Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 4,072 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: 3,636 out of 4072
  2. Mixed: 400 out of 4072
  3. Negative: 36 out of 4072
4072 music reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Yours Conditionally
    The tone is certainly slow dances at twilight, but given a shimmer by the understated elegance of Moore’s voice, something that has always sound fragile but defiant at the same time.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Common as Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood
    Each new Sun Kil Moon album both further acquaints and distances the listener with Mark Kozelek.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    The Best of the Dualtone Years
    While this sampler doesn’t begun cover the whole of his efforts, it does boast enough essential songs to qualify it as an adequate introduction.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Voids
    An album that feels inspired by nostalgia but not limited to it, which bodes well for wherever Minus The Bear decides to go next.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Last Place
    Lytle remains adept at worming his weary melodies into the hidden folds of broken hearts, and through a bit of grin-and-shrug relation, can take aim at the enigmatic roots of a dangerous generation with little more than three chords.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    World Eater
    The mixture of gentility and dissonance is somehow more unsettling than if Power was to go full on into harsher, angrier territory. The balance that he maintains throughout is what makes the album work.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    English Tapas
    This could be considered their mature album, but the Mods don’t sound the least bit worn out. Less sweary, maybe, though no less profane.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    The Breaker
    For as much fun as Wanderlust often was, the sound of The Breaker is really the band’s wheelhouse.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Dirty Projectors
    Dirty Projectors, his self-titled rebirth, is therapeutic and at times frustratingly insular, full of dazzling and meticulous electronic textures that bely the melancholia underneath.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Drunk
    It takes a special kind of artist to create a sound both familiar and groundbreaking. Thundercat continues his upward trajectory in that regard here.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Impermanence
    Though there are also occasional woodwinds, brass, keyboards and percussion, Impermanence is almost like an experiment in minimalism, to see how fully Silberman can deconstruct songs and still make them compelling. Quite a bit, as it turns out.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Graveyard Whistling
    Graveyard might actually be the most country Old 97’s record in years, while maintaining the sticky sweet melodies the band has always nailed.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Freedom Highway
    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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Life Will See You Now
    The result is engaging, if not terribly lasting.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Prisoner
    It’s a beautiful sounding collection, no question. Sometimes, though, Adams’ exacting, just-so approach to the sonics undercuts the power of his lyrics.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Nothing Feels Natural
    Like Bodies and Control and Money and Power, the LP thrives on an economy of force and purpose.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Ty Segall (2017)
    While far from a masterpiece, Ty Segall provides a neatly packaged summary for why the singer is a modern rock ‘n’ roll treasure.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Hang
    The band’s latest is a slight improvement, though the self-indulgence and lack of focus are still in evidence.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oczy Mlody
    The instrumentation here is expectedly psychedelic, anchored in both freeform jams and trip-hop grooves. But somehow the collective makes the two opposing forces, which read like they were picked via pulling genres out of a hat, actually work thanks in no small part to Steven Drozd’s delicate instrumental blending.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    11 Short Stories Of Pain & Glory
    Loss and the possibility of redemption represent the twin themes of pain and glory fueling the Celtic-punk band’s ninth album, a collection of songs by turns bleak and triumphant--and sometimes both at once.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Run the Jewels 3
    The group has evolved by revealing that sentiment is eternal. RTJ3 sharpens that revelation and encases it in lustrous, dazzling gold. The crooks had the jewels all along.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    "Awaken, My Love!"
    Glover is an artist who often pushes himself into new mediums and now new styles of music. While a further development of the concepts on Because The Internet could have seen an interesting continuation on the hip-hop arc of Childish Gambino, Glover instead introduced a new element.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Honest Life
    Like Harris, Andrews’ voice can ring out with force of feeling even at its softest, and relying on nuance instead of vocal pyrotechnics turns the song into an intimate confession. She demonstrates that same good taste, and finely honed skill, throughout Honest Life, resulting in an album at once elegant and deeply moving.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hardwired...To Self-Destruct
    Hardwired… To Self-Destruct is the best Metallica record in 25 years, but it’s not going to blow minds.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Slugger
    There are stylistic nods to hip hop (rapper Sammus spits a verse on “Coming Into Powers”) and jittery electronica (“Krampus”) along the way, some more successful than others. But nothing fits as gloriously as fuzzed-out garage rock.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service
    We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service also frequently makes the strong case that it’s the best thing this group’s ever done, too.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Jessica Rabbit
    At only 43 minutes, the album can take a few listens for adjustment. Like no other rock in 2016, Jessica Rabbit is rife with worthwhile whiplash, with some of Derek Miller’s best riffs no longer taking center stage in front the songwriting.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Arms
    It’s unlikely that Arms will bring Bell X1 any sort of really big breakthrough on this side of the pond. Yet at the same time it’s a skillful enough effort to at least increase their notice.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    No Waves
    Your reaction to No Waves--a titular nod to the extra-confrontational New York City punk-rock offshoot of the late-’70s--likely depends on your tolerance for passages of grinding noise and musical experimentation for its own sake. If that’s your thing, Gordon and Nace power their way through this 35-ish minute set with impressive ardor, and no shortage of ability.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Eternally Even
    Eternally Even, while a solid album worth a spin, would have been well-served to have a little more urgency, or at least energy, to it.
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