Sputnikmusic's Scores

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For 2,395 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 45% 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: 100 The Seer
Lowest review score: 10 The Path of Totality
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,773 out of 2395
  2. Mixed: 543 out of 2395
  3. Negative: 79 out of 2395
2395 music reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Ugly Season
    Perfume Genius could easily have made this as a wilfully oblique record; the reality is mercurial, intoxicating and richly creative at every turn, and you now know this. Get out there and get lost in it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Great Awakening
    It's a dark, gorgeous, twisted, spine-tingling experience that is able to pull off such a decelerated pace because it owns that pace entirely, injecting it with haunting rhythms and naturalistic beauty.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Big Time
    This is a significantly more rustic album than All Mirrors, with major country and folk influences joining that album’s lush art pop sound. Even the songs which lean towards the latter style are often gentle and delicate. It’s also a record which feels infinitely more personal.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Super Champon
    Super Champon’s genius lies in the way it brings this relatively complex subject matter down to a set of laser-sharp bangers, all supported with just enough English to resonate either side of the Anglosphere frontier.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    The Last Thing Left
    The record’s stylistically confused (and confusing) bookends prevent the project from being a straight dream pop homerun. Nonetheless, the bulk of The Last Thing Left is essential summer listening: don’t overthink it, just enjoy the vibes.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cruel Country
    Cruel Country might get a little sleepy at times, but it’s a rather impressively compelling listen, given its intimidating length. There’s a lot of beauty and feeling to be unearthed here, and the album greatly rewards further listening.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Night Gnomes
    An infallibly-down-the-line no-nonsense rather-quite-good-but-not-at-all-groundbreaking psych-rock record.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heavy Pendulum
    It's an album that shows a band comfortable and willing to begin moving on, 70 minutes of something new enough that you can see a pretty bright future for the band that seemed impossible to many just three years ago.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Preacher's Daughter
    Ethel Cain's debut album is an astonishing accomplishment; one that is as painful as it is constantly bathing in the most beautifully dreamy arrangements. Every moment serves to enhance the conveying of the record's story, and refuses to shy away from the unconventional, intense, or drawn out.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
    The listening experience is defined by languorous stretches between big moments, and becomes more of an exercise in patience than an engaging and enlivening journey. If it were more cohesive, more palpably moving in a musical sense, had less fat to trim, I could see myself fawning over Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers in fanboyish frenzy. As it stands, I think that in another five years I'll be wading back through this flawed masterpiece.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    A Light for Attracting Attention
    A delicately-crafted work fusing experimentalism and sheer sonic beauty, A Light For Attracting Attention stands proudly on its own merits as a top-tier piece of art rock, connections to a certain critically and publicly acclaimed band aside.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Endless Rooms
    Endless Rooms has the feel of a transition album, with the group throwing some new ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. There’s several new sounds and influences present on Endless Rooms which present intriguing and viable routes for RBCF to pursue on their eventual fourth record. The future is uncertain, but hope springs eternal.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    We've Been Going About This All Wrong
    We've Been Going About This All Wrong reflects on the darkest moments of her earliest work with a newfound sense of confidence and control fully discovered in the Remind Me Tomorrow era.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    LP.8
    While it's hard not to succumb to the subtle disappointment inherent in hearing an artist you love make such a sudden shift in sound, beyond that initial disappointment is an album that is the artist’s maturest to date. An album that is, somehow, equal-parts icy and warm; which progresses, despite this contrast, with an ease that is masterful; and which, inevitably, leaves me curious and yearning for LPs 3-7.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    I Dont Know Who Needs to Hear This...
    Every song on IDKNWTHT is strong on its own merit, but when digested as a whole, the album is overwhelming in the best kind of way that stirs the soul.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Zeit
    Zeit is imperfect, but there’s so much to be savoured here, and aspects you won’t get from any other Rammstein album.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Giving the World Away
    As it stands, Giving the World Away is a decent record with some excellent highlights, but also one that fails to live up to Hatchie’s potential. It’s somewhat frustrating, most of the time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything Was Beautiful
    Overall, the journey Everything Was Beautiful creates is definitely more entrancing and vivid than And Nothing Hurt.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Skinty Fia
    Skinty Fia won't tell you much about whether that vein of insecurity that runs below the band's surface level of confidence can fuel good art indefinitely; in its best moments, though, it may make you want to hear the band crack open that ground and let their strangest selves out completely.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aethiopes
    Tight as heck, gorgeously thematic, lovingly orchestrated, produced within an inch of its life (i.e. well), seamless, vital, other compliments, all of them. An album with a pulse.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    (Watch My Moves)
    This record does nothing to convince Kurt Vile skeptics to jump on the bandwagon, but for the already-converted it will also do nothing to drive them away. Indeed, this is certainly one of the singer-songwriter’s stronger efforts, even coming eight LPs into his solo career.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Together
    Together is a finely-crafted work which should hold up to listening under widely varied circumstances, likely to feel as much at home amid the windswept, skeletal trees of late autumn as on the porch on a humid summer evening. All told, there’s plenty to rejoice about, the sad boys are back in town.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    DISCO4 :: Pt. II
    Disco4 :: Part II might not get everything spot on, but it still stands up to Part I in a way that proves their last record wasn’t a fluke.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    El Mirador
    El Mirador is definitely on the right path, becoming Calexico’s strongest effort since Algiers. These cheerful tunes make for an immediate, fun affair.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bronco
    His music more than stands on its own in its brilliancy and, again, the fact that it is supplemented by clearly thought out performance aspects should not mean that it is viewed as anything less than genuine.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Diaspora Problems
    The sum total of their 2022 opus is a straight upgrade to SOUL GLO’s already brilliant back catalog, bursting with scorching new takes on old ideas and enough spirit and passion to set the entire scene ablaze.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Immutable
    While it has highlights aplenty, they seem the kind of highlights that would fare better outside of the context of Listening To A Whole Album In 2022. ... As a start-to-finish experience, there’s a tendency for things to melt together as momentum flags, the sequencing grates, or you find yourself paying less than your most devout attention to the swiftly passing milieu.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Unraveling of Puptheband
    The resultant journey is a jittery, joyous, glorious, gleaming mess: substantially less coherent than their previous outings, but no less endearing.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Never Let Me Go
    Never Let Me Go is a fantastic album, and it could even be argued that it’s the most consistent and engaging album of their career – certainly, it’s their most ambitious to date.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Labyrinthitis
    On the one hand, this is a record which sees Destroyer recalibrate their formula, quite successfully, to avoid any potential staleness in the fifth incarnation of their recent run. As such, it feels like a record that most, if not all, music fans with any interest in Destroyer could enjoy. On the flip side, this album also continues the trend that Have We Met began, accentuating Bejar’s idiosyncrasies in a more pronounced way than before.
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