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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    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Anywhere I Lay My Head
    She isn't a traditionally talented vocalist, which in itself can be fine. But she isn't much of an interpreter, either; she brings the flat, throaty tones of the heavily drugged to songs that beg for passion.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Solar Power
    Solar Power’s a little messy and rough around the edges, and features a Lorde now moving on from her youth and wanting to keep some things to herself. In short: It’s just like being 24.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Walk With Love and Death
    Overall Love isn’t arresting enough to draw listeners in without a visual component. Along with a handful of other Melvins albums, A Walk With Love & Death seems destined to be overshadowed by the band’s stronger output.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The "W"
    Although roughly half as long as Wu-Tang Forever, The W is every bit as erratic and overreaching. If Forever was a great single album hidden in a messy two-disc set, The W feels like a good six-song EP nestled inside an uneven album that seems to take its cues from the half-assed weirdness of ODB's N**** Please.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Live on I-5
    While the album features respectable performances of many of the band's biggest hits-even a diminished Soundgarden can't muffle the power of the almighty "Outshined"-Live On I-5 should have stayed in the dark hole it's been buried in for 15 years.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everybody
    “Amiable” is sort of the operant word for Everybody, which, like Joey Badass’ All-Amerikkan Bada$$, strives to create a trenchant pop-rap polemic for the Trump era, but unlike that record—or any other record ever, for that matter—frequently gets lost in minutes-long spoken-word segues in which Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks as a benevolent god about the nature of self-worth.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    TM:103 Hustlerz Ambition
    There's nothing about TM 103 that suggests Jeezy has any interest in moving on.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Now You Know
    Duds and semi-duds aside, Now You Know holds together okay, with plenty of high points, mostly huddled together in the first half.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Family Jewels
    Needless to say, that overbearing need to prove herself just ends up being exhausting. But the lady doth protest too much: There are hints of the darker, weirder dance-floor diva she wants to be hiding beneath the avant-garde pretensions of tracks such as “Shampain,” “I Am Not A Robot,” “Guilty,” and “Oh No!”
    • 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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Radioactive
    For an uncomfortable seven-song stretch, the rapper seems so alienated from his own album.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Six Cups of Rebel
    Six Cups seems determined to resurrect the bad decisions of pop's past.
    • 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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Death to False Metal
    In execution, though, Death To False Metal is frustratingly hit-or-miss.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Earth To The Dandy Warhols
    They were better as clever corporate whores.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
    Nightmare
    Avenged Sevenfold continues to sound like five different bands on every album, none of them particularly good.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Drastic Fantastic
    Tunstall tries hard to stand out with moments of guitar fuzz and lyrics that occasionally border on clever, but Drastic is ultimately little more than pleasant background noise.
    • 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.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Threes
    Where Amputechture is directionless but at least clever about masking its influences, Threes is directionless and completely predictable.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Asleep In The Bread Aisle
    This isn’t a horrible album, just a really boring one. What a disappointment.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Ultraviolence
    Ultraviolence moves away from more pop-friendly territory and instead languishes in a sleepy, sad aesthetic.
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