The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 4,544 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 The Life Of Pablo
Lowest review score: 0 Graffiti
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,663 out of 4544
  2. Mixed: 771 out of 4544
  3. Negative: 110 out of 4544
4544 music reviews
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rendezvous
    It flows far better than 2002's Romantica, but that increased fluidity, along with a couple of lead-vocal contributions from guitarist Sean Eden, still add up to what could be titled Another Solid Luna Album--thankfully no less and unsurprisingly not much more.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chocolate Factory
    Chocolate Factory is filled with the sort of come-ons and honeyed promises that even cut-rate dive-bar lotharios would dismiss as hopelessly cheesy, but Kelly stitches them together with such craft and invests them with such conviction that they become a strange sort of pulp poetry.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Folklore
    Though few tracks on Folklore stand out, the album hangs together agreeably, thanks to its parade of offbeat influences and guest stars.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
    And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, while not unremarkable, is still a little disappointing, too light on memorable hooks and melodies, too long on leisurely arrangements, and not too great to obliterate feelings that Yo La Tengo usually does better.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground
    At times, as with his past work, Lifted offers more to admire than love, as Oberst's tendency toward overreaching and didacticism periodically distracts from the nakedly beautiful emotion at the album's core.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Roman Times
    As drama, it poses no threat to King Lear or even Quadrophrenia, but it makes for an unpredictable record that unmistakably operates in the proud tradition of CVB's past work.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The New Romance
    Throughout The New Romance, the group crafts exciting, layered, tempo-shifting tracks where jolts replace hooks, but Zollo plays ringmaster, whispering and bellowing and enacting the stressed-out characters that populate her stark stage.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Idiot
    The observations don't always dig as deep as they're meant to, and buzzwords occasionally stand in for insights, but American Idiot finds Green Day both shaking up its formula and applying it in novel and unexpected ways.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Demolition
    Its songs are sketchy but affable, with a confidence that makes the half-hooks sound almost indelible.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heroes To Zeros
    It's difficult to get a handle on what the group is, but tough to deny that it's always doing its own thing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sung Tongs
    Snatches of certain songs owe a debt to weird-period Brian Wilson, but Sung Tongs sounds too hermetic and comfortable in its singularity to cast such a literal gaze.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Funeral
    Funeral's layering of sound and wide-eyed posing can be overly dense, and though the band utilizes nice melodies and lively arrangements, the nostalgia-steeped-indie-rock-orchestra pool was pretty much drained before The Arcade Fire dove in.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lateralus
    Tool's songs are long because the band takes its time, resisting show-offy displays of speed in favor of texture and minimalist mood, borrowing key elements from Far Eastern music and industrial rock along the way.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Weightlifting
    Weightlifting settles into an alternately joyful and reflective string of smart, gentle pop songs that should have fans of The Smiths and/or Crowded House waxing weepily nostalgic.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wet From Birth
    Wet From Birth is generally strongest when the beats-per-minute run high... but a few of the slower tracks showcase The Faint's growing way with melody.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Try This
    Pink's delivery says more than her often wince-inducing lyrics, but it means enough to make Try This an engagingly revealing album.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Restless
    Restless isn't quite the metatextual running commentary on fame and persecution that The Marshall Mathers LP is, but, like Eminem, Xzibit has gone from addressing the dire circumstances that created him to focusing squarely on life as a rap star.... A weak patch roughly halfway in slows it down, but Restless accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: It consolidates Xzibit's new fan base while retaining enough classic flavor to avoid alienating Likwit Crew diehards.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth?
    None of the new album reaches the gaudy peaks of Do You Party?, but it bumps just as well through subtle atmospheres and strange detours.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    From A Basement On The Hill
    Slightly overlong and sometimes stitched-together, From A Basement On The Hill sags in spots.... Yet in the end, the album still earns its place--not at the top, and unfortunately as a bookend--in a jarringly important body of work.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love, Angel, Music, Baby
    A few songs sound tossed-off, but a few of the stranger ones work.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Power
    Power announces a change from the get-go, fast-forwarding through punk's often-tired gambits and--sometimes tentatively, sometimes with impressive assurance--shimmying around the dance floor with only occasional furtive glances at the exit.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Street's Disciple
    Suffice to say, Nas' latest plus-sized, two-disc opus Street's Disciple isn't too big on economy or cohesion, but its passion and intensity are hard to deny.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Up The Bracket
    As fun as Up The Bracket can be, it might well be better if the group acknowledged that it's living in the 21st century.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Want Two
    A quieter, more intimate, and more demanding set than its predecessor, Want Two offers few of Want One's sweeping pleasures, but it cultivates a creeping beauty that's as satisfying in its own right.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chain Gang Of Love
    As with Whip It On, Chain Gang's greatest virtue is that it's short enough not to wear out its welcome.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Encore
    For the most part, Encore's strained, vaguely sad, regressive wackiness makes a lucid and compelling argument that Eminem should retire Slim Shady and let the real, serious Marshall Mathers stand up and be heard.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Franz Ferdinand
    The album is largely content to hover around the one note it plays so well. [24 Mar 2004]
    • The A.V. Club
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    God's Son
    God's Son is a worthy follow-up to Stillmatic.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mount Eerie
    Elvrum gets bogged down in telling the story, to the detriment of the songs themselves.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP
    Mathers is frequently brilliant and unique, if extremely flawed.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    With The Lights Out
    The crown jewel for those without the patience or proclivity to wade through sketches of songs better heard in full, the fourth disc is a DVD of live footage from the beginning to the end.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Live In New York City
    By trying to placate old fans, new fans, and the simply fanatical, Springsteen once again offers an "almost" set, a nice souvenir that finds him and the band in fine form, even if it's a poor substitute for the unfiltered experience.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fashionably Late
    The material plays to Linda Thompson's strengths, with her quiet, primarily acoustic, doggedly traditionalist ballads showcasing her thick, eloquent voice.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All About Chemistry
    Semisonic hasn't exactly turned into Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but signs of self-indulgence have crept into the music, as evidenced by the nearly eight-minute running time of "I Wish" and an abundance of strings and fussy production tricks. But [Dan] Wilson hasn't lost his gift for writing memorable, brilliantly crafted pop songs.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    X.O. Experience
    In lesser hands, such a narrow lyrical focus might grow tiresome, but the group continues to make drunken belligerence seem downright charming, thanks to smart lyrics and perfect timing.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I'm Lonely (And I Love It) [EP]
    Features Merritt doing what he does best: writing songs that are smart, funny, literate, and far catchier than anything on commercial radio.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    2000 BC
    The production is disappointingly uneven... The lack of song structure is also problematic, but Canibus invests his rhymes with such dark humor, vivid imagery, and controlled passion that his lack of thematic ambition is forgivable.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Insignificance
    Insignificance's ingeniously subtle songwriting project is one of O'Rourke's most affecting yet.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Date Of Birth
    Date Of Birth doesn't reinvent hip-hop, but it mines considerable rewards just by operating within the style's familiar confines.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jump Leads
    Jump Leads plays like a tourist's relaxed sojourn through resort-ready electronic aestheticism, but at its best, the album casts Fila Brazillia as a worthwhile guide more than a hapless hanger-on.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Confessions of St. Ace
    St. Ace is as quotable as it is catchy, with production that stays just on the safe side of lush and a sound that's eager to win the audience Harding has never quite found.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Push The Button
    An album that covers a lot of ground without ever tilling it.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Burn The Maps
    Some of these exercises in frustration are simply frustrating, but for the most part, The Frames' perverse restraint matches Hansard's lyrics, which are all about lowered expectations.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All Rise
    The record clearly shows off George's talent and eclectic bent.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Some Cities
    As has always been the case with Doves, aural environment-building sometimes seems to be all the band has going for it, like on "Someday Soon," which uses sudden dramatic hushes and angelic choirs to pump life into a ballad that's practically melody-free. But at least the practice helps Doves make its few great songs count.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Frances The Mute
    On the whole, the record sounds more like the blueprint for a stunning live show than like a viable document of a top-flight hard rock band.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nashville
    Rouse's primary gift remains his easy-flowing melodies, which are coaxed along by his cherubic rasp.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fast Cars, Danger, Fire And Knives [EP]
    Rock's marathon verses are so long and involved that it takes a few listens just to digest them, which their density and harshness makes a little daunting.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Wow
    No Wow doesn't make a huge stylistic leap from The Kills' 2003 debut, Keep On Your Mean Side.... Instead, they narrow the focus and amp up the intensity.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Set Yourself On Fire
    Like Ivy and other suave postmodern light-rockers, Stars sounds better in small bites than big gulps.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Employment
    A mini-compendium of Britpop from the '60s to now.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Warnings/Promises
    Warnings/Promises establishes Idlewild as a very good band, but also indicates that it probably won't ever be a great one.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Surrounded By Silence
    Surrounded By Silence is never less than pleasant, but with the exception of "Hide Ya Face," it's seldom more than that either.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Guero
    It sounds like a shadow greatest-hits album, a collection of also-rans offering intriguing variations on past styles.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Make Do With What You Got
    What the new Make Do With What You Got lacks in surprise, it makes up for in other areas.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
    It's hard to shake the empty feeling at the end of each these songs; The Best Little Secrets Are Kept has an inescapable, intentional tawdriness.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Open Season
    British Sea Power's momentum flags down the stretch, but so long as it keeps generating songs like the hazy "Killing Moon" re-write "Like A Honeycomb," the band can return all it wants to the days of sweet sorrow.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Elevator
    Hot Hot Heat has handled the pressure of going from happy discovery to possible-saviors-of-rock reasonably well.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Evens
    The two utilitarian voices mesh nicely, resulting in songs that are folk-like in their simplicity and directness, but never in their sound.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Forever Hasn't Happened Yet
    The songs are short and demo-quality, and though Doe still can't resist the rote roots-rock classicism that used to be beyond his means, the slapped-around sound of songs like "Heartless" and "Ready" should thrill longtime fans.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gods And Monsters
    Though on the whole, Gods And Monsters is a lesser record than I Am Kloot, what it lacks in great songs, it gains in stylistic advancement.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Celebration Castle
    The band's grace and curse is that it's more song-oriented than sound-oriented.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mezmerize
    While "smarter than most metal" sounds like faint praise, it may be the best way to describe the faintly praiseworthy System Of A Down.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Demon Days
    It's all quite innovative and cool, and Albarn's deadpan vocals suggest a Han Solo-like seen-it-all interplanetary weariness. Too bad it lacks a track as tight and memorable as the fluke 2001 hit "Clint Eastwood" to anchor it in place.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Don't Believe The Truth
    Yes, the rumors are true: Oasis has--for the first time in a decade--made an album worth hearing.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Another Day On Earth
    Another Day is nowhere near as invested with ideas as Eno's name-making work, but its easy pleasures still rub and float away.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Magic Numbers
    The album becomes increasingly hard to hold onto. The band gets lost in the feel of hippie-era California and forgets that the musicians they admire were skilled craftsmen as well as aesthetic adventurers.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    TheFutureEmbrace
    TheFutureEmbrace is a bit colder than what's expected of Corgan, especially after Zwan's celebratory Mary Star Of The Sea, and it goes without saying that he's handed in his trendsetter badge. But the fact remains that he's a pop showman, and regardless of the vehicle, he's going to continue writing transcendent sing-along rock songs from the heart.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blame The Vain
    The slight excursions into new genres don't go very far, and they make some of the straighter music sound rote by comparison, but about the worst that can be said about Blame The Vain is that songs like the jangly country anthem "When I First Came Here" are professional-grade.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Thrills
    Ellen Allien's Thrills supports the truism, not always easy to hear from the outside, that not all beat-driven techno works primarily as dance music.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Less Than Human
    In its deceptive simplicity, Less Than Human plays like the most focused and consistent DFA-affiliated album yet.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bright Ideas
    Bright Ideas sounds pretty much like a decent, later-period Superchunk record.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Knitting Needles And Bicycle Bells
    Sounds a lot like a stately, plump version of The Rock*A*Teens.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pixel Revolt
    Lacks both a unifying theme and any broad cohesiveness, houses a number of terrific, tough-to-forget songs, and stumbles hard when Vanderslice wets his toes in murky lyrical waters.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Late Registration
    Late Registration, is every bit as ambitious as its predecessor, but without Dropout's strong narrative, it's less successful in realizing that ambition.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Bigger Bang
    It's the best effort The Rolling Stones have produced in quite a while.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Set Free
    For existing fans, they'll either be happy to hear another assured rehash of the band's classic sound, or disappointed that it's just a rehash.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Weight Is A Gift
    The Weight Is A Gift isn't as lyrically sharp [as Let Go].
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Road To Rouen
    The album is heavy on texture and short on shape.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Apologies To The Queen Mary
    Apologies To The Queen Mary can be a little messy and unwieldy, but Wolf Parade's willingness to overreach charges songs like "We Built Another World" with real meaning, and palpable hope.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Prairie Wind
    Lilting instrumentation strengthens even the weakest lines.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Broken Social Scene
    Even a mellowed Broken Social Scene sports more energy and ideas than a dozen mainstream rock acts.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    You Could Have It So Much Better
    Starts off strong and rarely wavers, for better and worse.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Campfire Headphase
    Even the best parts lack anything new or novel to add to a sound already perfected.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Naked Truth
    The Naked Truth could benefit from judicious cutting, but for its superior first half at least, it boasts the intimacy of a diary entry and the urgency of a kite sent straight out the penitentiary.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tanglewood Numbers
    Tanglewood Numbers isn't the front-to-back triumph it might've been... but it's a welcome return nonetheless for a straight face that looks unlike any other.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    12 Songs
    The new album sounds great, but it has its share of filler, and Rubin's narrow vision means he lets some songs lie motionless when they might be improved by old-fashioned sweetening.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Right About Now
    Fans looking for a return to the focus and cohesion of Black Star and Reflection Eternal will have to keep waiting.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
    Song after song returns to the same nightclubs for the same set of cocky put-downs and faintly misogynist come-ons. Meanwhile, the band fumbles through a sound that seems to have been assembled from pieces of retro-minded rock acts like The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand, but without the sense of purpose or history.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Timeless
    At its best, Timeless has an airy, effervescent quality, a beguiling smoothness. At its worst, it sounds like a lackluster Will.I.Am solo album that just happens to have Sergio Mendes sitting in on keys.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    3121
    Oh well, a third of a terrific Prince album is better than no terrific Prince album at all.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living
    The album lacks the cleverness and affability of Original Pirate Material and the novelistic 2004 hallmark A Grand Don't Come For Free, and it's the first that calls for more explanation than exclamation.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Waterloo To Anywhere
    There are flashes of inspiration and personal expression all over Waterloo To Anywhere, but too much of the record feels unfinished—and worse, one-note.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Powder Burns
    There's a distressing structural uniformity to the material on Powder Burns.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Under The Iron Sea
    [Songwriter Tim] Rice-Oxley sells his gifts short too often by falling back on tritely positivist pap like "Put It Behind You" and "Try Again," and even Andy Green's electrifying production can't save pasty, interminable songs like "Crystal Ball," "Broken Toy," and (c'mon, now) "The Frog Prince."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Amputechture
    Sequenced into one long, continuous piece of music, most of Amputechture's tracks arrive at impressive jazz-fusion pit stops that are all too brief.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Year Of The Dog... Again
    For much of its duration, Dog is good mean fun, but given the disc's overwhelming been-there-done-that quality, it might benefit the old dog to learn some new tricks.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Skelliconnection
    Skelliconnection--most of it, at least--suffers from restless legs: Instead of gathering another unassuming set of downer-pop, it kicks, bloops, bleeps, and occasionally charges, dropping back to the mellow moods only when it's otherwise exhausted.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Lemonheads
    The sound's a harder-edged variation on Ray, but only a few songs stick.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Sam's Town
    Those who don't enter Sam's Town with inflated expectations will find it's a pretty fun place to spend some time.
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