Pitchfork's Scores

  • Music
For 11,942 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Sign O' the Times [Deluxe Edition]
Lowest review score: 0 nyc ghosts & flowers
Score distribution:
11942 music reviews
    • 80 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Private Suit shows the band taking some risks. They continue to write catchy and cute guitar rock songs, but also experiment with backing vocals and strings, a noble ambition that raises the bar higher than "the little band that could" is able to reach.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Ultimately, the picture that emerges on Twentyears is a simplified version of Air that swaps out most of their quirks for only their most palatable qualities. It’s a lite version of the band, and a frustrating missed opportunity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    But while the sound of this album is more expansive, the influences a bit less obvious, and the approach more varied, the guys forgot to tote along their initial strength: the songs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    The tracks on Yanqui are content to continue building to bored, satiated endings we can see coming 20 minutes in advance.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Music this theatrical demands a stage. On disc it plays a bit like a conversation-starting party favor: colorful and bright, but no substitute for actually being there.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Assume Form is aggressively pastel and suffocatingly serious. He has lost the playful sense of surprise that guided his falsetto’s agile twists and turns on his debut.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This is a merely pleasant album, and especially after 11 long years, pleasant is a low hurdle for such an inimitable singer.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone is the musical equivalent of a late Woody Allen film (possibly a good or bad thing, depending on your temperament): The action unfolds predictably, but the dramatic effect can also be increased by your fondness for and familiarity with the idiom.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Some of its songs deserve to be cut into halves, while others should have been chopped wholesale. With those snips, Exai would be a really good Autechre album that summarizes the various successes of their career in an hour or so. As is, it's as much a frustrating obstacle course as it is a grueling marathon.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    O
    The big, inescapable problem with O is that, aside from being derivative, Rice's songwriting is also unbearably repetitive-- he stubbornly relies upon time-tested singer/songwriter formulas (quiet acoustic strumming and sober, wavering vocals), and repeats them almost exactly the same way, every time.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    To its credit, {Awayland} rarely comes across as false, but O'Brien's affinity for cleverness over clarity ensures it rarely comes across in any real way.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Taylor writes about big issues—income inequality, political corruption, a society fraying at its edges—but these complex matters are undermined by the rote uplift in his songs, an optimism assumed but never really earned.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Draw Down the Moon most often plays like a collection of Total Life Forever extended cuts, moments of thoughtful lateral thinking tacked onto the beginnings and endings of otherwise familiar indie rock songs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Even if their whole style is essentially a throwback, there's plenty of room out there for throwback done right. But on too much of Youth and Lightness, they're not the machine they could be.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    With Aesop Rock on production, Felt becomes a triangulation that canvasses almost the entirety of U.S. undie rap in terms of geography and affiliation. So why is this thing kind of a bummer?
    • 79 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Mordechai doesn’t quite commit to delivering fleshed-out songs, or to synthesizing Khruangbin’s influences into something new. It’s too busy to settle fully into your subconscious like the intercontinental ambience of Khruangbin’s 2018 breakout Con Todo El Mundo, but not substantial enough to satisfy more active listening.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Set aside the negligible opening and closing tracks, and Sol Invictus has just eight tracks spanning 34 minutes, an underwhelming running time considering how long Faith No More have been away. Such brevity could be overlooked if Sol Invictus was accompanied by a significant shift in the band’s sound, but many of these songs feel like retreads.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Subtle breakbeat drumming and glistening guitar be damned, Bono will ruin a song. And so the story goes for the entire album-- one of the band's finest, if not for the tweeting and hooting of The Fly and his grating lyrics.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Throughout it's fourteen tracks, there's no doubting The Weakerthans are smart guys who keep up with literature and politics, but over the course of an entire album the band's ambitious literary posturing drowns in the bland songwriting and lack of captivating hooks.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The album spends nearly its entirety trying to revive a sound prevalent in 1994.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    The voice is willing, but the musical backdrop is weak.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    His beats are generally chunky sample flips and simple loops, but he also has an ear for a good sound. But if you’re listening to a Royce album it’s because you want to hear the guy rap. To his credit, Royce has the rare effect of a rapper’s extreme technical ability making him seem limber instead of rigid.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 46 Critic Score
    Virtually the whole record settles into the same formula the band's been dutifully churning out since the dawn of the millennium.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Divest the Smashing Pumpkins or Hum of their singers, give the bands room to jam, and this album might have ensued. Without vocals, it feels slightly empty.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    The problem lies with the songs themselves, which simply lack outstanding or memorable hooks: Most are content to meander behind a curtain of big rock guitars and bigger rock cliches, infinitely repeating themselves or, in some cases, never saying much of anything at all.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    clipping. never present themselves as resurrectors of horrorcore, and Visions’ songs are livelier than those on TEEATB, but the way the group embraces the style feels archaeological.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's ultimately a spotty album from a guy who has released a lot of spotty albums.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    It doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know about Cash in his final months, nor does it sound like an attempt to re-brand an icon or re-shape a legacy.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Ultimately, Blessed has the feel of a transitional album-- from lonely to married, from troubled to contented, from regretful to joyful.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's all good enough, but how many times, really, do you need to hear the term "rock the mic" in an hour? Not this many.