Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,018 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 53% 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:
  1. Positive: 9,832 out of 12018
  2. Mixed: 1,879 out of 12018
  3. Negative: 307 out of 12018
12018 music reviews
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    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    True Colors
    True Colors does traverse familiar, populous formats that may be difficult to innovate on top of, but other posi-tinted, mass audience-focused projects have found success by mixing their own cocktails of EDM, soul, and of-the-minute rap production. Zedd’s True Colors, though, feels underformed and unoriginal.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon
    To navigate successfully around a Kid Cudi album, then, is to get really good at squinting at the periphery.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Supermoon [EP]
    The most successful [alternative versions] are the ones that drastically reinvent their material, recasting, for instance, rock songs as synth-pop songs, synth-pop songs as rock songs, or busy twee-punk as slightly less busy acoustic twee-punk. But Supermoon never takes those kinds of leaps.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Release Therapy
    Release Therapy is probably Luda's best album since Back for the First Time, but it's not like that's saying much.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Inherit
    Unfortunately, Inherit tries to give the listener both of these great tastes at once, resulting in a combination that's less like chocolate and peanut butter, and more like toothpaste and orange juice.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Secondhand Rapture
    There are brooding, rhythmically strong pop songs that fall halfway between the poutiness of Lana Del Rey and the hyperactive fizz of HAIM. The parts where it deviates from that template, however, are baffling.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Red
    Guillemots cram themselves into awkward fits, and Dangerfield has to squeeze the hardest--whether he's tying himself to a straightforward ballad instead of clamoring for the rooftops, or standing up for a fight when he's so much more comfortable slipping into a dream.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Night On Fire
    VHS or BETA have moved on, like so many bands this year, to pillaging the dance-friendly template of late-80s Cure.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    A Better Tomorrow
    Where overbearing arrangements don’t get in the way, a cloying sentimentality does.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There's Me And There's You
    So yeah, the tricks are clever; unfortunately, musically, There's Me... is an overstuffed mess.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 44 Critic Score
    Fantasy Ride
    A few brilliant left turns that feel almost accidental mixed in with a sort of end-times hunger for a top-40 audience that doesn't seem to exist anymore.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Lord Dog Bird
    Most of the seven tracks crammed between these fine bookends, including two undistinguished instrumentals, run together in a modal drone, lacking urgency or emotional inflection.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 47 Critic Score
    The Past Presents The Future
    Bianchi's not much for such subtleties, emotional or rhetorical, which may suggest he'll have as much lovelorn electro-symphonic melodrama to recount on future albums as on those past and present.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 44 Critic Score
    We Can't Fly
    We Can't Fly's stylistic knuckleballs lack just about everything we'd grown to love about Aeroplane: namely luxurious grooves and effortless cool.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dedication 4 [Mixtape]
    The worst I can say about Dedication 4 is that there isn't one moment where I wouldn't rather be listening to the often mediocre originals. There are a dozen or so good punch lines scattered on D4, enough to make it fun enough for one listen
    • 60 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Funk Wav Bounces, Vol. 2
    Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2 simply demonstrates competence. Harris may say that this album is powered by fuck-you juice; it is as threatening as an Erewhon smoothie.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Grey Oceans
    While Grey Oceans is less caustic than their other work, it still has that lay-it-all-on-the-line quality that's worked for Antony Hegarty, Devendra Banhart, and Joanna Newsom. The difference is that the album never feels like anything's at stake, whereas past records embraced experimentation at any cost.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 47 Critic Score
    An A.merican D.ream
    As silly as the songs on an A.merican D.ream are, it is Gerner’s wincingly theatrical vocals that really take the album into the realm of unintentional comedy.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Magna Carta Holy Grail
    The weirdly distant and safe Magna Carta Holy Grail abides by the tried and true business principle that the customer is always right: you just have to remember who the customer is here.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Hunters
    The lyrics really don’t offer themselves up for much analysis, and they’re also sung in a way that lets you know your attention is best directed elsewhere.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Ghost
    Ghost rarely does get the hint, often left too slight and too self-important for it's own good.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dirty Dancing
    While it's not torture to listen to Dirty Dancing repeatedly, it does contain more than its rightful share of slip-ups and missteps.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    City
    Fans of Client will appreciate the more dynamic edge to City... but those without a history with the band may write it off as another limp post-electroclash exercise.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    A Head Full of Dreams
    Even when A Head Full of Dreams hints at experimentation, it inevitably drifts back onto predictable paths.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Beating Back The Claws Of The Cold
    Beating Back the Claws of the Cold only offers fleeting glimpses of potential greatness beneath the ho-hum surface.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Love Hate And Then There's You
    Where their earlier records thrived on the tension between Stollsteimer's gut-spilling confessions and the band's raucous, raw-powered attack, on Love, Hate and Then There's You, we get all the pleading, but without the violent, cathartic release.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Jamaica Plain [EP]
    Vile has mostly left his interest in extreme tape manipulation and soggy lo-fi charm behind him, but the Jamaica Plain EP offers a brief and fitfully pretty glance backwards.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Low in High School
    A few songs are some of Morrissey’s most engaging, exciting work of the 21st century. Other songs get your attention for the wrong reasons. ... His political musings all arrive with a crushing lack of subtlety or nuance.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    Deathsentences of the Polished & Structurally Weak
    Despite their best efforts, nothing on Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak is even half as interesting or poignant as the CD casing itself, and musically, the decision to focus on this album's mood and textures largely falls flat.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tron: Legacy Reconfigured
    TRON: Legacy Reconfigured succeeds as much as most remix projects do, which is to say about 50% of the time, and without Daft Punk's name attached to the project it's doubtful it would have attracted much attention.
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