Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 4,079 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 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [50th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Version]
Lowest review score: 10 Songs From Black Mountain
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,643 out of 4079
  2. Mixed: 400 out of 4079
  3. Negative: 36 out of 4079
4079 music reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Continuous Portrait
    A nice surprise in a year full of unpleasant ones. It’s also one of the best experimental releases of 2020 so far. Continuous Portrait doesn’t depart dramatically from the lively ambient sweet spot of Inventions’ previous work, but it does expand the duo’s sound to make deeper use of one element usually absent from Explosions in the Sky: the human voice.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Raw Power [Reissue]
    This slick new edition furthers the case for Raw Power as The Stooges' greatest work--as if there was any question.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Cry Cry Cry
    That seven-year break might have been just what Wolf Parade needed to regroup and come back even stronger than before, and Cry Cry Cry shows that guitar rock is far from dead.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Everything Is Alive
    everything is alive, prioritizes progression and refuses to stay stagnant. Sure, Slowdive glance back at their past every now and again, but it’s clear that their focus is fully set on the future.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Ultimate Care II
    At once atmospheric, industrial and experimental, Ultimate Care II is kind of like Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music had the old geezer from Freeport, N.Y. crafted it out of love instead of vitriol.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines
    Both installments of Quazarz attest to Shabazz Palaces’ inventiveness and imagination, and reveal new layers upon each listen. After all, creative thinkers like Butler and Maraire often do feel like aliens stuck on earth.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    50 Words for Snow
    It's a linguistic lesson you never asked for, or even wanted, but also one you'll never forget.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Range Anxiety
    Even at their most technically complex, Twerps still maintain a low-key, laidback, indie-rock appeal. They pull off charming pop that sounds tender and thrilling at the same time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Balladeer
    Where 2016’s The Bird & The Rifle teemed with broken people and broken relationships and The Tree was slower and more somber, these 10 new songs feel lighter and brighter, buoyed by personal reflection and the joy of familial connection.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Metronomy Forever
    With the range, depth and lyrical class Metronomy brings to Metronomy Forever, it’s quite a fun listen, one that shows how the group has evolved over their lengthy career. The electronic orchestration will leave you bopping through memory lane as you reminisce on old love.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star
    Both installments of Quazarz attest to Shabazz Palaces’ inventiveness and imagination, and reveal new layers upon each listen. After all, creative thinkers like Butler and Maraire often do feel like aliens stuck on earth.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Somewhere Else
    On Somewhere Else, Lydia Loveless has harnessed the barnstorming energy of her Bloodshot debut and transformed it into something much more.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Cynic's New Year
    It's not to say it's on the level of Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues, but it's pretty damn close.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Pearls to Swine
    The instrumental work by the session musicians on Pearls To Swine may be rather remarkable, as is the production work by Erik Wofford, but at the end of the day, it’s Torres’ natural soundscapes and elaborate imagery that brilliantly twinkles throughout this piece of art.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    To the Sunset
    It’s not that To the Sunset finds Shires wandering further--it’s that she’s digging deeper, with the same diligence and abundance of talent she’s been drawing from all along.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Every Acre
    Every Acre is a profound listen, one that reveals more wisdom the more you surrender to it. McEntire has discovered painful truths in the process, without ever letting herself or our history off the hook.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Spellling & the Mystery School
    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
    Bryce Dessner: Aheym
    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
    Arabia Mountain
    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
    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
    Go Fly a Kite
    It's spirited, energetic and competent power-pop.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Lazaretto
    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 [Box Set]
    CSNY 1974 offers a deep and vulnerable portrait of band at the very height of its powers.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Perdida
    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
    All or Nothin'
    When so many songs are clever rather than honest, Lane delivers no-nonsense reality.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Positive Force
    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
    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
    Upright Behavior
    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
    Ramble at the Ryman
    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
    Songs Cycled
    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.
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