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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    • 47 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Songs from the Sparkle Lounge
    A few bright spots don't make up for the album's general lack of immediacy or memorable hooks.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Earth To The Dandy Warhols
    They were better as clever corporate whores.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Shwayze
    Shwayze is remarkable only in how unremarkable it is.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Everything Is Borrowed
    Skinner's self-actualization prattle would be more admirable if it had any real insight, but the best he can offer are cheap aphorisms tailor-made for tote bags.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Ode To J. Smith
    Ode To J. Smith is the sound of a band too boxed-in to do the hooky melancholy it used to do so well, but too neutered to really rock out.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Flashy
    Flashy, the Detroit band's fifth full-length, still executes garage-glam with senses fully heightened, but it seems totally uninterested in doing anything new.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
    May claims to be a devotee of Lee Hazlewood, and admittedly, that genre lends itself to cheese, but there’s a big difference between Velveeta and a good, fatty brie.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Scream
    The problem with Scream isn’t that Cornell is too much of an artist to go pop, it’s that the fit is so unbecoming.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Asleep In The Bread Aisle
    This isn’t a horrible album, just a really boring one. What a disappointment.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Relapse
    It’s less a relapse than a rehash, less a comeback album than the kind of album artists need to come back from.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Reintegration Time
    Reintegration Time, the second album by Canada’s Shout Out Out Out Out, is ambitiously laid out, with lengthy, mostly instrumental tracks and a leisurely sense of pace. Too bad the electro grooves don’t offer much, nor does the ornamentation.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
    Like Momofuku, the new record was knocked out quickly, drawing heavily on material left over from other Costello projects, but while the looseness worked for the driving rock ’n’ roll songs on Momofuku, the freeform ballads and back-to-basics roots workouts of Secret mostly fade into Burnett’s tasteful woodwork.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Ocean Eyes
    The click-clackety beats and twinkling synth bleeps owe a clear debut to Jimmy Tamborello’s homemade production, though Young adds a bright sheen that owes something to J-pop as well.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Light
    Like the former Fugees mastermind, Matisyahu carries the curse of burying his true brilliance in too much pop schlock.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Crash Love
    The limited palette this time around doesn’t do the band any favors.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Real Feel
    The Pavement member released two full-lengths with Preston School Of Industry earlier this decade, during a relative lull in Pavement-mania; both essentially defined “workmanlike,” and sadly, The Real Feel is no different.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Alter The Ending
    Alter The Ending nose-dives into the studio of Butch Walker, the man behind Pink’s "Funhouse" and Weezer’s "Raditude," and he comically overproduces the damn thing.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Bionic
    Outside of her exceptional vocal abilities, Aguileraâ??s main talent thus far has been absorbing and regurgitating trends with such commitment that she essentially disappears behind a calculated varnish.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    How To Destroy Angels
    As it is, How To Destroy Angels resembles a subdued Nine Inch Nails with female vocals.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Nightmare
    Avenged Sevenfold continues to sound like five different bands on every album, none of them particularly good.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Death to False Metal
    In execution, though, Death To False Metal is frustratingly hit-or-miss.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Endlessly
    Duffy is clearly striving for growth with Endlessly, but outside her comfort zone, she comes up short.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Michael
    Michael mostly reflects the paranoid, musically out of touch, deeply unhappy person he became -- and who many fans would just as soon forget.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Goodbye Lullaby
    Lavigne is a divorced singer-songwriter about to enter her late 20s, but on Lullaby, she would've been better off not acting her age.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Who You Are
    In trying to be an über-pop-star, she ends up becoming an every-pop-star.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Share the Joy
    Like a broken record, Vivian Girls appear doomed to repeat themselves.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Love?
    In general, though, Love? is as vague and unfocused as its titular inquiry suggests, a musical shrug that seems to mean even less to Lopez than it will to listeners.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Head and the Heart
    Though the songwriting is sturdy, the choruses hearty, the melodies time-tested, and the recording vibrant, The Head And The Heart falters most on account of Jonathan Russell and Josiah Johnson's pre-packaged, Cracker Barrel lyrical conceits.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Suck It and See
    Only five years ago, Turner was a fresh-faced quipster hopefully eyeing a crush on the dance floor, but now he's playing into the tiredest archetype: the jaded, sunglasses-shaded rock traditionalist on the hunt for an easy lay.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
    Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark seems uniquely constructed to frustrate the expectations of U2 fans, musical-theater lovers, and even train-wreck enthusiasts, who will be disappointed to find that the show isn't as bad as some have suggested--at least when experienced solely as an album.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Sorry for Party Rocking
    Sorry For Party Rocking is a dumb party record that knows it's a dumb party record.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Again and Again
    Again And Again feels like it's skimming the dreaminess of that era without retaining any of its prickly quirk-or worse, any of its personality.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Yours Truly
    Yours Truly is based on the same assumption as Sublime With Rome, which is that fans will appreciate the superficial similarities to a band they once loved, and won't look close enough to notice the gaping holes.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Nothing But the Beat
    Nothing But The Beat is obsessed with the sex, swagger, and sensation of club culture, and taken individually, its songs are well-made, euphoric paeans to the dance-floor gods; but a deficiency of texture and emotional build causes them to blend into a predictable, exhausting murk of smoke and lasers.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    I'm with You
    As the forgettable I'm With You shows, there's a difference between surviving and thriving.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Sea of Memories
    The Sea Of Memories plays like an endless replay of Rossdale's past musical miscues.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Radioactive
    For an uncomfortable seven-song stretch, the rapper seems so alienated from his own album.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    rEvolver
    Despite the title's promise of evolution, the record mines the same club-banging, shawty-romancing formula of the singer's boom years, to ever-diminishing returns.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Black Cocaine [EP]
    Judging by this underwhelming return, Prodigy's stint in the correctional facilities merely constituted time lost.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Blues Funeral
    Lanegan's voice may be timeless, but its versatility has its limits--and Blues Funeral tests those limits just a little too much.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Six Cups of Rebel
    Six Cups seems determined to resurrect the bad decisions of pop's past.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Hell in a Handbasket
    Too much of Hell In A Handbasket is just generic songwriter-mill fodder, over-cranked and over-sung.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Exister
    A handful of tracks manage to convey some sense of energy and urgency. Few of them, though, rustle up the dark hooks that used to be HWM's greatest strength.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    This is PiL
    PiL's last album, 1992's That What Is Not, left the outfit hanging on a slick and inconsequential note, one that couldn't be further from the dubby murk of the group's pioneering work from the '70s. This Is PiL circles back to that murk, then buries its head in it.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Carry Me Back
    Carry Me Home, the band's latest, doesn't suffer from a shortage of whimsy, but its surplus of cringe-inducing aw-shucks hokeyness is problematic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The 2nd Law
    For a band so seemingly full of big ideas, Muse sounds on its sixth album like a hard-rocking collection of other bands, some that they've previously been compared to, and others new.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Dos!
    Dos! is the sophomore slump of a trilogy that's shaping up to be far less fun than it was supposed to be.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Beta Love
    It tries so hard to please that it becomes perversely repellant.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Magna Carta Holy Grail
    The bulk of Magna Carta, however, really is just an obscenely rich dude gloating about his spoils. Where West continues to introduce new twists in his ever-unfolding story—with Yeezus, he’s reinvented himself as rap’s most compelling villain—Jay-Z has remained static, frozen in permanent victory.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Testimonium Songs
    By the album’s end, there’s no definable takeaway aside from the fact that Testimonium Songs would have benefited from being a true Joan Of Arc record as opposed to a small piece of a larger puzzle.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Magpie and the Dandelion
    These songs are nice and they’re pretty, but have no bite, no substance, and no real pizzazz.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    ARTPOP
    For as flamboyant as she is, Gaga’s never lacked sincerity; ARTPOP’s lack of substantial personal connection and its tenuous grasp on reality makes it a tough record to like.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Magic Hour
    Nostalgia-driven fan-funding is a useful way to see which short-lived phenoms have anything left in the tank, but Magic Hour suggests Luscious Jackson is a little too far removed from what drove the group to make music in the first place.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    What The...
    Demons used to be what drove Black Flag toward hitherto extremes of punk-rock brinksmanship, and there are glimpses of that savagery on What The.... Mostly, though, it’s a footnote to a legacy that never needed one.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Louder
    Sadly, a compilation of tracks randomly culled from the best Rachel Berry solos recorded for the show would yield a stronger album than this one made up of originals.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Kiss Me Once
    Kiss Me Once is a disappointing record that tries too hard to mold Minogue into something she’s not.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Turn Blue
    Feelings are always “heavy” or a “burden,” and love is consistently “dark” or “light”; it’s thematic territory that feels stale for the band, and the result is an album that aspires to talk about the complex nature of relationships, yet has nothing meaningful to say.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Ultraviolence
    Ultraviolence moves away from more pop-friendly territory and instead languishes in a sleepy, sad aesthetic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    World Peace Is None of Your Business
    The future is here; love has not brought us together, nor has the bomb. Morrissey, having left himself no other options, makes do with a shrug.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    New Glow
    On New Glow, they’ve either finally dumbed things down too much, or simply reached the end of where this rudimentary songwriting can take them.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Freedom
    Freedom never seems to settle on a single direction, but it’s hard to say whether that’s good or bad.... But it’s when Refused attempts to sound modern--through ultra-slick production tricks and modern sonic collage--that the album truly falters.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    VII: Sturm und Drang
    A generic album.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    HitNRun: Phase One
    [Co-producer and engineer Joshua] Welton tinkers too much with too many EDM toys, and often the result is a cacophonous collision of EDM’s lamest trends. When this album does succeed—which it does on its back half—it’s because Prince and Welton have achieved a balance between dance and funk in which each genre brings out the best in the other.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Hymns
    Themes of loss, grief, and finding meaning in one’s life are buried deep within the subtext of the record. It’s just a shame that after listening to Hymns, we’re no closer to finding any kind of revelation or spiritual bliss.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    California
    California is the sound of Blink-182 desperately trying to remain relevant by outsourcing its creativity.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    AIM
    AIM sounds like a field recording made in the middle of a bustling Sri Lankan market: colorful, flavorful, and most of all, noisy. These inescapable Eastern vibes prove to be a blessing, uniting an otherwise fragmented album.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Honeymoon on Mars
    On most of Honeymoon On Mars, the band seems resigned to the apocalypse and modern society’s devolution, resulting in a shockingly limp record overflowing with empty bluster.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    He's Got the Whole This Land Is Your Land in His Hands
    These songs would never be mistaken for any other band—by that same token, it’s often so obtuse it feels like it’s not meant for anyone but its creators.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Bloodlust
    For every track that maintains an admirable speed-thrash spirit (“Walk With Me,” “Raining Blood”) there’s another that sounds more silly than rocking, like the cheesy posturing of “Here I Go Again,” a dark metal song as imagined by Roger Corman.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    I Can Spin a Rainbow
    “The Sun Still Shines,” suggests that Palmer and Ka-Spel should have really focused their energies on composing interstitial music for a stage production.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Witness
    Despite the presence of bulletproof hit-makers (Max Martin, Sia, Jeff Bhasker) and inventive electro artists (Purity Ring, Hot Chip, Duke Dumont), the record is curiously flat, a shapeless slog that feels remarkably sluggish.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Sacred Hearts Club
    Overall, Sacred Hearts Club also signals a return to Foster The People’s more electronic origins, but not in the inventive way that was used on Torches. Rather, it comes off as hackneyed copy, full of the predictable EDM/trap beats that every other chart-topper has shoved in somewhere.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    New Facts Emerge
    It’s not bad--it’s certainly not an Ersatz GB, or Are You Are Missing Winner (though its half-assed cover art certainly comes close). But now that I’ve written it up, off it will go into the pile, never to be played.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Pacific Daydream
    The Weezer frontman continues to tap that increasingly dry well, his dusty lovelorn longings for perfect summer nights now sounding completely formulaic.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Visitor
    Young and the youngsters he’s playing with here sound like they wrote and jammed these songs out in a few days, relying on the strength of his sentiment to carry them through. But a jam session with some cranky speak-singing on it doesn’t make for a great album, and it’s not going to make any new converts, unfortunately--either to Neil Young’s politics or his music.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Drift
    Where other records by The Men showed they could pull from someone else’s playbook and make something their own, Drift’s hodgepodge of styles ultimately makes The Men sound like they couldn’t settle on what they wanted to do.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Virtue
    For every adequate Strokes throwback or Radiohead soundalike, Virtue antagonizes you with two formless freak-outs cobbled together from influences as wide-ranging as ’90s R&B, Arabic chants, “Monster Mash,” and a shocking amount of nü-metal.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Donda
    More than half of this album is complete filler. No one’s missing “Okok,” “24,” or “Remote Control.” A soulful choir is not enough to save “Never Again.” On this record, there is none of the production genius we’ve come to expect from West. ... And that’s the thing that’s missing most from this record, with all its myriad problems: No one edits West anymore, not even himself. And that’s a damn shame.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Breathe
    Breathe is fine for what it is, but each time Leaves bandleader Arnar Gudjonsson launches into yet another midtempo space-rocker in which he shifts from a mushy monotone croon to a lilting falsetto, the move becomes less a genuine expression of personal style and more a shameless attempt to get with the new rock mainstream.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Folktronic
    It's all so clever and thought-provoking that it's almost possible to overlook that, in most other respects, it's not especially good.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fake Songs
    The spoofs are pretty much just lazy, fooling-around-in-the-studio exercises, which also holds true for most of the non-fake songs on Fake Songs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pelo
    Guests from Chicago's music scene, including Mekons singer Sally Timms and members of Tortoise, bolster the already-solid playing of the Navins' regular contingent, and while the songs aren't particularly sharp, the music (produced by the Navins, John Herndon, and John McEntire) most definitely is.... Can something be so smooth that it just slips away? For all its pleasantness, Pelo comes awfully close to this invisible ideal, an achievement in its own right but not an especially engaging one.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sound of Water
    Saint Etienne has made an egregiously Cardigans-esque wrong turn, abandoning impeccable craft and Motown melodies for the breezy if aimless experimentation of its wildly uneven EPs.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hyacinths and Thistles
    [Merritt] leaves vocal duties entirely to his guests here, an impressive group that includes new-wave forebear Gary Numan and '70s warbler Melanie alongside an all-star collection of indie-rock fixtures. Unfortunately, he's given them some of his weakest material to date, delicate but forgettable songs that often sound like discarded leftovers from 69 Love Songs.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    14 Shades Of Grey
    Not memorable enough to be bad, not heavy enough to pack visceral power, most of these songs–even radio-friendly ringers like "So Far Away"–are indistinguishable from the work of a hundred other bands with misspelled names, hotshot producers, plentiful tattoos, and optional silly facial hair.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Airdrawndagger
    Airdrawndagger fades so listlessly into the annals of anonymity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dear Heather
    Mostly, Dear Heather just coasts on poetic phrasing and inoffensive tunes.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Palookaville
    Palookaville's highlights promise the sweat and smiles that have become Fatboy Slim's stock in trade, but its surprisingly dull lulls offer nothing more promising than a blank expression.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Meteora
    Mercifully brief but mercilessly repetitive, Meteora is little more than a tolerable rehash of a formula that's been on the wrong side of its sell-by date for some time now.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Around The Sun
    In eliminating both the mystery of its early years and the restless spirit of more recent times, R.E.M. leaves just exactly what R.E.M.-haters probably felt the band made all along: midtempo, largely hookless adult rock.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Cocky
    Cocky plays it safe, tinkering slightly with Devil's formula but generally delivering virtual carbon copies of its monster hits.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Masquerade
    Yet another overreaching, overlong musical erector set, the album offers an uneven, conceptually muddled tour of the rapper's current musical obsessions, from gritty underground hip-hop to Caribbean music.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fatherfucker
    Nearly all of Fatherfucker falls back into ostensibly bracing anthems that sound plain stupid in such abundance.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Strange Little Girls
    The disc looks, on paper, like an intriguing exercise. Unfortunately, it sounds, in reality, like little more than an intriguing exercise: With few exceptions, it's tedious and predictable, wearing its calculated concept far too boldly on its sleeve.
    • The A.V. Club
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Eat at Whitey's
    Everlast's pretensions and ambition still outstrip his talent, however, and the distance between the two makes Eat At Whitey's both intriguing and frustrating.... like a defensive tackle trying his hand at ballet, he's far too clumsy and limited a singer and songwriter for the delicate material he attempts.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Under Rug Swept
    Her personal revelations too often ring false and crass, and nothing undermines a confession like calculation.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    American IV: The Man Comes Around
    His song selection has rarely made less sense.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Boomslang
    Boomslang's heavily treated vocals, nondescript songwriting, and swirling, noisy production doesn't leave much room for personality to pop through.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Last Temptation
    Rule is up to his old tricks on Temptation, wrapping thuggish sentiments in candy-coated R&B-flavored tracks, shamelessly dispensing 2Pacisms, and yelling his catchphrase "Murder!" at regular intervals.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pain Is Love
    Ja Rule's only real gift is for crafting undeniable pop hooks. That talent is underrated, but it still does little to cover up the rapper's derivative lyrics and crassly recycled 2Pacisms.
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