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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    • 89 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    All Mirrors
    The music is gorgeous but feels labored over, like pottery lacquered with one too many layers of shellac. Hopefully Olsen will also still release her stripped-back take on All Mirrors, as it’s the dressing—not the songs themselves—that stumbles.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Birth of Violence
    With melodies that are stretched thin and simplistic lyrics that feel even more so next to the sophisticated arrangements, Birth Of Violence’s dark beauty is like standing outside watching the stars in winter: stark, beautiful, and a little numbing.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Norman Fucking Rockwell!
    As a mood piece, Norman Fucking Rockwell does an admirable job preserving Del Rey’s mystique while moving her sound forward.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Twelve Nudes
    The record is as raw as a scraped knee and more furious than a woman scorned, a brick through the window of our reactionary era that draws inspiration from the equally pissed-off first wave of punk rock.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lover
    As always, Lover is an album Swift made for her fans. But it also feels like a record she made for herself, unburdened by external expectations and her own past.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Thrashing thru the Passion
    It’s a productive scaling-down—the sound of a great rock band getting back to work. The Hold Steady achieves its classic-punk alchemy by balancing the powerful rock ’n’ roll mythmaking of guitarist Tad Kubler’s riffs with the conversational myth-puncturing of Finn’s lyrics, and that balance threatens to topple over if the songs venture into more grandiose or self-referential territory.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Center Won't Hold
    This may also be Sleater-Kinney’s lustiest album yet. Several of the album’s 11 songs are peppered with breathy sighs and ecstatic yelps, and it’s almost as if Brownstein is staring you directly in the eyes as she sings, “Let me defang you and defile you on the floor,” in “Bad Dance.” But this, too, has its political aspect. ... A stunning finale is another Sleater-Kinney specialty, and The Center Won’t Hold delivers with the devastating, disarming “Broken.”
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Big Day
    The Big Day is a rare bouquet on full display; a stunningly realized array of color, sound, and sensation that swallows the room. Any structure at risk of pop cliché finds new life through Chance, whose mastery of composition creates spins on existing musical archetypes like new synaptic grooves being carved out for the very first time.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Bandana
    The first record was a grower, gradually establishing itself as one of the great producer-emcee efforts of the young millennium, but Bandana seems designed to dazzle, to assert a joint legacy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Western Stars
    It’s a delight to hear the man summon the musical spirits of his past, but it’s all a bit overly tasteful and mannered to have the force as his usual work.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Flamagra
    The net effect is a host of sounds and voices being drawn to Flamagra, much as a Quincy Jones opus involved dozens of contributors, some famous, others known only by professional reputation. If it all sounds vaporous at times, or even predictable to listeners long familiar with Flying Lotus’ sound, then at least it represents his growth into a full-fledged record producer, someone capable of straight-up great songwriting as well as engagingly electronic funk.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    California Son
    Without the baggage of his political views--which is where the letter grade on this review comes from--California Son would be a worthy addition to a mostly stellar catalog, offering insight into a great singer and lyricist’s taste and breathing new life into mostly forgotten songs.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    I Am Easy to Find
    The National’s never been afraid to dial things down, but it’s rarely sounded as vulnerable as it does here--song after song, Dessner’s vibrant, moody arrangements serve to reflect Berninger’s precarious balance of hope and frustration.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Father of the Bride
    Father Of The Bride isn’t the shocking rebirth that might have been expected, given all of the information that trickled out about it over the past six years. Instead, it’s just far enough from expectations to surprise, but close enough to remain true. It’s a little messy and a little weird (and, again, a little long), but exactly the right record for Vampire Weekend right now.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cuz I Love You
    Perhaps the most striking thing about Cuz I Love You is its vulnerability.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Titanic Rising
    Rado’s opulent production gives the experience of listening to Titanic Rising—particularly on headphones—the feeling of being enveloped in sound, insulated from the outside world like an astronaut looking down at the earth through layers of atmosphere. The lyrics on Titanic Rising certainly contribute to the album’s daydream quality.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    My Finest Work Yet
    he 10 tracks that make up My Finest Work Yet feel even more present, more in the moment, while never sacrificing any musicianship. Paul Butler’s production makes a gorgeous chorus out of the potential cacophony of a roomful of instruments and voices. The arrangements are as precise as ever, the track order gradually revealing a narrative that includes wrongdoings, incitement, and action.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Weezer [Black Album]
    The cynical read of this would be that Cuomo is both hugely calculating and deeply inept at performing those calculations, but the experiments and strange asides on The Black Album don’t come across as trend-chasing so much as genuinely eclectic. ... Maybe it’s more important that Weezer’s idiosyncrasies feel honest again.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    thank u, next
    A leap forward in the way it reshapes her R&B-inflected pop into something sleeker and more adventurous. ... Thank U, Next skillfully toys with the tension between universal sentiments and deeply personal confessions.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Assume Form
    Assume Form casts Blake’s prior albums in a new light, as does the once-secretive young maestro’s new openness about his life and his struggles. What sounded like someone trying to dive down into the inkiest depths of his soul turns out to have been someone trying to swim up out of them.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Remind Me Tomorrow
    Its 10 songs are much more focused on how their protagonists are dealing right now, in the present, with triumphs, traumas, and new beginnings. This approach leads to rich songs with lyrics probing the liminal space where resolution isn’t clear—but emotional reactions crackle on the surface like tingling electricity.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
    Thoughtful, strange, spiritual, immersive, rewarding upon repeated and thoughtful engagement.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Mandy [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    It marks a turning point in his musical style, an embrace of the lush and layered as well as the heavy and metallic. Realizing that, and thinking about what could have come next, makes his death all the more tragic.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Some Rap Songs
    Well, it can be [dour]. But it’s also ecstatic. Make no mistake: This is an album by one of the best rappers alive, elbowing slant rhymes and assonance into his disses (“Please do abort, I could feel when you’re forcin’ it / Still in a bore riddim”) and exhaling those singularly oblong sentences of his (“Galaxy’s the distance between us by Christmas,” he describes one foundering relationship).
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    E=MC2
    It's skillful and winsome enough that the other hits it spins off will stay pleasant, if not revelatory.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Black Velvet
    Even as Black Velvet occasionally fails to gel as a cohesive album--it is, after all, essentially a B-sides collection--it succeeds as a tribute to an authentic talent.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Suspiria [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Its ballet scenes are climactic, cathartic centerpieces, dramatically illustrating the power of sound to move, to manipulate, to conjure. Yorke’s score is a shrine to that dark power.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Darkness Rains
    Musically, the group’s sound is looser and more ferocious than some of its contemporaries, embracing atonal saxophone à la X-Ray Spex and swaggering scuzz-rock riffs along with the psychedelic guitar, sinister organ, and heavy, pounding drums you’d expect from a garage-rock revival band.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tha Carter V
    Like any fifth installment in a series, you’re going to need to care about those early entries to care about this one, and, at 90 minutes, it’s way more than anyone needs. But the highlights are so many--Mannie Fresh reunion “Start This Shit Off Right,” gonzo Kendrick collab “Mona Lisa,” the mixtape-style freakout of “Let It Fly,” heartbreaking coda “Let It All Work Out”--that you sort of give him a pass on the duds.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Electric Messiah
    The band’s eighth studio album towers alongside its best work, offering both peerless, full-speed-ahead blitzkriegs (like the title track, dedicated to late Motörhead frontman Lemmy, a kindred spirit in grizzled delivery and powerhouse shredding) and slower, heavier epics like the 10-plus-minute “Sanctioned Annihilation.”
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