Record Collector's Scores

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For 1,889 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 Relaxer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,233 out of 1889
  2. Mixed: 650 out of 1889
  3. Negative: 6 out of 1889
1889 music reviews
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    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Beatles [White Album] [50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition]
    It’s a fuller, more contemporary-sounding mix that is fascinating on first listen, but unlikely to replace the original mixes in fans’ affections. ... Still, the extras are why we’re really here and that’s where this reissue really delivers. By becoming a fly on the wall at their sessions we have the chance to feel closer to The Beatles; to better figure out how they did it and become privy to their casual chats. Close your eyes, suspend your disbelief and you’re there as they make history.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    G Stands for Go-Betweens, Vol. 2 [Box Set]
    16 Lovers Lane arguably even shades the triumphant Liberty Belle… when it comes to defining the Go-Betweens apogee. The extras, meanwhile, are both plentiful and tantalising.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    OK Computer: OKNOTOK 1997-2017
    The main draw here is the first release of three songs with myth-like status among the infatuated. ... There are a series of rough demos and what sounds like soundboard recordings of various sections of Paranoid Android in the first flushes of development (magnificently wigged-out, whirling dervish-style organ solo, come on down!) and a bare-bones take on Airbag, again featuring embryonic lyrics.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ramones [40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    The Ramones unwittingly started one of the biggest upheavals music will ever see. Finally we get to find out why, in the most well-realised form yet. It’s heartbreaking that none of the original band are here to see it.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [50th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Version]
    The mix is a massive improvement on the stereo that we’re used to--there’s so much more presence here from the off. For an album you know to feel somehow fresh, that’s quite an achievement. Purists may balk at some of the perceived liberties Giles Martin has taken (splitting and panning drum parts or backing vocals for starters), but he’s by no means claiming this is the definitive version of the album, and has clearly acted in the interests of the material.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Live and Dangerous [Super Deluxe Edition]
    That Bad Reputation deep cut – as well as five better-known extras including a spine-tingling Still In Love With You not heard before – reminds us we are in what was, for so long, uncharted territory. ... Live and definitive!
    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sticky Fingers [Deluxe Edition]
    It’s an all-killer-no-filler collection that sees the band benefiting from a bedded-in Mick Taylor’s influence and the colossal confidence that being...
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    1999 [Super Deluxe Edition]
    As the original album did for Prince’s artistic progression, so this super deluxe edition does for the posthumous reissue series: refine a vision, making good on all the promises of the past while pointing to a future full of possibilities. Whatever expanded edition comes next, if it builds on this it cannot fail.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Doolittle 25
    Doolittle 25 fleshes out the original album with a disc of B-sides and contemporaneous Peel Sessions, plus a disc of demos (both of which are also available as a double-LP on gravid 180g vinyl), and armfuls of the aforementioned demos receive their first official release herein.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Purple Rain [Deluxe Expanded Edition]
    While this release fails to be definitive, at least it’s a start for a discography that had been long neglected by its creator.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Queen Is Dead [Deluxe Edition)
    The demos and live tracks will be intrigue enough--while the as-yet unconvinced may be surprised to find an album that remains relevant; as resonant, daring and evocative as it ever was.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sign O' the Times [Deluxe Edition]
    What remains is a tightly-focused snapshot of an intensely creative period in Prince’s career: perhaps the most generous single-album box set of all time, for an album that itself just keeps giving.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Band on the Run [50th Anniversary Edition]
    The re-ordered track list reflects what had been noted in the MPL archive. At first it may seem like another money grab, before steadily, something rather beautiful emerges.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    American Dreamer [Box Set]
    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.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Abbey Road [50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    The whole thing works beautifully and, if you shop carefully, you will end up with superb value for money and a repackaging of a great album that for once isn’t stuffed with redundance.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Spiderland [Box Set]
    It’s powerful stuff, still wholly worthy of “10 fucking stars”.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Late Night Tales
    The new exclusive material for this Late Night Tales is quite superb; the cover of I’m Not In Love by Song Sung; Holmes & Steve Jones’ The Reiki Healer From County Down shows why he’s in such demand as a film composer. Best of all is the most amazing tribute by writer BP Fallon to the late guitar legend Henry McCullough.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Velvet Underground [45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition]
    The Velvet Underground features some of Reed’s strongest work; few will need reminders of the melancholy bliss of Candy Says and Pale Blue Eyes.... The two discs of different mixes of the record here (including the legendary mono “Closet mix” from the original pressing) are refreshing reminders of the quality of an album that’s often underrated in comparison to its predecessors.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Physical Graffiti [Remastered]
    The album proper finds an omnipotent Led Zep still within hailing distance of the top of their game.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lucinda Williams [Reissue]
    Its return is to be celebrated, not just for the bonus disc of a previously unavailable live show, but because it illustrates the formation of a blueprint (tough country-rock, literate confessional lyrics) that would serve Williams well for the next quarter century.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Early Years 1967-1972 [Box Set]
    The Early Years 1965-1972 is the sonic equivalent to background reading and extensive footnotes for their remarkable body of recorded work.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Suede [30th Anniversary Edition]
    Across the years, the album has often been discussed in terms of its proto-Britpop ‘moment’. But it holds up superbly freed from that context as a deeply distinct and thrillingly flash statement of what Suede do, creating its own world while doing practically everything it can to grab the attention.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Electric Ladyland [50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    Unprecedented in 1968 and unparalleled still, Electric Ladyland has bequeathed us no end of spoils. A fine celebration of Hendrix’s most kaleidoscopically-realised endeavour, this 50th anniversary set even restores his originally intended cover photo. Dig.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ghosteen
    It can only tower when it comes to naming this decade’s great albums; miles above and light years ahead of anything else.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Automatic for the People [25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    A impressively remastered album (including a new mix in the audiophile-friendly Dolby Atmos format), a decent live set. .... Remember REM any way you want, but Automatic For The People is a good if ultimately maudlin one.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Vol. 4 [Super Deluxe Edition] [Box Set]
    The Super Deluxe edition of Vol 4 supplements a crisp remaster of the original album with extra discs containing alternative takes and revelatory studio outtakes (“What’s it called?” “Bollocks”), plus an entire set’s worth of live tracks from their March 1973 UK tour, a poster and a booklet so hefty you could tether a bull to it.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Who Sell Out [Super Deluxe Edition] [Box Set]
    Historically The Who Sell Out hasn’t always been given the serious critical attention afforded its successors Tommy, Who’s Next and Quadrophenia. Yet, it’s just as significant a touchstone in the Who canon, a pointer to, in particular, Townshend’s desire for the band to test both themselves and their audience. It makes this extensive and richly textured ultimate edition a “ragbag” worth rooting through.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything: 1970-1975 [Box Set]
    The bonus disc corrals the single Pool Hall Richard and the jokey trumpet version of I Wish It Would Rain. Faces didn’t outstay their welcome and never took themselves that seriously.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    DAMN.
    DAMN. sees the rapper make a 180 degree turn from the sprawling jazz/funk/hip-hop odyssey of TPAB to deliver 14 taut, tough and wise cutting-edge examples of what’s possible in hip-hop today. ... Essential stuff.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Déjà Vu [50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    (The CSNY versions of Young’s Sea Of Madness and Everybody’s Alone would’ve been nice for starters), but there’s still a huge amount here for fans. The demos include some absolute stunners: Young and Nash’s wonderfully languid take on the former’s Birds; a delicate and heady solo version of Crosby’s Laughing; and Nash’s reflective solo rendition of Sleep Song. The outtakes, meanwhile, reveal just how much control Stills took in the studio, with enough material here for a fine standalone solo album of gutsy, soul-steeped jams.
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