Paste Magazine's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Ruffian's Misfortune
    Whatever is dealt him, he scrapes the roots, boils the marrow and gives up songs that rabbit punch with delicious truth.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Full Circle
    The debut is one of my picks for the year so far, a dance-hall record that grows on your and becomes more like a trusted friend who whispers wisdom from another universe.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Spiderland [Box Set]
    Spiderland is a record that will sound just as exciting 20 years from now. Call it the gift that keeps on giving.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kicking Television: Live In Chicago
    A vivid document not only of how far Wilco has come, but also of how distinct its vision has been all along. [Dec 2005, p.112]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Afrique Victime
    In so many ways, the album represents the full realization not just of Moctar’s individual artistry, but of what’s possible when influences collide in unexpected ways. ... Stunning, unique desert flower.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Out of the Game
    On Out of the Game, Wainwright does not disappoint: whirling string sections and a chorus of women exhale grief behind the brash songwriter who knows no shade of blue that eludes him.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All of This Will End
    Her bandmates act as a support system, pushing these songs to new heights, ready to catch her when she stares at the unknown. All of This Will End is triumphant, despite the emotional terrain it navigates.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Broken Boy Soldiers
    An efficient 33 minutes, Broken Boy Soldiers supplies the summer's most gas-conscious road tunes. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.128]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crack The Skye
    Amidst blistering tritone riffs and arpeggiated chords is a group keener to explore sonic harmony than crank the distortion. Crack the Skye is an epic trek across the space-time continuum, entirely on Mastodon’s terms.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ghetto Bells
    A particularly powerful collection from a consistently brilliant artist. [Apr/May 2005, p.128]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Shadows in the Night
    Every performance on Shadows In The Night expresses a level of vocal maturity and intuition that he’s never quite reached before.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Blood Mountain
    A study in elemental force that rides the line between thrash and plod with enlightened originality and compositional skill to spare. [Dec 2006, p.89]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    On Your Own Love Again
    Armed with little more than a guitar, some rudimentary tape-tracking recording materials and a a treasure trove of inventive vocal harmonies, Pratt’s darkly ambitious compositions are fleshed out into alcoves of aural mischief, served mystical and with a kind of dark magic, vacillating as they do between optimism and pessimism.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Blessed
    If 1998's Car Wheels on as Gravel Road stands as the high point of Williams' self-involved period, Blessed just as masterfully traces the bursting heart and smoldering soul of her humanity. This is as deep and true as the song form gets.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Release Me
    Release Me, his final album of an almost 30-year career for Curb, finds him resolutely steadfast in his excellence and eclecticism.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Thunder, Lightning, Strike
    Sounds like a mostly live interpretation of... The Avalanches' intricate party collages doubling as three-minute music history lessons. [#13, p.118]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Temple Beautiful
    It is the details that make Prophet explode.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Goon
    What Jesso has delivered is a record that needs no context, that can exist outside of time and place. Jesso, in short, has crafted a masterpiece, with the only connection of real significance being between him and his audience.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Marissa Nadler
    Marissa Nadler hints at larger tragedies and losses, implying an overarching break-up narrative that gives each song added force.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Promises
    There’s a timeless quality to Promises, an inscrutable sense that the album could hail from 30 years in the past or 30 years into the future.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson
    This is the best Americana album of the year. It reminds us all the way out here in 2016 that Blind Willie Johnson’s songs are still alive, and there is no better way to pay tribute to one of the finest American artists who ever lived.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Saint Cloud
    When an artist completely and beautifully upends the conventions of an entire genre, they’re probably aware of their capabilities. Saint Cloud is the sound of Katie Crutchfield at her most conscious, comfortable and controlled.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ain't Who I Was
    For Bishop, who’d given up music, it is in that maturity her strengths shine. If Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time marked a momentous arrival, Bishop’s Ain’t Who I Was could be the 21st Century answer.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Local Business
    This collection is the band's tightest and most cohesive, and they do so without losing any of the grit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Living With The Living
    Living With The Living rocks so much harder, spits more venom and cuts closer to the bone than just about anything else out there today. [Apr 2007, p.50]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sugar Mountain: Live At Canterbury House 1968
    Live at Canterbury House, the latest in a series of live recordings from his archives, is pretty simple-left track is voice, right track acoustic guitar. Simplicity, as is evident here, serves him quite well.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The List
    Although meant to honor?father Johnny’s musical tastes, The List better serves as an exquisite reminder of Rosanne’s own history of artistic rebelliousness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tug of War [Deluxe Edition]
    There are a lot of varying moods to digest over 40 minutes, but it gels well.... The demos provide a glimpse into the working process.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    American Kid
    Taking emotional truths and cutting to the quick, her razor-sharp sense of detail has never been sharper.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Shattered
    A boldly traditional, and fantastically well-rounded album of rock ‘n’ roll.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hair, The TV, The Baby & The Band
    There is much to be excited about here and virtually nothing to poo-poo.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Eye To The Telescope
    She combines a formidable voice with a rarefied command of phrasing. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.106]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Let the Good Times Roll
    Rock ’n’ roll has a knack for brute force, but these songs are never less than nimble, always full of electricity and a steady barometer of unfailing good taste.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Tigers Have Spoken
    She’s in perfect form.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
    The resulting album is as lean, rambunctious and snarling as its predecessor was stately.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Great Destroyer
    Songs like “California” and “Walk Into the Sea,” by far the sunniest, poppiest material Low has ever produced, shatter the mopey mold the band has so carefully cultivated, and to thrilling results.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    American V: A Hundred Highways
    From beginning to end, it's as heartwarming and heartbreaking an album as you're likely to hear this year. [Aug 2006, p.86]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dark Night Of The Soul
    The controversy nearly obscured the resounding triumph of the album itself; written and produced by Burton and Linkous, it's a breathtaking set of atmospheric ballads (plus a few rockers) that explore cosmic concerns, from the self-destructive trap of revenge to the possibility of spiritual renewal.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Led Zeppelin III [Remastered]
    From a purely sonic standpoint, these new versions are impossible to disregard.... The bonus material on Led Zeppelin II and III is more revelatory, showcasing the band’s creative process through assorted alternate takes and rough mixes.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    No Depression [Legacy Edition]
    This new 35-track Legacy Edition’s ample extras--revved-up outtakes, forlorn covers, rare live cuts and, best of all, its strikingly hungry lo-fi demos--provide an intriguing peek behind the curtain at a young band flush with potential.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Southeastern
    By any reasonable aesthetic criteria, Southeastern is a triumph.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Way Down in the Rust Bucket [Live]
    This long-lost document may be the most important live offering there is of Neil Young and Crazy Horse—or at least the most important Young has shared with us.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage: 1982-2011
    Every song a casual fan would know is here.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Another Eternity
    Another Eternity represents the confluence of hard trap beats with the formula for electro that gave rise to prevailing styles in indie music. It’s enough of a creative leap to perhaps usher in more copycats, but Purity Ring again checks in first.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Only God Was Above Us
    Only God Was Above Us is about transformations. It represents the idea that even with growth and change, an artist—or just a human being in general—can preserve their core. It’s high-brow art in that way. But if you, like Koenig, can appreciate the art of a good walk, it would also just make for a great soundtrack to your next mindless stroll.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    What Happens Next
    This version of Gang of Four is clearly Gill’s vision, and if the group doesn’t sound as tightly wound as they did in their first incarnation, the angular guitar attack and the relentless pounding of the drums is a clear indication that the fire still burns within.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Complicated Game
    Complicated Game is brilliant album, dense and thoughtful as McMurtry swirls around inside the heads of another set of fascinating characters.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Microcastle
    Though Microcastle is hardly straightforward, it’s an aggressive step toward the mainstream that sacrifices none of Deerhunter’s woozy adventurousness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Teen Dream
    Dream is a go-for-broke collection that not only creates and sustains a hi-fi drowse-pop drama throughout its 10 beguiling songs, but comes across like a logical and gorgeous extension of all the band’s previous dreams.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Langhorne Slim
    Slim’s range and depth are on full display this time out--with Langhorne Slim, he has painted his first near masterpiece, marking himself as a true artist whose work should be followed with a careful ear from here on out.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
    Whether soft or loud, these 12 songs are exquisite.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Modern Times
    What makes the music so compelling is not its frame of reference... but the flair and originality with which it's put across. [Sep 2006, p.70]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Honey
    Honey is a near-flawless dance pop album. It doesn’t need political or cultural commentary to assert relevancy; in Robyn’s deep understanding of human emotion and what moves us, Honey feels dire all the same. Release through dance has long been a tactic wielded by humankind, but rarely has it felt this inclusive, kind and positively radiant.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Window
    The Window, may, in fact, be the band’s best yet. .... Ratboys showcase, over and over again, their considerable skill for making songs that are emotionally raw and sonically polished, intrinsically rootsy and invariably catchy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Saint Dymphna
    Saint Dymphna is a dangerously sane blueprint for producers trying to capture what "futuristic" sounds like right now.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Funeral
    Musically dynamic and emotionally complex. [#13, p.132]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Boys And Girls In America
    The gentler surroundings encourage Finn to calm down and sing with a lilt of compassion. [Nov 2006, p.80]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Mouse And The Mask
    Wonderfully askew. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.96]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Letter to You
    Letter to You is also a letter to himself, to the music and to his steadfast collaborators in the E Street Band, past and present. It’s a potent reminder that together, they’re as good as it gets.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Heaven to a Tortured Mind
    Heaven is irreconcilably an album with staying power, one we’ll be referring to years from now as a benchmark for the sound of rock n’ roll and R&B. Tumor is an enigma, one who will continue to prove their sleeves teem with new tricks.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chemistry Of Common Life
    Despite a surprisingly visceral first listen, Chemistry reveals itself to be expertly crafted record with hidden subtleties at every turn.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Birth of Violence
    With Birth of Violence, she takes a momentous step forward with songs that initially mask their sophistication behind plodding, strummy, dreamy facades. Because of Wolfe’s newfound ability to communicate so much more with less, you could call Birth of Violence a tour de force—only Wolfe has mastered the art of eschewing force altogether.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    RTJ2
    RTJ2 is a fierce release.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Letting Go
    At last, Will Oldham as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy has given us a record of cryptic romanticism to complement the silver-rimmed bleakness of his 1999 masterpiece I See A Darkness. [Sep 2006, p.73]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Shepherd's Dog
    Beam has managed to tweak and in?ate his signature sound without sacri?cing any of its considerable charm.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Icky Thump
    Such arty, at times enervating, digressions highlight Icky Thump’s curious weight; whereas Elephant’s dinosaur-rock stomp got cut with fragile acoustic turns, there is little reprieve here.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tape Loops
    The result is a collection of five songs that shine forth powerfully spare arrangements, emerging from your audio source to your ears like hauntings from a house inside a daydream.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Light of the Sun
    Her dexterity in juxtaposing genres, infusing her swooping jazz-singing with near-gospel fervor, kittenish moans and shameless spoken exhortations is commanding.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
    An eminently pleasurable album that reveals more with each spin. [Apr/May 2005, p.148]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Locked Down
    A sweeping confession of sanctification, embrace and glory, this is deliverance personified.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Harrow and the Harvest
    The Harrow & The Harvest is simply one of the richest, most expansive roots albums to be released in some time.
    • 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.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    No Cities to Love
    On Sleater-Kinney’s eighth album, the band sounds as vital, composed and necessary as ever. In just 10 songs and a little over 30 minutes, Sleater-Kinney does so much more than revive an old band. They craft an argument for having improved in its absence.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hackney Diamonds
    The fact that Hackney Diamonds is this damn good further proves that even the bands who’ve given every bit of themselves to the music still have more left to give.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
    Unabashedly grand and inspirational.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Banga
    Banga is a song cycle that expresses a synthesis of all of her strengths to form one of her strongest albums.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Researching the Blues
    Redd Kross 2.0's incredible debut.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Age of Adz
    It's what you hope for from your favorite artists in your best moments -- evolution, a little difficulty and, especially, something new.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rumours [35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    If there’s ever been an album that deserves the lavish, borderline-unnecessary reissue treatment, it’s this pop behemoth.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rainbow
    Instead of dwelling on what isn’t said on the record, she chooses to use her experiences to find the strength to move on. And so we get the most authentic Kesha album yet, and it’s a triumph.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The White Stripes Greatest Hits
    Jack White had an abundance of talent and a highly specific vision that he pursued with dogged persistence. Meg White provided the anchor for his wild flights of imagination and searing guitar noise. These 26 songs are a reminder of just how potent they could be together, and that’s as compelling a reason as any to dig into their music all over again.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Collective
    The album succeeds wholly on its immediacy, and both its soundscapes and directionless lyrics slap you in the face with its message. It’s impossible to listen to The Collective without knowing exactly what Kim Gordon is talking about.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Psychedelic Pill
    Psychedelic Pill may be the best album Neil Young has ever done with Crazy Horse.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Nuclear Daydream
    The album becomes more intoxicatingly hermetic with each successive song, taking you as deep as you dare to go. [Nov 2006, p.79]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tempest
    There aren't many records like this one, and if you give it time and it catches you, you'll probably still be listening to it when the deal goes down and your own ship comes in.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
    Eagle is the ultimate cohesion of Callahan’s singular storytelling and bewitching delivery.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Helplessness Blues
    For now, Pecknold and his bandmates are important cogs in the indie-music scene - with a few more albums akin to Helplessness Blues under their belts, they may soon fit just as nicely into the canon of American folk music.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Who's Feeling Young Now?
    They may have just crafted a masterpiece.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Divisionary
    Ages and Ages have undergone lineup changes and lots of peripheral personal battles and have somehow managed to internalize and later deduce how to navigate the avenues of their own lives in triumphant--and insanely memorable--song. In the process, they’ve come out with one of this year’s best all-around albums.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Carnage
    Nick Cave may very well be the avatar for the idea that what we think of as “mellow” can be “heavy” and vice versa. With Carnage, he and Ellis prove that point yet again. Believe it or not, they also stretch themselves again, suggesting there may be no end to the inspiration they have up their sleeves.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Deerhoof Vs. Evil
    Even more than those artists' fantastic new albums, Deerhoof vs. Evil musically captures the essence of this hard-to-fathom-but-entirely-possible future.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    color theory
    Success may not be a salve, but color theory is a resounding triumph.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Destroyer's Rubies
    The only thing about Destroyer's Rubies that might shock existing fans is that Bejar's execution, ambition and passion have been buffed to a high shine. [Apr/May 2006, p.102]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wildewoman
    Lucius’ infectious melodies, keen self-awareness and shameless authenticity sweep through all 11 songs, making Wildewoman one of the most complete indie pop LPs this year.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wait For Me
    It’s a remarkable work, and while Moby may find himself once more providing the soundtrack to every trendy restaurant and automobile ad for the next 18 months, what’s best about this record is that it’s just that: an album, meant to be consumed the old-school way, front-to-back.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kidsticks
    Kidsticks feels genuinely special--it’s an exciting reboot and a tantalizing hint that new strategies may be on the horizon, never a bad thing when an artist has been on the job more than two decades.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Big Station
    A lean rock record [imbued] with import beyond the sting of the smart, seething tracks.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    1989 (Taylor's Version)
    1989 (Taylor’s Version) is a sparkling ode from an artist in her prime to an album that played a significant role in paving her way there.
Page: