For 5,909 reviews, this publication has graded:
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34% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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62% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.1 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 67
| Highest review score: | Magic | |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest review score: | Know Your Enemy |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 3,627 out of 5909
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Mixed: 2,242 out of 5909
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Negative: 40 out of 5909
5909
music
reviews
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- Critic Score
A great style doesn't always equal a great album, and the world's illest flows can't rescue some of these dud beats.- Rolling Stone
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Their dark disco punk is as close to a New York sound as anything these days.- Rolling Stone
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Her high notes are sweet and pillowy, her growl is bone-shaking and sexy, and her midrange is amazingly confident for a pop posy whose career is tied for eternity to the whims of her American Idol overlords.- Rolling Stone
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After Missundaztood, her choices were to repeat herself or to try more material outside her realm of expertise. She does a little of both on Try This, with mixed results.- Rolling Stone
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The last holdover from Xzibit's underground days is also his sole weakness: cartoonish hooks that sometimes spiral solid material off in an awkward direction. Otherwise, Man vs. Machine is state-of-the-art.- Rolling Stone
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Dragged down by too much unremarkably brawny fare. [27 Jan 2005, p.60]- Rolling Stone
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On the better half of this eccentric concept album, A Perfect Circle... revisit classic protest hits, jacking up the terror by throwing out iconic arrangements and performing heretical surgery on the melodies.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Daylight's rich, delicate instrumental work demands attention. [24 Jun 2004, p.174]- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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R&G begs for a little more R and some cleverer G -- or, if Snoop really wanted to be bold, no G at all.- Rolling Stone
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Producer Ross Robinson (Korn, Slipknot) adds some arena sheen, true. But it's not enough to smooth the edges off "Arc Arsenal," a primal tantrum against rebels "robbed . . . of their cause," or to homogenize the ragged beats and mind-bending guitar flurries of "Enfilade."- Rolling Stone
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What makes these multilevel pastiches more than cheeky cutups is a genuine musicality.- Rolling Stone
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Despite the overwrought angst, Still Not Getting Any... is a hard-to-deny collection of bubblegum punk- Rolling Stone
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The [lineup] changes bolster the will to power in Lazzara's Cure-like croon.- Rolling Stone
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Less blatantly melodic, peppy and cloying than their three albums on scene-making label Jade Tree.- Rolling Stone
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The London threesome behind X-Press 2 slaves to house's repetitious mechanics (check the ugly robot fart clouding "AC/DC") yet often transcends its self-imposed limitations through fastidious craft.- Rolling Stone
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He still commands attention, but his booming voice and confidence now deliver warmer, fuzzier messages.- Rolling Stone
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These twelve songs are streamlined, uncluttered miniatures.- Rolling Stone
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The big difference this time out is that the beats are as aggressive as Canibus' lyrics...- Rolling Stone
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Morcheeba make a lovely sound, but they seem to be broadcasting from a very bright and pretty hell.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Although Human occasionally slides into easy-listening soul, the still-spiky star delivers assured, remarkably smooth vocals throughout.- Rolling Stone
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Cerebral, meticulous and frivolous, Production is a disco-science celebration of pop trash that most electronica gurus would be too spiritually elevated to deliver. Mirwais' knack for song puts him in another league altogether- Rolling Stone
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[Setzer] reaches back to actual swing classics like "Pennsylvania 6-5000" and "In the Mood," as well as to vocal and jazzesque chestnuts like "Caravan" and "Mack the Knife." Foolishly, he has updated these with ungainly frills like hip-hop passages and dim-bulb lyrics.... other energetic fare works better...- Rolling Stone
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This covers compilation reveals them as an honorable South Carolina bar band that has survived its run-in with pop success by keeping its easygoing humor intact.- Rolling Stone
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Frantz and Weymouth have teamed up with a melting pot of songwriting, vocal and instrumental talent, who have supplied offbeat but on-point, ever-changing flavors.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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The resulting aural rummage sale brings some timely noise while proving D can still deliver lyrical knocks to the deserving.- Rolling Stone
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As a vocalist, Teddy Thompson isn't pushing too hard at the passion meter; at best, his singing rarely heats up past lukewarm. As a songwriter, however, he can generate some burn...- Rolling Stone
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The good songs don't start kicking in until about halfway through, after many synth glitches and botched break beats. But once it gets going, it's phenomenal.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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One could easily mistake Nightbird for something the duo made in the Eighties -- and if you love Erasure, you won't care.- Rolling Stone
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Doesn't have enough finesse to hold your interest all the way. [27 Jan 2005, p.61]- Rolling Stone
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As an introduction to Buck's weird world of lovable losers, hugely endowed centaurs and insomniacs, Right Here is right on.- Rolling Stone
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If you're going to be literal and heartfelt, you'd better have something to say, and that's where the twenty-five-year-old rapper often falls short.- Rolling Stone
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The lyrics? Unmemorable. But that leaves your mind free to wander the quiet spaces between the notes. [10 Feb 2005, p.84]- Rolling Stone
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Swooning song-poetry and Coldplay karaoke over electronics-tinged arrangements that sound very pro forma.- Rolling Stone
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Bachmann employs his band sparingly as he rambles on in his trademark croak and empties the ashtray of his brain.- Rolling Stone
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Many of these underwritten, underproduced tunes sound as if Amos could have composed them in the supermarket express lane.- Rolling Stone
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Autumnally pretty tunes that are also full of quiet gravity, as if Neil Young and a lover popped Valium and decided to hash things out on record.- Rolling Stone
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Some Cities is less self-consciously arty than Souls, though the murky atmospherics and nondistinct Brit voices here will likely confine the album to the nether regions of America's Top 100.- Rolling Stone
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Spektor's cabaret shtick occasionally wears thin, but Kitsch's highlights... have an appealing honesty that can't be faked.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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The results are much better than his 1993 sci-fi shark jump, Cyberpunk, and so it automatically counts as the best thing he's done since "Cradle of Love."- Rolling Stone
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The slower stuff vagues out, and the bonus disc of ambient instrumentals ought to come with a controlled substance, but elegant relationship songs such as the torchy "Forever" suggest this talented softy has found a sensible way to come down from a multiplatinum high.- Rolling Stone
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It's insular stuff, but because they think like hipster Stockhausens and always keep things moving, Out Hud's indie disco is exciting where Tortoise's indie jazz was merely annoying. [24 Mar 2005, p.79]- Rolling Stone
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Surrounded by Silence isn't exactly coherent, but it isn't supposed to be: Strictly for fans of fragmented, forward-thinking beatscapes.- Rolling Stone
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It's the tension between Homme's conflicting impulses that pressurizes Lullabies to Paralyze's highest points and accounts for its lows.- Rolling Stone
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The Bravery do a jockier version of the New Wave competition, pumping the drums in straight-ahead tunes such as "An Honest Mistake" and "The Ring Song."- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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For all the sloganeering, Press the Spacebar never forgets that it's a dance album.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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These Swedes are as retro as most of their countrymen, and they have even less to say.- Rolling Stone
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The B.Coming starts strong... [and] eventually flattens out into dark, brooding territory.- Rolling Stone
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These tracks employ a familiar strategy, piling up shambolic riffs and Belle and Sebastian murmurs until the homespun pitter-patter rolls like a wave and approximates hard-won beauty. [24 Mar 2005, p.79]- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Story is a couple gems short of excellence, but Carter has expanded her unaffected charm beyond the twang thang.- Rolling Stone
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It's a brutal approach that tends to trample her fragile vocals and rarely flatters her winding tunes.- Rolling Stone
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The Caesars adopt a bombastic, arena-friendly brand of Sixties revivalism recalling that of... The Soundtrack Of Our Lives. Fortunately, the Caesars are good at it. [5 May 2005, p.74]- Rolling Stone
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[He] strikes a balance between unexpected elegance and verbosity.- Rolling Stone
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This time around her songs are more pleasurable for seeming less deeply felt. [5 May 2005, p.72]- Rolling Stone
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Ditches the arty expansiveness of his former band and goes for laid-back roots rock.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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The twenty-two-song collection suffers from bloat, uneven pacing and an overabundance of tunes from 2003's World Without Tears. But it's still an effective summary of Williams' career as a prophet of, as she puts it, "all that's alarming, raw and exposed."- Rolling Stone
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Surprisingly, Albarn's vocals, phoned-in and incredibly flat, weigh the record down.- Rolling Stone
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At times, the four seem to move parallel to each other rather than as one.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Understated pop funk that breeds cheap thrills but not enough songs.- Rolling Stone
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Hebden's lovingly arranged pet sounds cohere nicely when he jacks up his trip-hop-y beats.- Rolling Stone
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Paul Smith's vocals are full of New Wave artifice, but he's also more earnest than many of his post-punk peers. [25 Aug 2005, p.100]- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Some of Grohl's lyrical shortcomings become exposed: The sameness and vagueness of his love lyrics blunt their impact.- Rolling Stone
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If the songs go down too easy, that's part of the deal -- monster hooks or guitar freakouts would only upset the balance Pernice has taken a decade to perfect.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Okemah replaces Farrar's indulgence with a gently rocking back-porch feel. [28 Jul 2005, p.82]- Rolling Stone
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[His] approach sometimes leaves the songs shapeless, but sad, atmospheric tracks such as "Begging to Be Heard" recall some of New Wave's most seductive aspects without getting too fancy. [11 Aug 2005, p.75]- Rolling Stone
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By keeping the grooves messy, Gomez shortchange the shimmering, Brit-poppy quirks that have made their albums unique.- Rolling Stone
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Because these swirls of desperation are as much about aura as fully formed tunes, their payoff is negligible. [23 Mar 2006, p.65]- Rolling Stone
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These tracks would sound less like anemic demos if Vek had allowed himself to take advantage of a full studio and a real band. [3 Nov 2005, p.92]- Rolling Stone
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The songwriting on mellower numbers like "Promise" isn't as finely crafted as the expansive sound. [25 Aug 2005, p.99]- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Plans flounders in the second half, where Death Cab run out of ideas and try to fill the holes with busy keyboard bits.- Rolling Stone
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Haunting as the results may be, they are distinctly lacking in Bjork's own musical personality and her greatest asset: her inimitable voice. [8 Sep 2005, p.112]- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Sometimes suffers from roots-rock blandness, but it delivers enough open-armed mojo to satisfy purists and curious young'uns alike. [8 Sep 2005, p.112]- Rolling Stone
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On his most affecting cuts, such as the lilting, elegiac title track, Gray works up the kind of gentle melancholia that goes down smooth, but reappears later, in your head.- Rolling Stone
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Next time, Coheed could do with less prog and more rock.- Rolling Stone
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It's not just that the album would be more fun if it rocked harder; all too often on these songs she's straining for high notes or stranded in an arrangement that leaves her voice sounding breathy and reedy- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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While Trinity is consistently engaging, it never quite achieves Dutty's immediate, overwhelming pop appeal.- Rolling Stone
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The vulnerability behind that mask is what's missing here; if she could articulate it, she might have a true classic.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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The cumulative effect feels a little dreary. [1 Dec 2005, p.128]- Rolling Stone
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Shine won't win over many nondevotees, but it's also not just a series of launching pads for guitar solos. [3 Nov 2005, p.90]- Rolling Stone
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More arena-ready and less ickily ponderous than this year's Be As You Are, though not as fun as the frat-rocking honkytonk from his earlier albums. [1 Dec 2005, p.128]- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone