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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    • 71 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    End Times
    Unfortunately, End Times comes off as impersonal and flat.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Mine Is Yours
    For the most part, Mine Is Yours is the bland sound of a band trading identity for ambition.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Gods Of The Earth
    For all intents and purposes, The Sword's Gods Of The Earth is the exact same album as its predecessor, "Age Of Winters." That isn't a good thing.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Times Infinity, Vol. 2
    Throughout, the album is marred by dated, slathered-on digital effects or chintzy, ’70s romantic drama synth-strings, or laden with clunky refrains.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Rebirth
    Rebirth sounds like a strange dispatch from a lost ’80s in which Wayne trafficked in cheesy power chords, cornball hard-rock atmospherics, lame guitar solos for beginners, rock clichés, and Reagan-era synthesizers.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Songs of Experience
    Songs Of Experience, U2’s 14th studio album, revs up the ambition, to embarrassing results. It finds the group desperately searching for a radio hit while pontificating on American exceptionalism, shoehorning the Syrian refugee crisis into not one but two love songs--and on consecutive tracks, no less.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Funstyle
    Possibly the saddest thing about Funstyle is that the seven straighter songs those experiments surround have just as little to recommend them.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    In Your Dreams
    For all the juvenilia of the songwriting, the production on In Your Dreams is an oldster's abomination, lacquering dated MOR bombast over intermittently inspired melodies that wilt on impact.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    See My Friends
    Sadly, See My Friends is mostly embarrassing, pairing Davies with ill-matched partners like Billy Corgan, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, and Metallica, who reduce "You Really Got Me" to third-rate bar-band fodder.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Soulsville
    There's a lot to be said for Lewis' work ethic and nose-to-the-grindstone grit. What these songs need, though, isn't grunting, grueling workmanship--it's soul. And Soulsville just doesn't have it.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Bring on the Comets
    VHS's tardy follow-up, Bring On The Comets, might as well have stayed in bed.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Black Holes & Revelations
    Give Muse credit for remaking itself over the years into a full-blown theatrical experience, and not just another echoing rock band. But that experience is, frankly, kind of shitty.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Hot Cakes
    With Hot Cakes-the group's third album, and first since reforming last year-the laughter has died. In its place is the sad wheeze of the last surviving party balloon slowly, listlessly deflating.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    United Nations of Sound
    Ashcroft himself is disappointingly meager. For a man with a true gift for epic pomposity, he's mostly dull here.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Murder of the Universe
    Overall this record requires a huge narrative commitment, with the payoff of a vomit coffin. Not worth it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Re-Arrange Us
    The Mates recapture a bit of brio of 'The Re-Arranger' and 'Help Help,' but the rest of Re-Arrange Us is only useful for putting the kids to sleep.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Revival
    Revival isn’t even interesting enough to warrant all of the critical beatdowns it’s taken in its short time in the world. Instead, it’s boring and predictable, which are greater threats to the Eminem legacy than anything else.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Howl
    Howl indulges the band's heretofore-dormant interest in country, gospel, and Delta blues, in an exercise that sounds about as exercise-y as music gets.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Twisted Tenderness
    The occasional brush with former glory, such as "Vivid" and the title track, isn't enough to make up for the eager-to-please inadequacies of the other material.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Weird Revolution
    Weird Revolution sounds dated and quaint, both in its "Pepper" rehashes ("Dracula From Houston," "The Shame Of Life") and in its halfhearted attempts at caustic shock ("Shit Like That") and misfit mission statements ("The Weird Revolution").
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Splinter
    The problem is that most of it is deadly dull.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Rock Action
    Even [producer Dave] Fridmann's ever-clever studio work can't make Rock Action interesting.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Auf Der Maur
    She never finds a way to distinguish one track from the next, or from the output of just about any '90s alt-rock also-ran.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    10,000 Hz Legend
    By trying to offer something for everyone, the mostly dull 10,000 Hz Legend has little to offer anyone.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Invincible
    Jackson has lived a bizarre train-wreck life of mystery and tragedy, but following such a lengthy absence, Invincible just reeks of desperation and aimlessness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Pole
    A stylistic side-step that trips and falls without making much of the tumble.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Gameface
    A mercifully brief running time (less than 50 minutes) and a few scattered moments of autobiographical storytelling help make Gameface marginally less disposable than its most recent predecessors.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Love, Shelby
    The disc's 10 tracks blur into a dispiriting, middle-of-the-road mishmash of lite pop, lite country, lite rock, and lite adult-contemporary.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Hotel
    An album that finds Moby half-remembering ideas for songs that are hard not to forget.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Low Kick And Hard Bop
    She mixes sloppy beat work with awkward singing that makes her songs feel like tossed-off indie pop.
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