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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    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let's Face the Music and Dance
    Let’s Face the Music features some of his strongest and most engaged performances in a decade.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Floating Coffin
    It stitches psychotic school dance vibes among the surf garage in a hurried splendor.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Desperate Ground
    Desperate Ground is easily the best Thermals record since The Body, The Blood, The Machine.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Terror
    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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Mosquito
    Mosquito is where this band finally grooves, after long threatening.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Overgrown
    Had Blake been inclined to temper critical pressure and career anxiety into raw material, Overgrown may have evolved into something much more compelling. Instead, mistaking the volume knob for an instrument, the album uses louder/softer fades to mask dynamic limitations and muddles through overstuffed mixes.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Shaking the Habitual
    It shouldn’t work--they went all or nothing. They got all.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Jake Bugg
    The debut from this 19-year-old British talent is very impressive and easy to listen to even if it’s not particularly trailblazing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Stories Don't End
    Stories Don’t End is crisper and more overdubbed, sprawling a tad where the first two albums flowed seamlessly.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Wakin on a Pretty Daze
    On Daze, Vile’s amorphous, ambient drones continue to solidify into sharp shapes with defined edges.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heza
    To call Heza, the third LP from the New Orleans-based duo, more opaque would be an understatement.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Holiday
    In keeping with the understated, meditative quality of the lyrics, Principe pushes his voice to notes of particular emphasis but conspicuously avoids the acrobatics that might otherwise attract attention: rarely does anything so lovely appear so unassuming.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    For Now I Am Winter
    For Now I Am Winter plays like a cultural stereotype, conjuring all the obvious adjectives but none of the emotions. But Arnalds has a gift for making boredom sound beautiful.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Cruise Your Illusion
    Cruise Your Illusion is a record that will likely be spinning on turntables well into the future.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 34 Critic Score
    Delta Machine
    Depeche Mode has been an easy target for complaints of stagnancy, and, indeed, the band seemed to stop progressing in the mid-’90s like a child with a pot-a-day habit. And, Delta Machine is another example of this.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO
    Until in Excess unfolds in chapters like a long tale and by the time the closing song “Alamogordo” finishes its nearly three-minute fade out, what’s left is a dreamy calm and sense of completion.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Dormarion
    Dormarion should leave returning fans satisfied and new listeners hooked as Lerner continues to refine his skills and churn out strong albums.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Dear Miss Lonelyhearts
    Dear Miss Lonelyhearts is not the breakthrough into critical acclaim either, hampered by innocuous words and the lack of personality in the arrangements and individual players, Matt Aveiro, Matt Maust and new guy Dann Gallucci.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Indigo Meadow
    The album is a disjointed trip but a trip nonetheless, and few can take listeners on a wandering journey better than The Black Angels.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Victim of Love
    If you were a fan of No Time For Dreaming you’re going to be a fan of Victim of Love, and you shouldn’t really need to know anything about it other than it’s an album full of Charles Bradley songs.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Optica
    For the most part, though, Shout Out Louds match their musical grandeur with emotional grandeur. And messy romanticism is their natural milieu.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Same Trailer Different Park
    A gritty girl dug in, she embraces her Bob Dylan overtones (the harmonica on “My House”), Roy Orbison steel cry and mariachi Eagles-tinge (“I Miss You”) and a tumble of revival slap ’n’ stomp (“Stupid”). This is no conventional pop-country supernova.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Miami
    Miami shows an inventive collective in the act of reinvention, their recorded output transitioning from concepts to compositions to living breathing body-moving songs.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Recover [EP]
    [Title track "Recover" is] so freakishly great, there’s no way Chvrches can follow it--at least not on this EP.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Via
    If listening to Via makes you feel good, chances are Zedek is feeling good. Powerful stuff.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Comedown Machine
    Comedown Machine [is] reliably solid, mostly enjoyable, slightly disappointing for reasons that are difficult to articulate.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Afraid of Heights
    The album is split up between the predictable pop-punk energizers that made 2010’s King of the Beach a pleasure, and a new avenue of slower, resolute tracks that lean on their lyrics. Williams, though, is not exactly a belletrist, nor does he try to be, and the words do function, proving to be revealing, dark and honest.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Water on Mars
    For all its polish, Water on Mars retains a sense of spontaneity, with a handful of soft, folky tunes.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    The Invisible Way
    It’s a disappointment to hear the band retreat into their old shell on their latest, The Invisible Way.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Muchacho
    Powerfully, the evolution of the songcraft on Muchacho doesn’t arrive as a random left turn but instead progresses directly out of Phosphorescent’s own canon.
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