Stylus Magazine's Scores

  • Music
For 1,453 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 Fed
Lowest review score: 0 Encore
Score distribution:
1453 music reviews
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fed
    Hayes’ performance on this album is so stellar one wonders why others don’t shoot this high.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    It's one of the few Europop albums that not only deserves worldwide domination, but also has a really good chance of achieving it.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    If The Unfairground doesn’t quite qualify as a "stunning" return to form--"stunning" never really being Ayers’ stock in trade--it certainly represents the delightful and unexpected renaissance of a perennially undervalued artist, whose quiet but significant influence is long overdue for re-assessment.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Vernon’s music is stripped-down, uniformly quiet, and confessional, his clipped, cracked, Will Oldham-inspired lyrics not evidence of cabin delirium, but the work of an artist warmed by a creative glow that only pure isolation (read: freedom) can fully render.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    What Hey Venus! ultimately is, is a good record of classy pop/rock songs, arranged and produced well, shot through with a degree of personality and skill, and almost completely lacking in the inspired, eclectic madness which made "Radiator and Guerilla" so damn good.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    At first listen, N.B. sounds creepy. But ignore the lyrics, surrender yourself to the joys of pop songwriting and N.B. seems to approach perfection.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Nash keeps herself resolutely in the background of her songs, revealing precious little of her own personality or emotion, and it’s this reservation that makes her fail as a popstar, at least right now.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Parades, both restrained and wildly dramatic, gently touching and warmly enveloping, is not a record that sits comfortably with convenient labels.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    45:33 works both as exercise-soundtrack and discopunk-odyssey because James Murphy understands how to make people move on a basic, physical level. [Review of UK release]
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Load Blown does more than enough to keep "very" and "awfully," respectively, in the mix.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    All of their typical sentiments are there, but where their prior releases used spacey interludes and bridges as a recess from the hopelessness, the group employs these moments more sparingly.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Prefuse 73 sounds freer, and yet more deliberately formal--most of the songs break down like classic hip-hop does, two-thirds of the way toward the end.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    It's not a complete disaster--the songs are still there, shining proud and (far too) loud--but each listen brings a constant, aggravating reminder of the sloppy production.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Right now, it's an album I'm unlikely to play all that much now that I'm done reviewing it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    For all its tasteful craft, aesthetic unity and knowing winks to its makers’ history, it’s simply not very interesting
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    While the commercial potential of her new album may be up for debate, as a showcase for Rosin Murphy’s talent, Overpowered is an enormous success.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    In Rainbows, then, is Radiohead as straight and lean as they’ve ever sounded.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The debut album was good, but this is better. Much, much better; the kind of record I will happily and willingly return to long after this review is dead and buried.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    An astonishing act of rejuvenation and reclamation, the album may just be the group’s best to date, and solidly reestablishes Eleanor and Matthew as progenitors of brilliantly exciting, mind-scrambling pop.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    If you’re already among the converted, Random Spirit Lover is a second straight masterpiece from arguably the most talented songwriter of this generation.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    You can write off some of Cease to Begin’s bland regionalisms as lacking in spice. But if, come midnight, Marry Song's' serpentine gospel finds home in your head, you better get up and read.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    This is a pretty great album, filler and all.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hera Ma Nono improves on "Ok-Oyot System" in almost every way: the guitar sounds are more vibrant (padded with reverbs, phasers, and other bubbly what-have-you’s); the songs hang together better as a record; the slide between Swahili, English, and Luo is as effortless and colorful as good pidgin; and, most importantly, it usually gets at--or at least hints at--African music’s most cherished balance: unhurriedness with a pulse.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    They’ve evolved into a tightly wound and grotesquely attuned power trio; and nowhere is that more evident than on the hyper-bpms of Grass Geysers.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Outwardly, We Are the Pipettes is fun, sweet, and attractive. If you hang around, it starts to feel brittle, frigid, bitchy, and weird.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The moments of "hey, that sounds a bit like ..." are few, but notable; and perhaps unavoidable with such a distinctive vocal presence. In any case, these are welcome echoes from the past, not a weary retracing of footsteps.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Little on Magic outright falters, which is why it's hard at first to explain how unappealing it is.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The only song worth a second listen is 'Smithereens.'
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Carrabba’s keening grandiloquence may have lost some of its most explicitly cathartic qualities, but The Shade of Poison Trees remains his best work in years.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The group synthesizes pretty much anything you could lump under a general Americana label--bluegrass, country, alt-country, folk rock--to create an idiosyncratic sound more West Coast than Nashville.