Prefix Magazine's Scores

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For 2,132 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Modern Times
Lowest review score: 10 Eat Me, Drink Me
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,576 out of 2132
  2. Mixed: 509 out of 2132
  3. Negative: 47 out of 2132
2132 music reviews
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    • 100 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Pinkerton (Deluxe Edition)
    In 2010, when oversharing is the norm, Pinkerton can seem almost quaint for its willingness to hold back. All told, it's roughly 10 percent as confessional as the average overheated Tumblr post or Gareth Campesino! lyric sheet. Maybe that's why, to this day, "El Scorcho" is still the sort of song that lonely teenage boys vigorously lip-synch to when they think that nobody's looking. Its lyrics can be vague enough ("I'm a lot like you...") to fit all sorts of specific yearning.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fully Qualified Survivor
    As expected, the album's highlights are its patient explorations.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
    Dark Twisted Fantasy is an album full off melodic ideas, copious guest features, winding songs, unexpected twists, and improbable pairings.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Icky Mettle [Deluxe Edition]
    When listening to Icky Mettle, you feel included, like they're the crew you've known your entire life. The fact that it's both very relevant today and a thrilling snapshot of the restlessly creative 90's underground is no small achievement.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition
    A mountain of shambolic, livewire B-sides and covers of heroes and influence ranging from the Fall to Echo and the Bunnymen, help add a sense of balance and ballast to Brighten the Corners. It makes for an expanded vision of the original while at the same time proving that the original’s vision wasn’t quite so narrow after all.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
    Orphans is something akin to taking a journey through a familiar yet entirely foreign dream-place.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960
    The one drawback to Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 is that, with the exception of “Light Blue”, its déjà vu nature makes it difficult to distinguish it from Thelonious Monk’s landmark albums.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Melodrama
    Still only 20 years old, Lorde could have been forgiven for floundering under the weight of expectation. Instead she’s reasserted her status as today’s ultimate alt-pop artist with a record that balances the contemporary with the classic in typically immaculate style.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Good Kid, M.A.A.D City
    Lamar's no impressionist, however; his lyrical gifts weave a complex, yet uniquely-West Coast set of influences into something that feels new and forward-thinking.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The ArchAndroid
    In spite of the album's potential obesity at 18 tracks of wildly different musical ideas, the three [Monae and her production partners, Charles "Chuck Lightning" Joseph II and Nathaniel "Nate 'Rocket' Wonder'" Irvin III.] keep the weight off by welcoming coherence and by evenly spreading out their interests.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Illinois
    Vast in scope and breathtaking in its beauty, Illinois may very well be the album that heralds Sufjan Stevens as one of this young century’s most talented artists.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
    Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty isn't just an expertly produced and performed slab of brilliantly odd, futuristic dance music. It isn't just the best rap album of the year so far.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Z
    By trimming thirty minutes off their standard record’s length, the members of My Morning Jacket have paradoxically managed to broaden their sound, cutting the fat to give us ten songs that jive, moon-walk and cock-rock in equal measure.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Modern Times
    Modern Times may not contain a single song that would rank among Dylan's all-time best, but it doesn't have to.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Big Fish Theory
    This is a very different record from Summertime ’06, both thematically and sonically, but it’s no less incisive, challenging, or flat-out excellent.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
    For all the foot-stomping vitriol that seeps out here and there, The Idler Wheel... is the sound of a brilliant songwriter putting away childish things, and waiting tensely for what comes next.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Merriweather Post Pavilion
    Has the album of 2009 been unleashed in January? I can’t see anything else coming near it.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hell Hath No Fury
    It's impossible to guess what kind of album would've turned out had this seen the light of day two years ago, when it was originally expected. Chances are, though, we wouldn't be talking about intensity or hunger or survival with the same emotion in our voices.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Push Barman To Open Old Wounds
    If you’re only going to buy one Belle & Sebastian album (and shame on you if you are), make it this one.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Greatest Story Never Told
    Don't consider Saigon's The Greatest Story Never Told his debut, but his farewell. It is a goodbye to the discarded first chapter of his career. The half-decade-in-the-making effort needed to be released in order for the rapper to move on.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    The Sound Of The Smiths
    It proves that with the same attention, wit, grace and intellect that these musicians gave to their songwriting, they can indeed construct a retrospective that not only reflects the brilliance of their band but heightens and intensifies it as well.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hypermagic Mountain
    Even with its brief lapses, Hypermagic Mountain is Lightning Bolt’s most accomplished effort to date, one-upping 2003’s Wonderful Rainbow with a fresh sense of maturity.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II
    Only Built for Cuban Linx...Pt. 2 is top-to-bottom brilliant, and it's energy and emotion is too infectious not to inspire a dozen great hip-hop records to come.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Bad as Me
    Throughout it all, it still feels like essential, singular Waits, like moody and manic are two sides of one very marked coin.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dear Science,
    Dear Science is another highlight from a band whose career has essentially been an extended one.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Return To Cookie Mountain
    Return to Cookie Mountain makes Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes look almost silly by comparison.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bay Of Pigs [EP]
    There may only be two songs here, but Bejar does a lot with them. He gives us both the clever tricks we expect from him and a whole new sound in which for them to swirl around.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Destroyer's Rubies
    Those who choose to fixate on Bejar's lack of a pretty singing voice are missing the point. Much like John Darnielle, everything outside of Bejar's verse should be seen as peripheral -- a means to deliver the lyrical ends.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Undun
    The Roots manage to craft another interesting hip-hop experiment with undun.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    In Rainbows
    This is a grownup album, made for grownups.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Woods
    Not only does The Woods jumpstart a moribund genre, it also serves as a wake-up call for the zeitgeist.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lonerism
    Tame Impala possesses an uncanny ear for reconstructing psychedelia that spans decades while remaining undeniably present.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Monoliths & Dimensions
    With the explorations of additional instrumentation as well being more comfortable with silences and with echo, SunnO))) approach the freedom and abandon of the spirit-travelers alluded to in the titles and approaches on this, the band's best record yet.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    All We Love We Leave Behind
    This is pure, unadulterated energy, seething catharsis taken out on throats, fingers, fretboards and drum heads by a band going on 22 years, and showing no signs of weakness or irrelevancy.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am A Bird Now
    Antony has found a voice that expresses what it feels like to be trapped in that gray area between misery and rage.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fishscale
    Another great release from the most important emcee in hip-hop.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For Emma, Forever Ago
    The strength is in Vernon’s ability to make a quiet, lonely album that is not boring.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pacific Ocean Blue [Reissue]
    Though at times difficult to listen to, the effect is a clear view of an artist's process. Herein lies the true value of Dennis Wilson's legacy: an open invitation to simply listen.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fleet Foxes
    They deliver on [Sun Giant EP's] five-song teaser's promise and then some with their first full-length, a self-titled gem that already seems set to wind up near the top of any right-thinking person's year-end list.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Person Pitch
    Although it's certainly inventive in approach and execution, there's no denying that Person Pitch sees Lennox working within decidedly pop-centric parameters.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
    On Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!, Cave weaves yet another tapestry of characters.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Seer
    One of the most satisfying, a nearly unclassifiable mammoth of sound that manages to weave brutality, atmosphere, and aching melody into a body-enveloping cocoon that sticks around longer than the average Hollywood movie.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    And Their Refinement Of The Decline
    And Their Refinement of the Decline is a nearly two-hour opus that at times dares us to deny that it can, in fact, be classified as music. That spirit in Stars of the Lid is commendable--even if it makes for a project that often seems more an experiment in deconstruction than an attempt at creating a universally enjoyable listen.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let's Stay Friends
    Most notably is how these songs manage to seem loose, fun and deliberate all at once.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Airtight's Revenge
    Bilal and McKie place emphasis on the craft of each song and the arrangement of each instrument. Bilal's voice is treated as one of these parts, so there is a flat quality to the sound. This may frustrate fans of Bilal's voice or those expecting a conventional star-centric album that places the spotlight on a voice or an instrument. Instead, Bilal's feelings are the centerpiece here. That alone makes Airtight's Revenge a welcome return for a needed voice.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    xx
    The xx recorded not only the year's best debut but also one of its best albums, period.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Neon Bible
    Some Funeral devotees may be disappointed by the more straightforward approach on Neon Bible, but their numbers will likely be easily replaced.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    The Suburbs
    For all the over-arching themes, The Suburbs is the most rocking Arcade Fire album yet.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kala
    The result is Kala a stark confrontation of set notions of authenticity and identity--and my new favorite record.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    DFA Remixes: Chapter 1
    Even when it's not the most innovative, the sounds they use are fresh, and the duo tends to eschew hooks and conventional structure for letting the song slowly evolve.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Let England Shake
    Harvey's singing delivers the material by juggling unwieldy emotions with care and empathy. And she makes the experience sound natural -- like a true no-brainer.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sound Of Silver
    As a cohesive album and a personal statement, Sound of Silver is superior in most every way.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Body Talk
    Body Talk concludes a triptych of highly enjoyable pop albums. Let's hope we don't have to wait another five years for the next batch.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is Still It
    That such a glorious and previously unheralded collection of tunes could appear so far into what seems like a decade plus wave of reissue fever is a wider comment about how much great music still out there waiting to be unearthed. The Method Actors deserve to be placed alongside the very best acts of any scene or era.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Who Kill
    Garbus might be more known right now as a magnetic performer, but w h o k i l l proves she's just as beguiling on record.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Comicopera
    However, like so many singular artists, Wyatt's presence spans the record and ultimately gives it its necessary gel. His multi-octave voice booms, croons, and cracks across the album with stunning clarity and consistency.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Mirrored
    The indie-rock universe hasn't coughed up a record as rhythmically thrilling as Mirrored in ages.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bon Iver
    We can all go on loving For Emma, Forever Ago (with good reason), but don't let your attachment to that obscure what Vernon has created here. No cabin, no crazy backstory. Just a great, inventive album.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    How I Got Over
    Gone are the frantic raps, menacing synths, and general hardness of the band's past three albums. In their place is a mellow approximation of the jazzy, old-school charm of The Roots circa Things Fall Apart.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hercules And Love Affair
    Hercules & Love Affair is a testament to the great foresight and control is required in a disco producer to keep the track from lunging into an abyss of low-blow kitsch, and to be able to stimulate the ears and feet at the same time.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Life Is People
    Life is People does have its missteps, but even those don't sap the album of its undeniable charm.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Robyn
    Clearly Robyn knows her pop history, but she manages to prevent the album from slipping into simple pastiche by always keeping the balance between old and new just right.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Minimum-Maximum [Live]
    Nearly everything on Minimum-Maximum sounds astoundingly fresh.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thunder, Lightning, Strike
    Thunder, Lightning, Strike is for people who love music that hits them over the head with the sheer enjoyment of the human ability to rock.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Halcyon Digest
    As they've made it to their fourth album, they've quickly become one of indie's most reliable bands, each new album bringing the promise of some of the year's best music.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    'Sno Angel Like You
    'Sno Angel Like You is not only beautifully performed and recorded, but also wonderfully written.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    45:33
    The pace of the album (or, more accurately, the "file") is intriguing, and even though it doesn't top the band's best work, any iPod owner should be proud to have 45:33 in the library. [Review of UK release]
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Midlife: A Beginner's Guide To Blur
    Blur may not have gotten the adulation they deserved in the states during their heyday, but Midlife is a solid move to reevaluate Blur’s position in the pantheon.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bakesale [Deluxe Edition]
    The beautifully (which is to say, lightly) remastered album, and the warts 'n all bonus disc shows us just how good of a band Sebadoh were, and why they became far more than just the band Barlow started after he left Dinosaur Jr.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Cosmogramma
    Yet, even though the steady presence of featured performances helps beautify Cosmogramma, this is essentially Ellison's crowning achievement. The album is sequenced with a sense of purpose, evidential from the promo being presented as a long continuous track.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Shields
    Conservative, instead, describes Shields: Veckatimest authorized it to be far bolder. You yearn for what could've been.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Truth Is Here [EP]
    Ali can do this, can take the familiar, the overly confrontational, even the trite and overdone, and make it riveting, because he has a voice that strains syllables so that the meanings of his words are made perfectly clear--you can't escape what he's saying--and a flow that loads and unleashes relentlessly.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Authenticity
    Authenticity is a concise, cohesive effort that finds The Foreign Exchange again successfully pushing the boundaries of R&B, soul, electronic music, and hip-hop.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I See The Sign
    While I See the Sign might not quite measure up to the staggering "All Is Well," this is still a hell of an album. One that, like the songs that populate it, could resonate for a good long while.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Empros
    Empros proves Russian Circles' ability once again, without going horribly out of its way to prove something or make some sort of grand statement.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Acid Rap
    It is Chance’s ability to transition fluidly between self-imaginings that makes him such an impressive and likeable rapper. It’s also part of what will make Acid Rap one of the major hip-hop releases of this year.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    David Comes To Life
    It is an album based very clearly on a concept, an overall construct. Within that, Fucked Up once again morph themselves, moving further away from anything you could call hardcore (save Damian Abraham's voice).
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Spiral Shadow
    In a career full of successful fusions of metal, psych, crusty punk and indie rock, Spiral Shadow is another triumph.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rook
    While earlier albums hinted at the kind of open-air pastorals that the band was capable of, Rook delivers on all the promise.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
    Case's genius as a writer, evident from track to track, stems from her ability to write lyrics that conjure up amazingly clear images but that still leave the songs as a whole up to interpretation.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Third
    Behind these minor tones and detached themes, Third emits a knowing and quiet confidence that communicates the band’s strongly held ideas, especially that of existential ennui.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stay Positive
    Considering most of the album is spent describing what life’s like for the rest of us, it’s surprising Stay Positive ends on a relatively self-focused note, courtesy of album highlight “Slapped Actress.”
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bleach: Deluxe Edition
    Listening to Bleach now, the main thing that comes across is how little it sounds moored to a specific time.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    The Lost Tapes
    Unsurprisingly, The Lost Tapes is a masterpiece in his own right, much like previous revolutionary releases Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Helplessness Blues
    It comes down to what you're expecting here. Do you earnestly yearn for another album full of beautifully arranged, meticulously pored over harmonic acoustic folk? Then this is probably your album of the year to beat.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mezmerize
    There’s no filler here; there’s barely space for a spare breath. But amidst the bombast, there are a few moments of clarity, and though fleeting, they’re certainly worth the wait.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beauty And The Beat
    There is little doubt Edan is an innovator on the production tip, but he’s not nearly as talented an emcee.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twin Cinema
    The slickly produced Twin Cinema tweaks the formula to include subdued moments, climactic codas and fully unified vocals, elevating the band’s ideas to complete cohesion and transcending its previous output.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    New Moon
    What makes New Moon succeed is something similar to what Shakespeare gets at in many of his sonnets: the ability of art to beat death.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Drift
    The most elaborately impenetrable album we're likely to hear this decade.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Budos Band III
    The bass can get lost in the mix as well beneath all the moving parts. With the kinds of rhythms The Budos Band lay down, you need the bass up front and center. These qualms are minor compared with the overall delight the album conveys.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Smother
    Maybe it's because we've come to expect these guys to knock us out with each album, but Smother can't help but feel like a misstep.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Have One On Me
    Have One on Me isn't at all a ploy for greater likability. It's an affecting, indulgent, and thoroughly fleshed-out monument to Newsom's considerable ambition.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    De Vermis Mysteriis
    It is simple, it is pure, it is predictable, it is Another High on Fire Album.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Veckatimest
    It plainly improves Grizzly Bear’s sound, and lends itself well to multiple spins, because each repeated listen reveals another perfectly crafted shard you missed on the last go-round.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Bitte Orca
    Bitte Orca is the kind of album that is best taken from start to finish, where the songs and musical themes are allowed to grow, endear and impress.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Devotion
    On Devotion, Ware demonstrates a knack for weaving everything together. And just like in the best-tailored clothes, it's difficult to see the seams.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
    I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass is the statement of a band insistent on showing the world it is not quite through being relevant.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chemistry Of Common Life
    The Chemistry of Common Life is not a technically proficient album despite its epic leanings. Like most albums primarily consisting of anthems, its impact tapers off slightly on repeated listens. But the sheer power of the album is key.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Airing Of Grievances
    the majority of the album is exactly what indie rock has been lacking for over a decade, and this is too crucial a release to get caught up in nitpicking.
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