Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 4,060 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: 3,625 out of 4060
  2. Mixed: 400 out of 4060
  3. Negative: 35 out of 4060
4060 music reviews
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    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    22, A Million
    There’s certainly a sense of urgency here, and also sublime moments on songs that overlay beauty with turbulence in a way that suggests an anguished soul reaching for solace amid turmoil.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    I Had a Dream That You Were Mine
    The majority of I Had A Dream just doesn’t stick as deep, brushing past in a breeze of strained vocals and intricate arrangements.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chapter and Verse
    That’s ultimately what makes Chapter and Verse unique--it’s not necessarily the Springsteen songs that soundtracked our lives; it’s the ones that soundtracked his.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Strange Diary
    There is certain clarity in Strange Diary that keeps the album cohesive, although it can become stagnant at times. The album’s slick production wards this off almost entirely, setting a strong foundation for Fein to recoup her poise.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    We're All Gonna Die
    Frontman Taylor Goldsmith experiments with R&B-style falsetto on songs like the title track, and the plaintive piano songs of yore now lean more heavily on keyboard synths and textural effects.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    High Anxiety
    There’s a lot going on here, as required by any worthwhile slate of electronica, and Greene streamlines the grooves, tempos, beats and boom bap in a meaningful way.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    AIM
    AIM isn’t nearly as ambitious. It’s just busywork, M.I.A. watching the clock, scanning the news, occupied, but idle.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Tuns
    In the end, TUNS holds up just as strongly to any of the member’s legendary bands, and they are making their own legend along the way.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sea of Noise
    Ultimately, Sea of Noise is a powerful testament to the unflagging power of music borne from faith and conviction.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Skeleton Tree
    Cave fans may nitpick about how this album instrumentally stands against avant-garde classics like Kicking Against the Pricks and Let Love In. But there’s something to be said about Skeleton Tree and its starkness, which is as familiar as life and death, an elegy, and a hell of a thing to forget.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    No Burden
    With No Burden, Lucy Dacus challenges the little boxes everyone seems forced into at one time or another, exposing them for the weak material they’re built from. In the process, she’s created a debut record with an abundance of heart that should speak to anyone with a pulse of their own.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    The End of Comedy
    Despite the stuffing of unnecessary transition tracks on this album, Drugdealer still makes a clean getaway with The End of Comedy.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Schmilco
    Schmilco is an acoustic record but not a slow one--thank God--which proves the right vehicle for the band’s loosest, most unadorned set of songs since its debut. There’s electricity here, if not much electric guitar.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Calico Review
    There are more than a few bands hell-bent on exhuming and reinventing the past. Few are as adept as the Allah-Las.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    My Woman
    The relentless heat of My Woman can be exhausting over the course of 10 searing tracks--the addition of a throwaway would give a weary listener time to regroup. But Angel Olsen’s fearless and eloquent embrace of raw emotions in all their messy splendor ultimately feels oddly uplifting, the way it always does when you witness a gifted artist at her best.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Deluxe
    You can’t separate this band from nostalgia, and although that might seem like a crutch to some, it can be a major point of interest for others, especially when it’s done as well as it is on Deluxe.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Mangy Love
    Though Mangy Love is well constructed, the album at times has a slippery feel, and some of the songs can just slide by without making the impression it seems like they should.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Prima Donna [EP]
    In the world of Prima Donna, black death is radical. Author Paul Beatty came to the same conclusion in his satirical novel The White Boy Shuffle, but Vince does it in 20 gripping minutes. Never has so much been done with one little light.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Los Niños Sin Miedo
    The Parrots supply their best tunes when they are having a good time, exactly why they act best to soundtrack the fun times under the sweltering summer sun. For The Parrots, all of the fun they have is just in a day’s work.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Blonde
    Beautifully more simple than any of our mythmaking delusions, Blonde is Ocean’s life as he experiences it: fluid and fluctuating, one man in motion. This is what freedom sounds like.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    One Day All of This Won't Matter Any More
    While this album is overall a winner, it’s not revolutionary.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Roosevelt
    Given the album’s August release date, this is one of the nearly perfect LPs for the last few hazy weeks of a brilliant summer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Boronia
    Though Boronia lacks the imagination to separate Hockey Dad from the knockoffs, the band knows how to have fun in their music, and they know how to do so well.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    A Weird Exits
    A Weird Exits can be a trying album, requiring the listener to tumble through several disorienting sonic rabbit holes. The reward, however, is emerging from the other side of this wild ride with stories and theories as to what exactly went down between the channels of your headphones.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Morning Report
    The fourth album shows the band pushing the barrier of mainstream music and aiming for a breakthrough outside of the Canadian market.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not
    The band’s got a steady, comfortable grip on what’s make them sound great together, and Give A Glimpse of What Yer Not is, so far, perhaps the best distillation of this loud, glossy sound.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    This Is Gap Dream
    You can sense the solitude and fear in his warbling slacker-rock epics, and the solitude went beyond sheer internal turmoil: Fulvimar also played every instrument on the album.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Over There That Way
    It’s a textbook case of hiding in plain sight, pirouetting gracefully from one style to the next and deftly eluding precise meaning.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Tell Me if You Like To
    Tell Me If You Like To often finds the band kicking and screaming, both in downtrodden passion and in high spirits. What makes Spring King one of a kind is that they do not feel the need to differentiate the two.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Viola Beach
    Most poignant are the songs that offer something a little different from standard, because these are the instances where you can hear the makings of the band proper.
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