For 52 reviews, this publication has graded:
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63% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.3 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 72
Highest review score: | Essence | |
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Lowest review score: | Songs From an American Movie Vol. One: Learning How to Smile |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 41 out of 52
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Mixed: 6 out of 52
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Negative: 5 out of 52
52
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
Jurado's songwriting is solid, if sometimes slightly bland -- but a lack of idiosyncrasy is to be expected when an artist references such a recognizable, well-mined sound.- Salon
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- Critic Score
Sprawls in all directions, effortlessly spanning the gap between breezy pop and hard rock.- Salon
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- Critic Score
"Supper" is Callahan's equivalent of Dylan's "New Morning." It's the work of a competent, seasoned songwriting veteran who exudes confidence.- Salon
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- Critic Score
Elegant and subtle, "Neon Golden" convincingly balances the scales of pop and glitch electronics and is the best argument yet for combining the two.- Salon
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- Critic Score
An evocative composite of soulful melodies, with stripped-down piano and hushed guitar-and-vocal ballads.- Salon
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- Critic Score
It's the gurgling electronic underpinnings and distinctly cheerful '70s synth chimes that make the difference here, adding needed texture and distracting from overly rigid rhythmic structures.- Salon
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- Critic Score
By taking a new path with their music the Roots succeed in both staying relevant and momentous.- Salon
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- Salon
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- Critic Score
Despite his best intentions, it seems, Kweli's best songs on the record move away from social criticism and into more conventional hip-hop subjects.- Salon
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- Critic Score
Missy scores the highest marks in the qualities shared by all gifted rappers: rhymes, flow, cleverness and style.- Salon
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- Salon
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- Salon
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- Critic Score
The short album feels fully realized -- immediate and raw all at once -- just as rock ought to be.- Salon
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- Critic Score
Gabriel's greatest achievement is that his technical sophistication actually encourages a fully organic and man-made sound.- Salon
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- Critic Score
Spartan and unadorned, the naked sincerity of the record is heartbreaking.- Salon
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- Critic Score
Those dependable fuzz tones never get tired, so long as they're accompanied by a propulsive backbeat, maximum adrenaline and a modicum of melody, and Sweden's Hives have all of that.- Salon
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Two CDs that brim with primitive optimism, as the music shuffles between naked, moody pop (Stereo) to gritty indie rock (Mono) -- like the Replacements, but with half the noise on hold.- Salon
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- Critic Score
It's the unsettling undercurrent of angst and unease with the modern world that's earning this group comparisons to the favorite art punks of the moment, Radiohead. But Clinic's songs are much less static and harshly digital, and much more groove-oriented.- Salon
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- Critic Score
It's a nervy progression, almost necessarily uneven because of the risks it takes, balancing a grace that soars toward aching perfection with an intimacy that elicits a squirmy discomfort.- Salon
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- Critic Score
The songs on "Invincible Summer," nearly all of them written by lang and various partners, aren't up to the standard of those on "Drag".... But the lyrics finally don't matter much because the record holds together as a mood piece.- Salon
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- Critic Score
A visit to desolate regions... a 60-minute, 15-song treatise on isolation, displacement and a seemingly bottomless spiritual void.- Salon
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"Transcendental Blues" is a deeply personal album steeped in pain and loneliness.- Salon
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- Salon
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It's about as close as someone can come to hearing what they sound like at Twilo without visiting the club.- Salon
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- Critic Score
A return to the gorgeously crisp electric pop Partridge has been writing for more than 20 years.- Salon
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- Critic Score
The unruly, bad-dream aftertaste of this material echoes the quartet's early records from the 1980s... Even while there isn't a single song here that holds together from beginning to end, even as the music makes only itself felt in halting jigsaw fashion... the album has a gloomy, unaccommodating tenacity that's hard to shake.- Salon
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- Critic Score
Saturated with choruses too well designed to be written off as anything less than calculatedly brilliant.- Salon
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- Critic Score
In inventing an overarching statement about modern technology, Looper has created a work that is surprisingly old-fashioned and quaint.... Though filled with pops and hisses and high-pitched squeals culled from an increasingly gadgetized world, the record remains enchantingly melodic and tuneful.- Salon
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- Critic Score
Ween is so satisfying because they're making something that's at once smarter and grosser than the competition.- Salon
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- Critic Score
Broadcast manipulate their equipment to give the music the rangy pulse of jazz. It's electronic, but not shot full of skittering beats. The extra charge comes from the girl out front.- Salon
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