The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Getaway
    The tame, disco-fried band they’ve become is the only group you’ll hear on the second half of the album, and the instrumental moments that provide redemption wear thin as Kiedis dampens their purpose.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Ash & Ice
    Ash & Ice is an incremental creative step in the right direction for The Kills. But the uneven execution demonstrates once again that the band’s undeniable live chemistry and charisma doesn’t always translate perfectly to its studio work.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Kidsticks
    In the end, Kidsticks’ raw material is sound, and Orton’s attention to detail is impressive. But this adventurous approach could use a bit more structure and cohesion next time around.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Are You Serious
    Unfortunately, the highlights here are exceptions rather than the rule.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Can Do Anything
    Too often, solid tracks like “Foothills”--never mind its ridiculous and hilarious rhymes like “I’ll take lunch with my coworkers / But after work I just go berzerkers”--are lost among the album’s wackier, ambitious forays.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Music For Listening To Music To
    While the record is undoubtedly pretty, it also feels defanged.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    This Unruly Mess I've Made
    It’s hard to think of a more apt title for this album than This Unruly Mess I’ve Made. Listeners can find everything that made Macklemore popular in the first place, mixed with everything that lead to the intense backlash against him two years ago.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Don't You
    The music rarely has room to breathe underneath all the echo, reverb, doubling of vocals, instruments, and synth-heavy swirls of sound. It doesn’t help matters that the lyrics often succumb to the temptation of pop-song cliché.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Adore Life
    It’s a shame that so much of the Savages album feels like a songwriting rut, because the record’s lone moment of transcendence, “Adore,” also stamps out a repeating coda at its end.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Purpose
    The album also takes itself so seriously that too often it inadvertently suppresses exactly what made Bieber so appealing in the first place.
    • 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.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz
    Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz ends up a collection of fleeting engaging moments sandwiched between a slew of half-formed musical ideas.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cranekiss
    Cranekiss is going for hypnotic, but too often ends up narcotizing.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Morning World
    The album skates from tumbling tracks like “Pink” and “Morning World”—which are reminiscent of the slightly math indie-rock sound of the solid Polyvinyl band Aloha—to a jam like “It Starts At The Water,” which features static washes floating in and out of the atmosphere while an underground buzz burrows beneath a simple, chugging beat.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    VII: Sturm und Drang
    A generic album.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Mobile Orchestra
    Nothing on Mobile Orchestra indicates he’s found his new muse, but it reveals a well of passion for that discovery.
    • 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Monsanto Years
    It’s a collection of songs that winds up sounding like it could have been a series of blog posts or even tweets.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Grand Romantic
    Grand Romantic often feels so preoccupied with grandiose gestures that it loses sight of the little details that in the past have made Ruess’ music so memorable.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wilder Mind
    With Wilder Mind, Mumford & Sons have morphed from a band that’s easy to either love or hate into a band that’s hard to care much about at all.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Cherry Bomb
    For all their blown-out abrasion, though, Tyler’s harder tracks never dazzle the way West’s industrial experiments did. They merely cloy.
    • 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Piece by Piece
    Piece By Piece sounds energized during these looser moments; it’s hard to shake the feeling the album would’ve been far better had it taken a few more risks.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Happens Next
    This record foments no curiosity, just indifference--and for a band built on commanding attention for its politicized music, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    36 Seasons
    Even at its best, however, 36 Seasons lacks the maniacal forward drive that propels Ghostface’s most electrifying works.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Classics
    Losing something in translation is the potential downside of interpreting beloved standards, and while She & Him are lovingly faithful performers, Classics ends up as just pleasant background music.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hood Billionaire
    Hood Billionaire is an overlong 16 tracks of Ross luxuriating in his excesses, including the most expensive productions this side of Watch The Throne.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Seeds
    Seeds reflects a band unconcerned with challenging its listeners this time and more interested in delivering a complete collection of competent, mark-bearing songs for the sake of proudly stating the existence of TV On The Radio in 2014.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lost on the River
    The New Basement Tapes is a mostly pleasant collection of sleek and sometimes forgettable tunes.
Page: