks out musically for one reason or another--whether it’s the groovy bass line of “Sick of Words,” or the various movements of “Somewhere Unoccupied.”
    • 80 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Gorgeous and personal, the band has delivered a record that is not only the product of years of trial and error, but also the rarity of a truly talented storyteller.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Without a doubt,Stranger to Stranger is a testament to an artist who refuses to be ordinary and pigeonholed. With this LP, Paul Simon has created his best work in many years.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Heartfelt and engaging.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The results of these experiments can be on the nose, like doing a gender switch on Brazilian extreme metal act Sarcofago.... Others take a little bit of unpacking.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    With Here And Nowhere Else, they’ve thrown the first punch, and it hits you square in the jaw.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Orquídeas is a masterful ode to Uchis’ ancestral roots. A project that artfully skywalks across a variety of Latin genres, including dembow, bolero, salsa and reggaeton, the project proves to be her most sonically ambitious to date—and boasts all-star level features to boot.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Bach: Sonatas and Partitas Volume 1 is beautifully played and uplifting to listen to from beginning to end.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    He was better known for his studio acumen and production work than his own songs, yes, but his solo albums are revered among those lucky enough to have heard them. The Hex will only bolster his legacy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    While his band has grown into a post-punk monster, Casey, too, has moved beyond his personal frets and frustrations and developed into a lyricist capable of clear and compelling commentary. He’s a voice worth listening to. It took a while, but thank goodness he found his way to the front of a band.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    In and of itself Truth Liberty & Soul is a fantastic performance. But better still, it provides a counterintuitively good look at what was special about Jaco.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    There’s nothing for Danilova to hide behind here, and having her so present throughout this album is breathtaking.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Snider has always followed his own path, always been the champion of the underdog -- the patron saint of all the wonderful weirdoes out there.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    It’s an infectious album that blooms repeatedly throughout, unfolding in muted, endearing aural hues; simultaneously sad and celebratory, and always charming.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Somehow, she makes gothic folk, gloomy doom and grim noise feel above ground. The odds of these kinds of sounds bubbling up into the mainstream are slim, to be sure. But on Hiss Spun, Chelsea Wolfe makes it imaginable.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    An album that feels like a logical next step for the Memphis singer-songwriter, but never overreaches. And overreaching would’ve been easy.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Intimate songs like these needed such intimate music behind it. You’ve been invited in to the confessional and your job is to listen, learn and support.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    More than a reclamation, Outlaw suggests the miles traveled imbue a more fluid application of his roots attack and tattered romanticism.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Overall, Thrashing Thru The Passion is musically looser than previous offerings—fewer ballads, the big rock numbers less lush and more compact—but it also makes it accessible to new listeners, who can then work their way back through albums like Heaven is Whenever or Separation Sunday.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    It’s Marling’s sense of immediacy that makes Short Movie so evocative.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    It stitches psychotic school dance vibes among the surf garage in a hurried splendor.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Microphones in 2020 contains some of the year’s best, most reflective and probing lyrics. Elverum’s mastery of language is impressive thanks to his ability to capture an intangible, fleeting feeling without coming across as pretentious or out of reach.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    This is the first album where his artistry seems fully realized, both in terms of subject matter and performance. Witty, balanced and highly charged.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Like New Orleans itself, the album understands how to strut. But it also knows its manners. For all his funky pedigree, Toussaint comes off as a picture of elegance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Likewise is a record full of little, unrelated moments that manage to create a world of their own when put together. That world isn’t always pleasant—it’s often an anxious and distressing one—but it’s also full of vivid color and meticulous detail.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Superstar proves itself a tightly knit satire of celebrity, effective thanks to Rose’s sharp storytelling and her calculated use of distortion, which highlights the artificial quality of the protagonist’s new surroundings. ... Among these key storytelling points are some of Rose’s most brilliant moments yet as an indie-pop artist, a dizzying kaleidoscope of her own vocal talent and colorful artistic choices.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Seemingly able to kick out a chug-a-lug stomper with absolute ease at this point, the best moments on Infinite Arms center around Bridwell’s growing confidence in the his deadliest weapon: his voice.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The album’s crisp production captures every nuance of Hendrix’ technical wizardry—drums snap and guitars burble in simpatico, offering a hazy and heavy backdrop to road-trip yarns (“Stone Free”), flirtations with bluegrass (“Crying Blue”) and show-stopping covers (“Sunshine of Your Love” and “Bleeding Heart”).
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    MS may have temporarily slowed the Athens, Ga., musician’s output, but it has not diminished its quality.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The combination of loose fun and pinpoint accuracy here is bracing, and Califone’s sheer originality is a great counterpoint to the many acts trying desperately to live up to the legacy of their formers.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Law is the perfect Indian-summer morning garage sale soundtrack album. It follows the mood flow to a T.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Love’s Crushing Diamond never is over-intellectualized, but it lets emotion guide the trajectory, and taking something away from the album is dependent on the listener’s willingness to feel.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    It's the seamless simplicity in which the record flows that defines this masterful debut.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Upside Down Mountain is a great achievement and Conor Oberst’s best work to date.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    It’s the one of the best QOTSA records to date.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett understands the grace of understatement.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Rave On Buddy Holly takes classic tracks and, for the most part, offers instantly memorable covers of them. It's not quite an A, but it's as close as anything I've reviewed in a while.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The fact that they’ve been cranking out albums as good as this for nearly half a century is a legacy worth appreciating for a really long time.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    It may rank as one of their best outings yet, as its multifaceted compositional creativity, coupled with its consistently fetching melodies and words, makes it a thoroughly impressive and engaging listen. As always, Sparks shows its stylistic siblings how it’s truly done.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    It’s Jones’ powerful, perfectly vibrato-laden voice that creates just the right of emotion for every break-up, hook-up, fed up and uplifting track on the barely 30-minute record.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    So no, you don’t get a remastered version of one of your favorite albums. But you definitely do get your money’s worth.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    It’s a rollicking, exciting and inspiring tussle in a corner of Thao’s cheerful quilt of a discography.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    With Birthmarks, Born Ruffians bring us a deeply personal album.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    In combining her equally sincere and sarcastic tales with her proclivity for ginormous hooks, her stunning, Sade-like croon and her disdain for genre boundaries, she’s crafted an infinitely quotable, profound and moving bedroom pop masterpiece.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Lyrics have always been the focal point of Bazan's music, and here they carry a vast majority of the weight.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The overwhelming magnificence of “Dawn Chorus” distracts—but not detracts—from everything else. There’s a good chance ANIMA will be remembered as “The Album With Dawn Chorus On It,” and that’s not a bad problem to have, just one that unfortunately makes it much easier to ignore the other incredible tracks on here. It’s just what happens when you make the centerpiece of your album one of the best songs you’ve ever written.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Arctic Monkeys collect their darkest impulses and put them on stark display; it’s another massive step forward in a career that seems marked for greatness.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    On Cosmogramma, this never-ending stream of aural textures sounds effortless, and the enthralling swirl of jazz, drum 'n' bass, dubstep and hip-hop beckons you toward the edge of something damn near cosmic.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Unlike many career-spanning sets, Blur 21 is perfectly arranged, with each studio album living on its own disc, accompanied by another disc of era-specific bonus material like singles, compilation tracks, remixes and more.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    All Spoon albums have some great songs and tasteful production touches, but Hot Thoughts might be the first time they didn’t do another year’s slightly tweaked version of Girls Can Tell. To arrive at such a worthwhile new vista roughly 24 years in is a pretty serious achievement, and all with no more overt fanfare than a humble presentation of one of their best offerings.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    I Like Fun rocks unabashedly.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    While the familiar ache still haunts Single Mothers, Earle treats it with new wisdom, choosing instead to ramble forward, rather than perseverate and drift waywardly back.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    The result is the most thoroughly engaging entry in the Dirty Projectors catalog and one of the most singularly engrossing albums likely to be released this year, a triumph in sustained creative restlessness.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever have more tricks up their sleeves, it seems. For a debut, though, a couple tricks are enough, especially when you’ve already mastered them.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Spiked with muted touches of rock and other intangibles, Telluric establishes Corby as far more than a genre stylist and even stamps him as a visionary to watch right out of the gate.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Although their synth work and melodies are memorable beyond belief, this album’s poignance, delivered with a good-natured determination, is what takes the wheel and makes it a synth-pop milestone.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Each song here is a lesson in catchiness. Every driving guitar onslaught, drum hop around, keyboard attack and vocal screed is a hook unto itself. The distortion is prominent almost as a laugh in the face of danger.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Earth is an engaging, highly credible recording that burns with a fire of its own. From beginning to end, it is brave, uncompromising, cracked up and beautiful.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Ronson’s Uptown Special is his best work yet and one of the best funk albums you’ll come across in recent memory.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Whether Chance is billed as frontman or not, his thought-provoking lyricism and potent backing band has made for yet another life-affirming release that’s sure to propel the artist to even more impressive territory.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Big Time is emotionally devastating, but never toes a line of melodrama.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Anderson brings along his DIY community for the ride. It’s that bedrock that makes Cartwheel such an expressive and foundational album. And one that’s not just a triumph for Anderson and Hotline TNT, but for shoegaze itself.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    On Deeper Woods, however, Louise fully finds her voice. Literally. It is as much a vocal album as a guitar album, and Louise’s voice is a ideal complement to her six-stringed wizardry, only heightening the beauty and deepening the mystic vibe of her songs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Hunter, their finest album yet, is proof enough.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Like every Punch Brothers album, The Phosphorescent Blues is defined by technical chops. But its lyrical focus offers a vibrant edge over its predecessors.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    This was, at least until two days ago, the most ambitious and powerful underground hip-hop album to be released this year. But leave it to Death Grips to drop a surprise record on us and steal the spotlight from their fellow Californians. We’ll have to wait before we find out which one stands the test of time, but for the moment, advantage: Clipping.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Yes, Braid is still a guitar-forward post-punk powerhouse, and No Coast is a great addition to its catalog, even possibly containing some of the best material the band has ever written.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    It's a wonderfully weird parade of sonic delights: an arresting consummation of the Lips' two-and-a-half decade career.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    On Diaspora Problems, Soul Glo have caused a clearing in the forest with an album so boundless in its creativity that it cannot be ignored. This is the shape of hardcore that we had been promised.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Reminiscing on lost love and lust, Mould impresses with his songwriting skills.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Crying Light, reaches out from the band’s investment in gender issues to grapple with nature of a different sort: the earth, familial relationships and a life-force passed on. The scope of the record spans generations, but retains a sense of communion with its listener.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    It’s a quietly sublime work from a group of musicians who have always insisted--via their straight-up goofy music videos, Budweiser references and substitute teacher-like appearances--they’re just average suburbanites.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    To be sure, Juice B Crypts contains many moments of unabashed oddness as well, but in allowing for a sharper contrast between the odd and the beautiful this time, Battles ultimately get further with both.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The more charming pockets found within The Narcissist II's peculiar symmetry are worth waiting for, so long as you're willing to suspend your disbelief long enough to ingest the entire record. Otherwise, you might be missing the point.