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For 287 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Bow Down To The Exit Sign
Lowest review score: 30 Unified Theory
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 196 out of 287
  2. Mixed: 90 out of 287
  3. Negative: 1 out of 287
287 music reviews
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    • 95 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stankonia
    Their songs still bulge at the seams with clever ideas, but they're veiled in deep grooves and hooks.... Outkast have developed a major sweet tooth for P-Funk, but what they've picked up from their former collaborator George Clinton isn't his low-end bounce. It's rather his hovering, serpentine vocal arrangements and his acidic political fantasies.... [but] Stankonia's conceptual sprawl isn't all good for the album -- the collection is hampered by more than a little filler.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love And Theft
    It's been a good three decades since Dylan has sounded as footloose and, er, freewheeling as he does on much of Love and Theft. That it comes on the heels of '97's haunted, hellhound-on-my-trail-vibed Time Out of Mind makes it all the more remarkable.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Canto
    Comparisons will inevitably be made between Canto and the Buena Vista Social Club disc, but the most significant similarity is that they both feature great songs and terrific musicianship.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Is This It?
    Casablancas is all old-school rocker in the Mick Jagger/Chris Robinson mold -- an ugly/pretty boy out to beg, borrow and bleed for even prettier women while acting like nothing ever satisfies.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    XTRMNTR
    The band's new sound appropriates slabs of dance music, free jazz, rock and techno to create a menacing landscape of rattling beats, thundering bass and crippling distortion, dotted with lyrics that evoke urban decay and social disgust.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Miss E... So Addictive
    Miss E... So Addictive shows another side of Missy Elliott, yet unlike the calculations of other artists who morph themselves mainly as a marketing scheme, her dancing-sex-queen moves come through more like revelation than reinvention.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bachelor No. 2 (or, the last remains of the dodo)
    On the evidence of her work here, one would have to say there really isn't any pop-rock composer writing more sophisticated material these days than Mann.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    69 Love Songs
    By my count, you've still got 50 keepers out of 69, give or take a few songs. And about a third of those sound like classics.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wicked Grin
    The collaboration ultimately benefits both players, adding a touch of art house abandon to Hammond's at times studied formalism, and authenticity to Waits' Martian grease-monkey blues.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
    She has always been a good songwriter -- experimental, dynamic, probing -- but here she demonstrates that she has the potential to be a truly masterful one. With newfound clarity and restraint, and with her usual wit, she examines the ways in which we try to convince ourselves that we are safe in an unsafe world.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Vespertine
    1997's Homogenic, also a mixture of heavy beats and strings, was not as varied or complete as this album, and while Selmasongs, last year's soundtrack to "Dancer in the Dark" (in which Björk starred), was lovely in its own sweeping, cinematic way, Björk has surpassed herself with this new work.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Blueprint
    The Blueprint is not a perfect album. Some of the material is undoubtedly filler. But this recording makes it clear that hip-hop is supposed to be fun -- and that Jay-Z is having a ball.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Best Of Blur
    The only complaints involve omissions. Four of five singles between '92 and '94 (among them the minor American hit, "Bang") aren't here, which bypasses the band's crucial early development and leaves only one song from Modern Life, the punchy "For Tomorrow." On the other hand, the disc could easily have shed at least one of its five offerings from Parklife -- most noticeably the title track.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Remedy
    Remedy is the next great step forward for house music.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ágætis Byrjun
    Agaetis Byrjun is an impressively unself-conscious record that would have been difficult to make in a trend-obsessive center like London or New York. It is sincere and though its influences may be familiar, its beauty and tenderness are refreshingly new.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Time (The Revelator)
    Welch has become a notable talent on that long, rootsy highway, and she and Rawlings have fashioned their own unique sound.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blues Dream
    With the twangy, kaleidoscopic blend of country blues, downtown jazz and so many other unexpected flavors and sounds on Bill Frisell's latest album, Blues Dream, one can't help but be reminded a little of the updated American folkloric music score in the Coen Brothers' latest film.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Transcendental Blues
    The writing shines throughout... Steve Earle seems able to do anything he cares to.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Sparrow
    Little Sparrow captures one of country's greatest talents in top form, backed by some of the best acoustic players around...
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All Hands On The Bad One
    Some of the finest music of their already sterling career.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Convincer
    Even darker and more emotionally resonant than its impressive predecessors.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pause
    Without resorting to sappy new age or yuppie lounge cliches, Hebden has created a blissed-out ambient album for the post-rave generation.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Greatest Hits: The Evidence
    He's responsible for some of the most classic (and controversial) jams in the history of hip-hop.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Soft Bulletin
    A trip into the prettiest altered states the Lips have yet kissed.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dongs of Sevotion
    Continues the musical evolution that was evident on last year's Knock Knock, with a collection that goes beyond Smog's standard home-alone-in-the-basement-with-a-four track-and-a-weird-mood aesthetic.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Supermodified
    Feeding everything from polyrhythmic samba marches and interstellar jazz excursions into his mixer-microprocessor, then topping them off with obsessive beat-programming, Tobin blurs the boundaries between organic and prefabricated, as if the coexistence of the two should be an undeniable rule.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bow Down To The Exit Sign
    Featuring vocal contributions from Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, punk-blues aficionado Jon Spencer and ex-Tricky collaborator Martina Toppley-Bird, Bow Down to the Exit Sign is a dark, soul-wrenching trip through an even darker world.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mwng
    Horns, keyboards and acoustic guitars dominate the 10 tracks here, with an overall live sound that steers clear of the studio effects the band embraced with their last release, Guerrilla.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Play
    Play is a modest, charming little record built on a few simple ideas, and a winner on its own low-key terms: Moby has made the first electronic blues album.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A South Bronx Story
    ESG may have been heard mostly in other artists' songs, but A South Bronx Story is an impressive attempt to focus attention on the force behind the samples.
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