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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    • 75 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Lamb
    In many ways, The Lamb is a step forward for West, but here’s hoping its cleaned-up approach doesn’t end up reining her in too much.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    AAARTH
    Aaarth is the band’s most off-kilter collection of anthems yet, working in tribal drumming, stuttering and overlapping vocal tracks, and some of the Middle Eastern influences Led Zeppelin famously tried on for size when feeling adventurous. Admirable though the experimentation can be, The Joy Formidable still hits its sweetest spot aiming for the nosebleeds.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Iridescence
    The group’s music is all over the place, often gloriously so. The temptation has always been to pick out best tracks from these records, and Iridescence has some clear standouts.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dancing Queen
    Dancing Queen pulls off a perfect balance of frothy effervescence and resonant emotional depth.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    MITH
    The musical spaciness only enhances his already-considerable dignity and the gravitas of his songwriting, making Mith a powerful, prophetic collection.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Art of Doubt
    While album standout “Risk” delivers a slick and insistent groove with lyrics about trying to cut through layers of emotional distance--too many tracks find themselves lacking the enticing hooks that fuel so much of Metric’s appeal.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Cry Pretty
    Here the bluesy “Drinking Alone” transports you to a smoky bar where two lonely strangers find each other above their beer bottles, while “The Bullet” is a strong and surprising anti-gun-violence message from a country star. But it’s Underwood’s considerable resilience that shines through here.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Piano & A Microphone 1983
    Piano & A Microphone 1983 verges on postmortem voyeurism, but it’s also a unique insight into the way a notoriously private artist’s creative impulses fired.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Chris
    Chris more than anything revels in fluid identities--whether gender, personality, mood, or otherwise--and the way they free people from expectations and limits. By extension, this frees up Christine And The Queens from musical conventions, and propels the group to the precipice of greatness.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Room 25
    From beginning to end, Room 25 is a testimony to the power of telling your story and the hope that can be found in doing so without apology. Like hearing the chorus of an old spiritual or having a long conversation with a close friend, each song is intimate in a restorative way. An unquestionable balm for uncertain times like these, this album announces Noname’s lyrical coming-of-age.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Moon 2
    Moon 2 plays more like a collection of standout tracks than the kind of album that needs to be taken in from beginning to end, but it’s effective all the same. Nearly every song could be slotted into a playlist at a club without screwing up the flow, and that’s an achievement in itself.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    True Meanings
    Forty-plus years into his career, the Modfather has once again ripped up his own playbook--and released a singular album.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Double Negative
    The result is fearless and impressive, but often lacking in the kind of inviting musicality that encourages repeat listening. It’s a headphones record that holds its audience at a distance: admirably fascinating, but rarely addictive.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Render Another Ugly Method
    All told, Render Another Ugly Method is a transitory step for Mothers, one that’s equally messy and compelling, showing that Leschper’s voice as a songwriter and singer remains her own, no matter how many effects she puts on top of it.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    And Nothing Hurt
    Nothing Hurt is the band distilled into its most affecting essence.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Solo Piano III
    While those showier pieces grab attention on first listen, the more meditative ones slowly sink their hooks in, too.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    In the Blue Light
    It would be easy to get bogged down in treating Blue Light as a compare/contrast exercise, but what’s most impressive about is the way that it sounds more or less of a piece as its own record.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    New Hymn to Freedom
    New Hymn To Freedom, the English trio’s second album, is a remarkably lucid 45 minutes of spontaneous composition, a civilization of sound and emotion conjured from nothing more than the in-the-moment interplay between keyboardist Luke Abbott, saxophonist Jack Wylie, and drummer Lawrence Pike.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fixed Ideals
    The only downside is a sense of fussiness that suffuses some of the more heavily produced tracks, a slightly stultifying vibe that saps a bit of urgency and vitality from the songs, making them feel too precious, as though the music was hermetically sealed to prevent anything too loose or raw from breaking free. Still, it’s another set of engaging and mostly excellent songs from one of the U.K.’s most compelling rock trios, and well worth the time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Magus
    It’s frontman Bryan Funck’s bilious self-reflection that rescues Magus from its occasionally oppressive, repetitive crunch—even if his own introspection, delivered in a swamp-thing rasp, is a little harder to decipher than Cobain’s ever was.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Indigo
    Emotionally rich and full of depth, Indigo is easily Wild Nothing’s best album to date.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Bloom
    Appropriately, Bloom’s beauty and gifts reveal themselves gradually over time.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Big Red Machine
    With much to toy with, Vernon and Dessner create an unhurried warmth that makes a song like “Forest Green” so moving and gives Big Red Machine the feeling of a soft rainbow light cast from a crystal in the sun.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hunter
    More than just grafting on its politics and themes of liberation, Hunter embodies them by capturing a freer, more complex--and queerer--view of its creator. Anna Calvi is on the loose.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Negro Swan
    He’s given us not just a great album, but a piece of himself that stands as a whole truth that need not be escaped, but rather, treasured.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    KIN [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    With its songs that loom like smoldering towers and enveloping hazes of electronic programming, KIN, the band’s score for Jonathan and Josh Baker’s apocalyptic pursuit film of the same name, splits the difference between the average late-period Mogwai record and its previous film work, and when it dodges the temptation toward the histrionic.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Go to School
    It’s the kind of complicated release that rewards repeated listens, as the story of a disaffected chimp translates into songs about the loneliness and longing for acceptance that linger even as high school fades away.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dance on the Blacktop
    While much of the album intermixes the gritty and the gorgeous with all the economy of an Anton Corbijn photo, there are moments of open-hearted purity, too. But unlike just about every other band on earth, NOTHING is at its best when it closes itself off and spins into oblivion.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Marauder
    Like a wild party, the album gets looser and less coherent as it goes along. Still, fans should be pleased to hear that Marauder shifts the group’s focus while still remaining recognizably Interpol.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Sweetener
    Confident and empowered, Sweetener illustrates once again that Grande is an unparalleled pop chameleon.
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