Record Collector's Scores

  • Music
For 1,895 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1 point higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 The Apple Drop
Lowest review score: 20 180
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 6 out of 1895
1895 music reviews
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sound Of The Morning displays an irrepressible knack for songwriting. There’s a nimbleness, too. ... A real treat.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It adds up to White’s most relatable – and accessible – record in some time.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A layered, atmospheric, darkly playful headrush of a first offering.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The result perhaps misses the conceptual cogency of earlier Tree peaks. But it doesn’t want for controlled reach. Over a tight 48 minutes, C/C weds a reinvigorated affirmation of band identity to expansive energies, all to confident effect: “The sum of all, of new and old,” as Wilson’s lyrics put it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Far more than an indulgent side project, A Light For Attracting Attention deserves to be taken on its own merits as a daring, invigorating and often very moving piece of work in its own right.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The hardcore will need these and it’s hard to argue with the performances and the sound quality. Both shows find Young introducing new material from Harvest, released later that year, and beyond.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With themes of adult responsibility and parenthood bearing heavily on his mind, it might sound solemn in places, but it’s a hugely rewarding listen, a baroque-folk companion to the gorgeous undulating mysteries of Rock Bottom.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In attempting to circumvent the human mind, Everything Everything have found their heart, and made their finest album yet.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    An unmitigated joy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On (watch my moves), sticking to what he knows is all the fuel Vile needs for lift-off.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skinty Fia is another triumph for this era’s most vital group.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wet Leg’s debut album is simultaneously of its time, ahead of its time, and evokes past times.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pop music at its very brightest.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Earthling gives an uplifting sense of the creative energy shared between Eddie Vedder and his keenly empathetic collaborators, distilled into striking, memorable songs, and unified by a fresh, cohesive sound. On this evidence, it’s to be hoped the partnership forges ahead as the day jobs allow.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They build their own world. Eventually you grasp its shrewdly filtered emotion and want to live there, too.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It finds House on spine-chilling form with clear vocals and stunning slide guitar on tracks such as Pony Blues, Preachin’ Blues and Death Letter. The re-mastering, courtesy of The Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, is also superb.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 is some great reward for the Marr faithful, a hope-fuelled 16-song set mounted on a generous, expansive balance of scope and detail.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It’s an album blazing with a refulgent light that illuminates the darkness. Ultimately, it’s a cathartic celebration of life co-created by someone who’s survived a traumatic experience. More importantly, it shows how heartbreak, suffering and tragedy can be refashioned into transcendent art.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    [Eddie Piller] doesn’t sequence chronologically; his approach is more scattershot, with the emphasis on listening experience rather than presenting a history lesson. But 60s mod in all its rainbow colours is represented.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As well as drawing more liberally from the likes of My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins, this time they’ve woven into the mix some 80s synth-pop motifs (Masquerade could be Duran Duran circa 1982), but the overall effect remains as bewitching as ever.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Overload is quite the debut.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Between the weather-worn blues reflections of Hard Times and the euphoric lift of closer Coalinga, the sense emerges of a band rediscovering their footing, a little saddle-sore but riding tall once more.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sublimely crafted, incredibly well-played, there are all the reference points, yet it never sounds like a composite of old glories. The intelligence, urgency and immediacy of his 32nd album are a most welcome surprise.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stylistically, Marshall’s “less is more” minimalism ensures Covers sounds remarkably cohesive, making it, as ever, a totally immersive listen.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    From its bossa nova kick to its slabs of heavy organ, Kofi Psych sounds like an attempt to conjure The Doors’ Break On Through (To The Other Side) from a half-remembered conversation, while Say The Truth bears unlikely fruit from its cross-pollination of highlife rhythms, celestial early prog and The Strawberry Alarm Clock. Sadly, Essilfie-Bondzie died as this compilation was in the works but, as this set often shows, his legacy is assured.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Maybe after the stresses and strains of the past couple of years we need a familiar embrace to soothe away our pain. Raise The Roof fits the bill, even if it might win fewer prizes for originality than its predecessor.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An album of adroitly chosen covers and something more. Poke around in its shadows and the songs often investigate the idea of putting on a front as a kind of catharsis, their ravaged depths trawled for high drama.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Her artistry had never been so robust. As the earlier, more mournful In Concert version of Carey shows, Mitchell would dig deep in the studio to find a euphoric vocal that causes the song to soar. ... For Mitchell at this stage, then, nothing was ever truly a failure, but more an opportunity to take her art to new heights.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    While the Toy highlight Shadow Man introduces “… a man back a-ways/Who believes at where he is”, at this stage of his career, David Bowie could reflect on where he’d been with pride – including, as Brilliant Adventures shows, another decade of committing to himself.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It’s one of those evocative retrospectives whose true worth exceeds monetary value. ... American Dreamer spotlights an uncompromising visionary who created music on her own terms and paved the way for Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush and Tori Amos and many more of today’s female singer-songwriters.