Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 4,080 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: 3,644 out of 4080
  2. Mixed: 400 out of 4080
  3. Negative: 36 out of 4080
4080 music reviews
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Coal Miner's Daughter: A Tribute to Loretta Lynn
    Other Nashville all-stars-Lee Ann Womack ("I'm a Honky Tonk Girl"), Carrie Underwood ("You're Lookin' at Country"), and Reba McEntire ("If You're Not Gone Too Long")--contribute perfectly adequate performances, and Miranda Lambert plows duet partner Sheryl Crow into the ground with her saucy delivery on "Coal Miner's Daughter," which features a cameo by Miss Loretta herself. Still, most of the disc's highlights come from those outside of the country genre.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Sister
    Sister completely one-ups the band’s debut from eight years ago.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Leave Me Alone
    Leave Me Alone manages to be a nostalgic album that nevertheless lives in the moment.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    It's Frightening
    While playing catchy, well-crafted songs isn't necessarily a bad thing, it is sometimes less than exciting.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Encore
    It’s danceable, sure, but there’s a sinister edge, and the album spans more than just your classic ska and reggae beats. It’s easy to listen to, easy to get lost in. Music to fight the power by.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Passwords
    Dawes’ latest may well sound fresh and new, or at least vaguely soulful, if you don’t know it’s a retread, but Passwords is all too easy to crack, and what’s inside isn’t really worth protecting when others have been doing it all better for decades.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Mines
    Mines is Menomena at its best-mentally relentless and physically ruthless.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wondrous Bughouse
    While Wondrous Bughouse may not be for everyone, it certainly pushes new barriers.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Motion Sickness [Live]
    All the pros and cons of Bright Eyes present themselves here. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.110]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 74 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Let It Sway
    The rest of the album slides downhill, a mix of inoffensive and unremarkable power-pop with the occasional slow jam to break the wistful monotony-the perfect soundtrack to cruising the streets of Seattle in your 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Surrounded
    It is a beautiful sleeplessness captured in Surrounded; in those channels and eddies, fans of his musical landscapes can drift for hours.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    What Chaos Is Imaginary
    Girlpool’s trajectory from Before the World Was Big to What Chaos Is Imaginary proves how an album can be many things: a meticulously cohesive monologue delivered by multiple voices, or a notebook stuffed full of intriguing yet somewhat dispersed ideas. What Chaos falls into the latter category, though its title includes a self-referential wink that implies the band both perceives and embraces the work’s disarray.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Down in Heaven
    There still seems to be something especially right about how Twin Peaks are retaining a level of familiarity with anyone who likes rock music while getting to be better and more songwriters with each passing album.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive
    Small quibbles aside, I'll Never Get Out Of this World Alive is a solid addition to Steve Earle's impressive body of work that should satisfy both faithful and new listeners alike.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lonely Runs Both Ways
    Lonely Runs Both Ways is spit-polished to a high, Nashville sheen, airbrushed into perfection and loaded down with layer upon layer of gooey gloss. Ultimately, all that shine holds Krauss back.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Around The Well
    That sense of musical evolution makes Around the Well a particularly compelling listening, and Beam’s sensitive readings of songs by Stereolab, the Flaming Lips, the Postal Service, and New Order show how sturdy his sound can be, as he translates them to quieter settings without losing their heraldic sentiments.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tracks And Traces [Reissue]
    A synthetic/organic melting pot where experimental electronics meet birdsong and wind, Tracks and Traces is a Krautrock classic with a heavily mediated release history that renders it ultimately mysterious--the more music we hear, the further we get from what actually happened in that room.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Gimme Some
    The energy level is up; the production is clanky and raw; the guitars ring louder, and the drums hit harder. For the first time, Peter Bjorn and John actually sound like--dare we say--a rock band.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Mountaintops
    On Mountaintops, the band flaunts the dynamics of their past recordings while sneaking in layers of growth.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    True
    Violens is able to float between atmospheric and in-your-face, giving the album a swirling feeling instead of putting power hits up front and letting the album slide into the background as the songs pass.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Get There
    Get There, is a thoughtful, interesting record (about what it means to be thoughtful and interesting).
    • 74 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    ∞ (Infinity)
    At times, even on its better tracks, Infinity suffers from the weight of its own ambitions, obscuring great ideas in a wash of obstinate noise wrought by too many instruments in the mix.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Dereconstructed
    It’s a dirty-sounding album, full of scuzzy red-line guitars and overdriven vocals, but even all that speaker-busting grit doesn’t hide the alluring melodies Bains threads among the mayhem.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Singer's Grave/A Sea of Tongues
    If the album does anything right (and it does a lot right), it is capturing the contradicting emotions of a life and trying to reconcile them, so that the listener doesn’t have to do the same.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Absent Fathers
    While the album’s primary appeal may come from the rich storytelling in Earle’s songs, the musicality on display is nothing to balk at either.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Archive Material
    Whether all our efforts on this dying world will be for naught is an open question, but Silverbacks bear witness nonetheless on Archive Material, advancing their craft even as the ship sinks beneath their feet.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Almanac
    Widowspeak's Almanac strikes as a true original, as a natural evolution from the band's original concept.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    We All Want the Same Things
    There’s still no substitute for the adrenalizing power of the Hold Steady at its best, but the nuance of Finn’s solo songwriting, and the subtler sense of musical adventurism he has come to embrace on his own work, make these songs essential, too.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    God Help The Girl
    While there are fewer barbs and the atmosphere is less filigreed, as with Belle & Sebastian , you’re either down with the twee or not. Tuneful as this is, it’s hard to write it off without feeling like a rockist grinch.
    • 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.
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