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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    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Alpha Games
    Alpha Games is the sound of a band trying to reignite its former flame, while simultaneously digging its heels so deep into unfamiliar territory, it can’t even reach the lighter.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Skinty Fia
    More than anything, however, Skinty Fia’s plodding progression and miserabilist overtones come across like cut-rate versions of Bauhaus’ chilly gothic vibes and the aforementioned Joy Division’s claustrophobic dirge, only without the benefit of the latter group’s inimitable basslines.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Crash
    Overall, CRASH’s crystal clear production and iron-clad writing has all of the force behind it to propel the album into the stratosphere. But instead of putting the pedal to the metal in pursuit of a high camp sound, it stays in the slow lane.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Extreme Witchcraft
    The songs on Extreme Witchcraft that don’t work simply blend into the background. ... Moments that do work—and there are a handful—combine Everett’s peerless gift for melody and pacing. ... Ultimately, however, there isn’t much in the way of subtext here.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Donda
    More than half of this album is complete filler. No one’s missing “Okok,” “24,” or “Remote Control.” A soulful choir is not enough to save “Never Again.” On this record, there is none of the production genius we’ve come to expect from West. ... And that’s the thing that’s missing most from this record, with all its myriad problems: No one edits West anymore, not even himself. And that’s a damn shame.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Planet Her
    While the pleasant-enough arrangements may make for an effective summer record, Planet Her lacks the originality Doja made her name on, and no amount of stunning and spacey visuals (as in the music video for “Need To Know”) can make the songs better than they are.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Chemtrails Over the Country Club
    “Tulsa Jesus Freak” is arguably closest to the Lana Del Rey longtime fans know and love, and it’s no surprise that it was written in 2019, around the time NFR! came out. “Yosemite” is another highlight, a stunning number with Del Rey’s vocals at their best. But most songs on Chemtrails don’t stand out. They blend together in their delicateness.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Notes on a Conditional Form
    Notes On A Conditional Form feels less like a 1975 album than it does a hodgepodge collection of songs by a band trying on various sonic identities to see what fits. If anything, to understand and appreciate the record, don’t approach it as an album-length statement from one band, but as a personalized, diverse playlist curated by a favorite human tastemaker.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Changes
    Artists can certainly grow up and mature without losing their edge or creative spark. Changes, however, is ultimately a transitional record that finds Bieber navigating how to reconcile adulthood with pop stardom—and discovering that, at least in his case, this merger is a tricky one.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Slow Rush
    Parker’s long-awaited Currents follow-up, The Slow Rush, isn’t quite as interesting as its predecessors in terms of songwriting and production, and this gap makes Parker’s lyrical weaknesses more challenging to ignore.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Wanderer
    There’s nothing inherently wrong about Wanderer being mannered--but, unfortunately, the album’s subtlety is also often its undoing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Egypt Station
    This is very much a Paul McCartney solo album: the uneven product of compulsive songwriting that includes several delightful songs, several terrible ones, and a lot in between. It wouldn’t be fair to say he sounds out of ideas, because this formula describes a whole lot of his non-Beatles albums going back decades.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tangerine Reef
    The record captures all the noodling self-indulgence that makes the psych-poppers such a maddeningly inconsistent live act. But Tangerine Reef is an incomplete object in this form: It’s accompaniment, not feature presentation, the drowsy soundtrack to the iridescent undersea visuals of Australian filmmakers Coral Morphologic.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Joy
    It’s barely over 30 minutes long but brims with musical ideas, including several sets of interconnected songs that push Segall and Presley to their weirdest and most tuneless.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    No Sounds Are Out of Bounds
    Overall it’s a baggy mixed bag of dub grooves and warmed-over house beats, dominated by an exhausting tower of babbling dialogue samples that, like No Sounds itself, rarely have much to say.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No Shame
    This is a prettier, more heartfelt record than Sheezus, but only a slightly better one.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    V.
    Momentum is lacking throughout much of the record, as comatose tracks like “Already Gone” drone on with little to grab the ear. Thankfully, the band perks up again during the closing stretch.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tell Me How You Really Feel
    Tell Me How You Really Feel is a disappointing and muted record that never quite lives up to its potential.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino
    The album feels unmoored and even plodding due to a lack of structure.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Dove
    Shaving a few of the middling cuts like “Heartstrings” and “Stars Align” would have helped the album overall, as Belly’s comeback songs runs together in a cranky sea of relationship angst.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Critical Equation
    Dr. Dog’s music is usually far more engaging and inventive, so hopefully Critical Equation’s monotonous tedium is a mere blip.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Eat the Elephant
    That nothing here much resembles the band’s heyday hits is theoretically admirable; this is not the work of a lazy nostalgia act. But as end-of-the-world music goes, it’s more whimper than bang.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beautiful Thing
    Yo-yoing of tempos and moods aside, whether it is on the stripped-down “A Hit Song” or the jerky, David Byrne-esque “Oh Baby,” Taylor sounds pretty emotional, a sadness underscoring his signature vocals throughout.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Smalls Change (Meditations Upon Ageing)
    Shearer’s vocals, especially on a four-minute-plus opus like the title track, unfortunately demonstrate why he was never that band’s lead singer, detracting from another promising rock opera like “Faith No More.” For die-hard Tap fans only.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    My Dear Melancholy, [EP]
    On Melancholy, the Starboy wallows in heartbreak. It can be a bit tedious, at least until French producer/DJ Gesaffelstein shows up for “Never There” and “Hurt You,” which plays like a two-part song.
    • 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Used Future
    Without the stone-age shredding that was once this band’s life purpose, Used Future is just nostalgic affectation, with the added anti-bonus of pushing frontman John D. Cronise’s Ozzy-lite enunciations and corny lyrics--like those of the vixen-fearing cautionary tale “Deadly Nightshade”--into the unflattering limelight.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Automata I
    The first half of Automata (part two arrives in June) is almost too straightforward, offering plenty of what we’ve heard before from these Raleigh space cadets: the folkish plucking and mad noodling, the burps of intergalactic synth, the way a song like “House Organ” closes the safe distance separating Pink Floyd from Cannibal Corpse.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    AmeriKKKant
    AmeriKKKant is cathartically enjoyable, but it ultimately feels as inspiring--and effective--as tweeting Trump-Putin memes at Fox News.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Drift
    Where other records by The Men showed they could pull from someone else’s playbook and make something their own, Drift’s hodgepodge of styles ultimately makes The Men sound like they couldn’t settle on what they wanted to do.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crooked Shadows
    Of all his very short albums, this is his shortest, and where he once packed his songs with knotty chord changes and shout-along confessions, here he tends toward conventional structures and lowest-common-denominator couplets.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shape the Future
    With so much New Age nattering, here more than ever your enjoyment will depend on your own zeal for enlightenment and/or bong rips.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mania
    Since around 2007’s Infinity On High, the key to enjoying Fall Out Boy has been letting go of their pop-punk past and embracing the pop band that always hid in plain sight. That was a chore on American Beauty/American Psycho, but less so on Mania. As endorsements go, that’s pretty qualified.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The House
    Maine turns in some of his best songs yet, with “Country,” “Now The Water,” and “Find Me” all showcasing his skill as a crooner, but around its midpoint, the album starts to sag. The House’s three interludes feel less like connective tissue and more like unfinished filler, and the album’s back half ends up seeming rote.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    No One Ever Really Dies
    It’s a weird fucking album, in other words, neither as crowd-pleasing as it should be nor as experimental as it wants to be. The drums sound great, though, and the Rihanna track is as good as N.E.R.D. gets.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Visitor
    Young and the youngsters he’s playing with here sound like they wrote and jammed these songs out in a few days, relying on the strength of his sentiment to carry them through. But a jam session with some cranky speak-singing on it doesn’t make for a great album, and it’s not going to make any new converts, unfortunately--either to Neil Young’s politics or his music.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Who Built the Moon?
    It’s like an extremely amped-up version of Oasis, but the excesses sway from impressive to taxing. Often the effort to be interesting just comes off as nonsensical cacophony.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Thrill of It All
    To date, the only real distinction of Smith’s music is his voice--and though he’s a talented singer, even that’s dulled by songs this predictably vanilla.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Pacific Daydream
    The Weezer frontman continues to tap that increasingly dry well, his dusty lovelorn longings for perfect summer nights now sounding completely formulaic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Ogilala
    No matter what he does to it, that voice is still unmistakably Billy, and while Ogilala gives it some genuine moments of quietly affecting beauty, after 11 beatless tracks laden with burdensome titles (“Amarinthe,” “Antietam,” “Shiloh,” “Half-Life Of An Autodidact”), yet light on memorable melodies or any lyrics that match the frankness of the setting, by album’s end, you long to hear it over a wall of guitars again.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Younger Now
    Cyrus’ voice has scarcely been more expressive, and there’s no question that she means what she sings. That said, you might long for a more inspired metaphor (or eight).
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gemini
    This is the same old Macklemore, stuffing all of his songs with drop-out catchphrases and horn solos and minutes-long American Idol-style belting, all starry-eyed and corny in the same way that, say, the music in a Broadway musical is.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Wonderful Wonderful
    That lack of any real direction or purpose colors all of Wonderful Wonderful, a record that, even by The Killers’ standards, boasts little depth beneath its glossy surface.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hiss Spun
    Hiss Spun is a full-on sludge-metal extravaganza, never content to go slow and heavy when it could be going slower and heavier. The bombast is overwhelming, and while there’s an admirable zeal to her drive for making almost every second as intense as possible, it begins to get numbing.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Black Mile to the Surface
    There’s some beautiful songwriting here, but it’s buried beneath the smudges of its producers.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    New Facts Emerge
    It’s not bad--it’s certainly not an Ersatz GB, or Are You Are Missing Winner (though its half-assed cover art certainly comes close). But now that I’ve written it up, off it will go into the pile, never to be played.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Universal High
    At points, Universal High finds a hook and rides it somewhere new, but for the most part it’s content to time-travel to safe harbors, layering clean, jazzy guitar over simple grooves or dabbling in yacht rock.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Eucalyptus
    While Eucalyptus is undoubtedly intriguing, it’s only occasionally enjoyable as music.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    LANY
    LANY’s ambition is admirable—and this debut will sound great blasted at parties all summer long--but its pleasures end up feeling superficial and ephemeral.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    BOOMIVERSE
    On his third solo record, Boomiverse, Big Boi chooses a path of cheerful irrelevance. The only possible thing to say about it is that you will like it if you like his other solo records and would also like a third album exactly like them.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Woodstock
    While all that tinkering and aiming for the center have reached their payoff with the most commercially viable record of the group’s career, something of what made Portugal. The Man unique feels like it’s been lost.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Crack-Up
    The band has always prided itself on ornateness, and in that sense, Crack-Up is its richest release to date. But more often than not, all that fussiness robs it of any impact.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Relaxer
    In its eight songs, Relaxer feels as though it covers almost as many musical moods and genres. That overload, combined with its stylistic hairpin turns, leave one feeling queasy and slightly confused, lessening the impact of its more successful cuts.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Planetarium
    It generally just plays like a wash of ideas without much of a through-line, despite its galaxy-driven conceit.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Wolves
    Wolves is somehow even more polished, almost glossy to a fault with its compression and ladled-on sweetening of the distortion. At times, it veers dangerously close to latter-day Metallica.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Ti Amo
    It’s gorgeously produced and does a bang-up job of updating the sounds that it’s clearly so enamored of. It’s just not the kind of album—unlike Wolfgang Amadeus or 2006’s It’s Never Been Like That—that feels particularly urgent. Maybe it’s a pleasant diversion for band and audience, which is fine—it’s just never much more than that.
    • 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Teenage Emotions
    He is at his most interesting on the few occasions where he slips into a sort of uncanny valley of pop music--a bizarro fantasia that he arrives at honestly, like a less satirical PC Music.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Shake the Shudder
    There’s no reason not to throw on Shake The Shudder and dance it out, but like many fun-yet-hazy late nights, it doesn’t leave much of an impression afterward.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    White Knight
    Mostly, White Knight sounds like an album that was probably a lot more fun to make than it is to listen to.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    I Can Spin a Rainbow
    “The Sun Still Shines,” suggests that Palmer and Ka-Spel should have really focused their energies on composing interstitial music for a stage production.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    8
    Too many songs get halfway there, starting promisingly, then petering out quickly.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Whiteout Conditions
    In the immediate, Whiteout Conditions might leave you a little cold.
    • 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
    • 58 Critic Score
    Silver Eye
    Too much of Silver Eye keeps something back. But if “Zodiac Black” signals the next step in the evolution of Goldfrapp, maybe that reluctance will eventually prove to be worth it.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Silver/Lead
    On these songs [“Playing Harp For The Fishes,” “Short Elevated Period,” and “Diamonds In Cups”], Silver/Lead strikes the perfect balance of moody intrigue and saw-toothed aggression. Unfortunately, the rest of the album isn’t calibrated quite as precisely, which makes for an uneven listening experience.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Emperor of Sand
    Emperor Of Sand is both progressive and regressive, as Mastodon takes two different parts of its past and slaps them together. And while it occasionally works, more often than not Mastodon just sounds confused.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In Mind
    Pleasant sonic wallpaper that unfortunately doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hot Thoughts
    Spoon is a master of hooky songwriting, but Hot Thoughts seems so bent on undermining it that the band undersells itself. Maybe Hot Thoughts is an apt title after all--it’s got great ideas, but the execution is lacking.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Yours Conditionally
    Even with some outstanding singles, the album as a whole finds the group somewhere between its comfort zone and a confident next step, with many of the songs bleeding forgettably into one another.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    I'm Only Dreaming
    It’s a pleasant record, but an awfully safe and unchallenging one.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Voids
    While an album of ’80s-styled pop played by a band with a penchant for fretboard theatrics could be thrilling, VOIDS stumbles more than it should.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Zombies on Broadway
    In sum, Zombies On Broadway compiles some worthwhile ruminations and life lessons, but McMahon needs to search a little harder for compelling ways to package them.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    After the Party
    While The Menzingers’ best work has always been about grappling with personality flaws in the interest of becoming a better person, After The Party only offers surface-level reflections, to the detriment of the band itself.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    He's Got the Whole This Land Is Your Land in His Hands
    These songs would never be mistaken for any other band—by that same token, it’s often so obtuse it feels like it’s not meant for anyone but its creators.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Echolocation
    Unfortunately, about half of the album’s 12 tracks could be described as comfortable, safe songwriting without the exploration that makes the band shine.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hamburg Demonstrations
    There is the sense here that he’s trying to get away from himself, to grasp at problems that loom larger than those in his personal life. It feels necessary, if not particularly memorable.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hardwired...To Self-Destruct
    Hardwired is never embarrassing in the way of St. Anger or Lulu, but it’s rarely revelatory either. It’s not so much that Metallica is incapable of writing a good song in 2016; it’s just a little too complacent to write a truly great one.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jessica Rabbit
    Sleigh Bells has grown up plenty since their 2009 lightning-strike arrival, but perhaps that strike is starting to feel like more of a distant memory than it should.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Honeymoon on Mars
    On most of Honeymoon On Mars, the band seems resigned to the apocalypse and modern society’s devolution, resulting in a shockingly limp record overflowing with empty bluster.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Head Carrier
    Unlike Indie Cindy, Head Carrier knows exactly what it is. Whether that’s something we’ll remember is another discussion entirely.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    AIM
    AIM sounds like a field recording made in the middle of a bustling Sri Lankan market: colorful, flavorful, and most of all, noisy. These inescapable Eastern vibes prove to be a blessing, uniting an otherwise fragmented album.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Endless
    For the most part, the musicality--much sparser than the maximalist sonic feasts of his earlier work--still holds the same synesthetic power of the past, even for those who don’t claim to have the ability to see sounds.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    One Day All of This Won't Matter Any More
    The album as a whole leaves a blurry impression, not a crisp memory.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Over There That Way
    Over There That Way’s pandering play for indie-pop acceptance makes it a more leisurely listen. But, with no need to periodically clean a little heavy-metal grit out of the ears, the album just doesn’t demand much attention.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    California
    California is the sound of Blink-182 desperately trying to remain relevant by outsourcing its creativity.
    • 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.
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