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
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    SPELLLING has shown how she can transform her project from peculiar, interior pop to something grandiose—and Mystery School demonstrates her versatility: Not only can Cabral reorient her sound, she can fashion her existing songs with a new, consistent approach, closely tying all of her eras together under one project.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Aheym is a moving work but it is also challenging: The quartet saw and slide with impeccable skill with Dessner as their captain.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    It's Ronson's dash of throwback style topped with the band's signature wild-child tendencies that make this album an impeccable partnership. It's so perfect of a fit, in fact, that Arabia Mountain not only emerges as the Lips' best-sounding record, but arguably their finest album to date.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Quaranta is Danny Brown at his finest—and his most personal. It’s one of this year’s best albums: a no-skips project from an artist committed to stepping into the light and putting his best foot forward every day, despite the clouds that sometimes obscure the sun.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    It's spirited, energetic and competent power-pop.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The songs are exciting, effortlessly creative and full of risk-taking, but White taps into the vein of classic rock just enough to filter all of his weird extrapolations so that they’re comprehensible for his audience.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    CSNY 1974 offers a deep and vulnerable portrait of band at the very height of its powers.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Far more than a modern-day reprisal of the MTV Unplugged ethos, Perdida is the sound of a band stretching beyond its own self-imposed limits to challenge what a so-called “acoustic album” can be.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    When so many songs are clever rather than honest, Lane delivers no-nonsense reality.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Happy music can sometimes seem superficial or lacking the emotional depth that music is "supposed to" capture. On the contrary, this album seems enlightened. It's happy and deep and complex and present, all at the same time.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Atlas is ambient neoclassical at its finest; stirring and introspective without succumbing to sameness, furthering Laurel Halo’s extensive, unpredictable influence on experimental and electronic traditions.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Whether you’d rather stimulate your brain or your heart, it’s all available on Upright Behavior, it’s an impressive effort from an act that feels like it’s just finding its footing.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    On live disc Ramble at the Ryman, with a characteristically exuberant blend of rock, blues, country, and folk, Helm proves himself once again to be one of our most vibrant conservators of traditional Americana.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    He brings it all home with the final track of the album--and this work, accompanied by artwork and liner notes from some of the world’s best contemporary artists, is intended to be taken as a whole.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    At its core, Warm Blanket is a tremendously revealing album.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Foxing have long been one of our most ambitious bands, but Draw Down the Moon confirms they’ll keep going for broke for the foreseeable future.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    It's a monumental return-pure, unfiltered American rock 'n' roll--and has to be considered one of the party albums of the year.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The fact the “Born Under Punches”-esque freakout outro doesn’t rob the earlier minutes of their somber beauty is testament to the success of this particular sonic experiment. For that matter, it’s the main proof this new sound of theirs was not just a good move but a great one.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Where Bright Eyes lyrics lumber, The Mynabirds are aflight.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Throughout Salvador, Navarrete uses the lexicon of modern club music and intimate, reflexive lyrics to create an astonishingly confessional art-pop album. There’s a self-awareness to the themes that bind Salvador which prevent it from straying into braggadocious territory.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    It’s a taut, focused collection that reins in the sprawl of the group’s 2019 release I Am Easy to Find and re-centers the band on their most emotionally complete effort since Boxer.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Instead of reintroducing the genre’s founding dub steps and club sensibilities, contributions from Massive Attack’s musical descendants (Blur/Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn, Portishead’s Adrian Utley) lend quieter atmospherics that amplify the emotion of the band’s mainstay whispers.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    What is most inspiring about Cost of Living is, whether they are addressing workers’ rights, saving net neutrality, the white-cis-het hegemony or police brutality, among countless other topics to manage to fit into a 35-minute album, Downtown Boys stay angry, but are never pessimistic.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The natural, gloss-free sound clears the way for Willie's voice, as cozy as an old pair of slippers; the 77-year-old singer's persona is inseparable from any song he sings, even when he's never sung it before and even when it's cruise-ship reggae.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The baton has been passed to these fine young women, and they are running far and away beyond their forebears.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Because even if Acoustic at the Ryman doesn’t flow like one natural performance, the cumulative effect of the record presents Band of Horses as a talented group of musicians who are wholly capable of playing live without sonic camouflage or superfluousness.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    There are no brakes on Let Me Do One More—rather, it is more like a sprightly rollercoaster, with mellow gaps in between punchy electronic tracks creating arcs bound to give out an exhilarating sort of whiplash.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The far-flung vocalists demonstrate how vast his songwriting and cultural influence is, comfortably enfolding each without losing the essence of his intent.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The album is at its sweetest with love-laced tracks like 'Water Spider' and 'Summer Morning Rain,' but it truly shines when it tackles deeper issues.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Mines is Menomena at its best-mentally relentless and physically ruthless.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Blessed with great songs, wonderful arrangements and vocal performances that seriously raise the bar in our expectations of what she's capable of, it is a record that shows real artistic growth in every area and is destined to become a classic that rivals Trailer Park and Central Reservation.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    This doesn’t negate the power of Sometimes, Forever, a record that will be noted for its big swings, but rather reinforces it. When a band is able to thrive both inside and outside their comfort zone, it is built to last. The release of Sometimes, Forever is just another indication that Soccer Mommy will persevere in the face of an industry that is always changing.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    It would almost be safe to say The Flaming Lips have hit closer to the classic record here than on the Dark Side cover album they released a few years ago.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The result is not only her most honest and personal album to date but also her most affecting.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Smarter pop? Seductive commentary? REALLY? Yes.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Every Open Eye is another album you can throw on at a party to get everyone dancing just as easily as you could pensively listen to it alone in your bedroom. They translate so well because they know what they want to say, and one can only hope they keep saying it for some time.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    There’s a fine line between irony and referential lightheartedness. We all need a vehicle to convey emotions, after all, and Chromeo’s is more stylish than most.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Mumford and Son resisted the temptation to upend their sound for more commercial ends, with an album of carefully chosen material and plumbing even deeper declinations for lyrical insight. It’s a strategy that pays off; along with increasing anticipation, it results in a better set of songs overall.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    It's a turmoil of glorious noise.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    As a whole, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is simultaneously eclectic and of a piece: It’s big and bold and sometimes messy, but never unfocused.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    This is still the Frightened Rabbit we all know and love, as gloomy as we last heard from them.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The eight-song release is a runaway train, screaming down the tracks but controlled enough that it never runs off the rails.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Overall, it's an album full of songs Lloyd Dobler could have played during his window-call, boom-box confession of love.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    One of the things that works so well on this six-song album is that it shaves away some of the psych rock of the parent band and lets the fragmentations remain.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    If you like to move, En Yay Sah is a must-listen.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The collection offers a glimpse inside the band’s development, and at times has an air of what might have been even as it reinforces Tweedy’s overall artistic vision.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Stockholm, produced by Peter Bjorn and John’s Bjorn Yttling, has the cutting lyrical tilt and raw agony that defined the Pretender, but its sheen beckons listeners.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Entrenched in the things they do well—roadhouse revelry, a funky kind of country honk, heart-aching ballads—the Joe Henry-produced project eschews the formalness of old friends finding their way for a playful jumble that bubbles (“Bring It On Home To Memphis”), sweetheart waltzes (“Just Pleasing You”) and tracks that get down in the pocket (“If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now”).
    • 70 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The record is alive with a lush, symphonic sensuousness that recalls Of Montreal; it's as layered and ornate as an origami crane, but as organic and effortless as the real feathered thing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    At 61 years of age-a time in life when many people begin to consider retirement-Nick Lowe has put out his best album in many years and more than three decades into his career, the British tunesmith may be just beginning to hit his stride.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Lost On The River is a joyful record, and everyone sounds like they had a lot of fun making it. And, for once T Bone Burnett seems to have been content to steer the proceedings without imposing his very recognizable production style on top of every recording.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Knowing Gunn’s exotic inspirations, Way Out Weather is certainly only a snapshot of where his talents could lead him. Whatever you take away from it, it’s most certainly a step in the right direction.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    While how i’m feeling now is by no means Charli’s most genre-pushing work, nor an indication of the creative potential she has left, it will be remembered as a quintessential 2020 album—not just because of its unique recording constraints, but because of the passion, authenticity and work ethic interwoven in every fuzzy beat and every sprightly, lovelorn lilt of Charli’s most intimate vocal work to date.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Next Day offers an embarrassment of riches that should keep listeners busy for weeks and months to come.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Heart Under is simultaneously ghostly and glorious, a wretched yet emancipatory tornado of distorted dissonance that places the band among the vanguard of the British Isles’ ever-crowded post-punk scene.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Rock or Bust is the best LP that AC/DC has produced in over 20 years.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The King's strength lies in its ability to pack light and still pack a punch.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Not all of those styles may be represented on this collection, but the love of the craft is contained within each note presented.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    This carefully sculpted juxtaposition of weight and waft has by now become the band's larger calling, and All Eternals Deck manages to be simultaneously esoteric and accessible, faithful and irreverent.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Blake has managed to create something new, balancing his understated vocals with funky, dub beats, synthesizers and a vocoder.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Kline’s lyrics, underscored by offbeat, Phil Elverum-like vocal delivery, teeter on an exquisite line between goofiness and sharp honesty, mundanity and magic. In the end, it comes down hard on the side of magic.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Hell Can Wait is a dense and rewarding EP from a rapper who is refreshingly serious about his craft.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The expansive tracklisting makes for a CD-era 70+ minute listening experience. You can appreciate the varied approach that John and Bernie Taupin brought to the studio with the balladry (“Candle In The Wind,” surprisingly not a US-charting song), the ballsy (“Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”) and the busy (“Funeral For A Friend (Love Lies Bleeding)”) even if the results led to a less-than-cohesive album on the whole. As with many Elton John albums, there are hidden gems to be found.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    There are lo-fi treasures throughout this collection that stand with some of Pollard’s best work, like “Big School,” “Gelatin, Ice Cream, Plum” and the meditative, d-tuned “Johnny Appleseed.”
    • 79 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Heterosexuality can be an overwhelming listen, packed with emotion and production choices that leave you gasping for air , but it’s also deeply rewarding.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The album's titular track, which translates to "Within Skin," is a reference to pregnancy, but it's also a manifesto of the album's purpose as an arbiter of overwhelming feeling bound up in a neatly-tied package of folk tunes--the emotional intensity lying under the surface rather than on the sleeve.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    A bold, career-defining step, Leaving None But Small Birds updates metal’s longstanding obsession with morbidity, even as the musicians look to the past. That they sound so natural exploring these old, dusty sounds together, and that they manage to breathe new life into them, must be recognized as a monumental achievement.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Even with the three original albums alone, Joni Mitchell has left us with such a profound legacy that it didn’t seem possible for anything to come along and reveal more depth to her art. Against all odds, Archives, Vol. 3 does just that and more.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Sure, literally speaking all of the songs off of Light Upon the Lake conjure up failure to maintain a relationship with a loved one, but how can you relate a new band’s debut record--and one that’s so so fully realized to the point of even having a mission statement in the Whitney, as a man, as a writing prompt and concept--with a break up? If anything, it’s the start of something new.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Sonically, Screws spit-shines things just enough to give the songs an almost radio-friendly glimmer without losing their ramshackle mojo, sense of urgency or danger--cleaner, but not too clean for rock 'n' roll.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Her arrangements are music-hall clever, her erudite lyrics reference the most arcane subjects, and her flapper-vampy voice camps up everything to the point of burlesque.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    An album that could have been a grueling downer from start to finish. Instead, it’s a testament to perseverance, determination and a vivid creative imagination from an artist who seems to have finally found himself, and that’s profound enough.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    With the drums and guitar so busy in the mix of almost every song, Keaton Snyder’s amped-up vibes are an inspired addition, their subtle atmospheric effects put to careful use by producer Phil Ek.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Whole Love reveals itself as their finest album since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    La Dispute picked a perfect time to make a classic album in the post-hardcore spectrum that might be considered a classic outside of genre, too.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    With The U.S. Albums, we get a cleansed version of the experience, many times utilizing the UK remasters.... Sure, it’s a quibble to harp over better quality, but there is an argument to be made for historical accuracy.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Armed with a collection of adrenaline-pumping beats and diverse vocal appearances, it's a musical force that continues to establish Zimmerman's place among the house music greats.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    To say Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper is a textural album is probably stating the obvious, but it very much is, in a way where the individual tracks feel simultaneously adventurous and tamed.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    For those who cherished the late, great Go-Betweens, Galaxie 500 and The Zombies, take heart--here is your new favorite album, filled to bursting with shivering tremolo guitars, surrealist poetry and the sort of melodies that made the kids’ knees buckle whenever “Time of the Season” graced the airwaves.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Each song shows new facets of their sound.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The evolution of Queens of the Stone Age has been slow and steady; and 20 years in the band still sounds amazingly energized.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    This ought to be the album that launches Spectrals out of the expanses of the insider underground. And if it doesn’t, it’s still one of the best records of 2013.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    For fans of what country was, For The Good Times could well be a hope chest for what could yet again be.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Just like Futuresex before it, this innovative, sonically dazzling album sounds like it was beamed in from several years in the future—2020 sounds about right.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The quality is indisputable, although one might question why the Chems need another best-of. The answer is disc two of Brotherhood, an invaluable collection of their “Electronic Battle Weapons” (promo tracks released to DJs for field testing).
    • 89 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Sawayama is an exhilarating reminder of a bygone time when boy bands ruled all and commercialism ruled the boy bands. That era is long gone, but that particular brand of maximalist pop is back, only better now than before.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Not many bands in recent memory have been able to combine noise and otherworldly sonics with the sweat and hot breath of punk rock. The Skull Defekts have mastered it, boiled it down and resurrected it.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Mostly, the music works together more than it works to distinguish itself, always pushing movement and progression into the forefront in a sort of peaceful acceptance of chaos and uncertainty.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She finds Chelsea Wolfe at her most creative while reviving her particular, audacious and revered brand of dark storytelling. Every piece of the record finds a way to tie into the themes at its core while still pushing Wolfe’s own sound forward in earnest.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Similar to the BBC’s fantastic Bringing It All Back Home soundtrack, The Beautiful Old further solidifies the root connection between Celtic folk and American bluegrass.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The arrangements on Fallen Angels are wonderful and sumptuous. Recorded with his longtime touring band, it’s easy to hear how working with this music has breathed new life into them as a performing unit. Their playing is loose, easy and natural, and they sound like they’re having a lot of fun.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The record sounds, appropriately so, as if it were made by a band experimenting, rather than by one man alone, heartbroken, in his so-often-talked-about Wisconsin cabin.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    At Weddings is filled with such a powerful, saintly aura that even the most ugly subject matters can spur flawless, beautiful results.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    July Flame is carefully composed, ever-deepening, glinting and glowing in new ways each time it’s played; there’s an inkling of something greater coming just around the bend, but for now it’s Veirs’ finest work.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Rather than picking up where End of Love left off, Hungry Bird sounds like an extension of previous solo outing Lose Big. Barzelay’s soft, depressed poetry is brushed across the canvas of his wispy songs as if he could float into the ether at any moment, becoming a ghost singing from the wizenened remove of the afterlife.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Whether she shuck’n’shimmies through the flirty trombone-laced “Hey Bebe,” the bowed cello and moan lullaby “Baby Boy” or the staccato romance denied “Love We Almost Had” (featuring fellow roots journeyer Bhi Bhiman), the emotions of desire and elation run strong.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Pondering the loss of innocence, rise of awareness and acceptance over 12 songs and 45 minutes, Lissie demonstrates resilience in the wake of California/stardom’s illusionary appeal.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Pop the bubbly. Buy that heart-shaped box of chocolates. Send that overly earnest card. Dacus has done it again, and that’s reason enough to celebrate.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Whether the first sign of a late career renaissance or a corrective recourse to their shrugging split in the ‘90s, Bell, Gardener, Queralt and Colbert offer a comeback easily on par with their classic output.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Prettiest Curse shows the band at their expected peppy standard, maintaining the youthful punk-cum-surf-rock vigor they’ve built their name on for damn near 10 years. They’ve grown up, whether they meant to or not, but they haven’t lost their edge. They’ve merely sharpened it with their best work to date.