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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    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything, Everything
    To its credit, Live: Everything, Everything does a good job displaying the group's qualities that set it apart from the strictly DJ-and-DAT set.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With Ghost
    This slow, hazy, head-in-the-clouds music has a way of leaving sonic cobwebs long after it's over, the melodies lingering like distant memories.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Confessions of St. Ace
    St. Ace is as quotable as it is catchy, with production that stays just on the safe side of lush and a sound that's eager to win the audience Harding has never quite found.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Ecleftic 2 Sides II a Book
    Even when Jean missteps, as on the heavy-handed "Diallo," he missteps in the most interesting way possible, pushing his music into weird and exciting directions that work more often than not.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Menace
    It's hard to imagine Elastica's fans being patient or loyal enough to care much either way about The Menace, though it's artistically solid enough to warrant consideration.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Public Domain: Songs From the Wild Land
    Alvin's approach acknowledges the haunting quality that traipsing through history can evince; Public Domain is like a photo album of ghosts, where the images are recognizable but occupying some other plane.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Art Official Intelligence (Mosaic Thump)
    But while packed with great songs--"The Art Of Getting Jumped" and "All Good?" also stand out--AOI is inconsistent, undermined by battle raps that feel limp and overly familiar coming from artists of De La Soul's stature. It doesn't help that the production tends to be weak and colorless, particularly when compared to the Technicolor vividness once provided by longtime collaborator Prince Paul.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fragments of Freedom
    The disc flirts with dozens of styles, with so much diversity from track to track that the album never quite builds up artistic momentum. But several moments are more than worthy of the band's legacy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
    An 800-pound gorilla of winning, eclectic rock 'n' roll.... Thirteen Tales may be the most joyous, instantly likable rock record you'll hear this year.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rancid [2000]
    A refreshing eardrum-blaster...
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I'm Lonely (And I Love It) [EP]
    Features Merritt doing what he does best: writing songs that are smart, funny, literate, and far catchier than anything on commercial radio.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    2000 BC
    The production is disappointingly uneven... The lack of song structure is also problematic, but Canibus invests his rhymes with such dark humor, vivid imagery, and controlled passion that his lack of thematic ambition is forgivable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mad for Sadness
    A surprisingly strong representation of the group's slow, sad appeal.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alone With Everybody
    There's a lot to like about Alone With Everybody, and a lot to take in. Most of these busily layered tracks exceed five minutes, and most outstay their welcome.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Rising Tide
    Another remarkable, evolutionary chapter in the stormy history of one of rock's best young bands.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Faith and Courage
    Its first single, "No Man's Woman"... contains much of what makes O'Connor's music so compelling: tight songwriting, music that borrows from traditions both antique and contemporary, and a voice that can switch from fragile to fierce in the span of a graceful note. As goes the single, so goes most of the album...
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Moon & Antarctica
    A sort of concept album about cold and distant places--creepy sound effects and odd nods to science and space abound--these 15 songs rarely settle into one place for long, opening with the characteristically potent "3rd Planet" before veering off into weird cacophony, jarring interludes, mellow meanderings, and general tunelessness.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Quality Control
    In the hands of a lesser group, such retro affectations would be little more than a clever gimmick... In the hands of Jurassic 5's four gifted rappers and two enormously promising DJs and producers, however, it's a brilliant musical strategy that draws on the energy and enthusiasm of the old school to take hip-hop in new, exciting, unexpected directions. A flat-out great full-length debut.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Elephant Shoe
    It's some of the most depressing music ever made, and unlike The Cure you can't even dance to it, but that appears to be the point.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Transcendental Blues
    Extending his winning streak to five albums, he's become a paragon of quality and musical honesty.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant
    It makes good on Belle And Sebastian's urge for diversity while sticking to the transcendent pop that made its name.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mermaid Avenue Vol. II
    A worthy successor to the original, MA2 is another inspired reminder of Guthrie's relevance.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Silence Is Sexy
    Silence Is Sexy is yet another collection of pointed and intriguing meditations (in German and English) on love, life, poetry, and metaphysics, with part-time Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld's creaky grumble drifting in and out of Goth territory.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Platform
    Platform would benefit from greater lyrical diversity, and it suffers from moments of monotony and inertia, but it's a promising debut from a group that should only improve with time.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP
    Mathers is frequently brilliant and unique, if extremely flawed.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wasp Star (Apple Venus, Pt. 2)
    One of the most unassuming, instantly pleasing efforts of XTC's career.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All Hands On The Bad One
    Song for song, this could be its best album.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bachelor No. 2 (or, the last remains of the dodo)
    An imperfect collection of remarkable music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Discovery of a World Inside the Moone
    At once infectious and challenging, complex and direct, The Discovery Of A World Inside The Moone represents the new standard for those seeking to carry the torch lit by the Beatles and Beach Boys.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Noise Made By People
    Broadcast's strange mix of electric keyboards, sampled strings, soundtrack chic, and Trish Keenan's coolly regulated vocals offering hypnotic chill-out music for the new century.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good Looking Blues
    Good Looking Blues marks only a subtle advancement over its predecessors. The songs are a little too similar to Laika's Sounds Of The Satellites, and therefore not terribly radical, but that just gives everyone else a chance to catch up.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Figure 8
    A strong collection of lush, densely arranged power-pop and inimitably intimate ballads?
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dongs of Sevotion
    Recording with a small band that includes John McEntire (Tortoise, The Sea And Cake) on drums, Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Isotope 217) on guitar, and Matt Lux (Isotope 217) on bass, Callahan has created a surprisingly accessible and enjoyable pastiche of what makes him tick.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gung Ho
    Smith has released her most direct and, not coincidentally, hardest-rocking album since 1978's Easter.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Covers Record
    The unrelenting bleakness that pervades most of Marshall's music can be oppressive when taken in excess, and The Covers Record's gloom is exacerbated by the fact that its instrumental accompaniment seldom entails more than a piano or guitar... That barren approach can't match the stunning elegance of 1998's Moon Pix... but it is appropriate: The Covers Record is Marshall laid bare, and it needs no embellishments.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Winners Never Quit
    Virtually sparkles with pop craftsmanship-
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Broken By Whispers
    The album is driven by Wratten's sensitive voice, ringing guitars, haunting synths, pattering drum machines, and some of the most beautiful songs you'll ever hear, like a cross between Cocteau Twins and The Cure.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
    And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, while not unremarkable, is still a little disappointing, too light on memorable hooks and melodies, too long on leisurely arrangements, and not too great to obliterate feelings that Yo La Tengo usually does better.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bloodflowers
    The album does seem to pick up where Disintegration left off, offering long, casually cathartic songs driven by minor chords and loopy, languid drones.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Nixon
    Nixon sounds like the Superfly soundtrack recorded in a different dimension, one in which Mayfield and Marvin Gaye met up with Lawrence Welk for an impromptu jam session.... a drowsy near-masterpiece.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Night
    The Night finds the trio expanding its sound beyond its periodic tendency to fall back on noirish shtick... a marvelous high note.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am Shelby Lynne
    Fortunately, Lynne has the material to back up the declaration, and in erstwhile Sheryl Crow producer Bill Bottrell (who co-writes most of these tracks), she's found a partner in tune with her genre-blurring aspirations, liberally mixing elements of country, blues, R&B, and lounge-infused jazz, yet still accommodating the occasional drum machine and synthesizer.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Midnite Vultures
    An entertainingly excessive album, its libidinous funk mosaic finds Beck coming on like a master of ceremonies overseeing a sci-fi orgy.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    69 Love Songs
    Alternately recalling the best work of Blondie, Leonard Cohen, Depeche Mode, and dozens more, 69 Songs About Love is a sprawling masterpiece of White Album-like proportions.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Soft Bulletin
    An impossibly multi-tracked masterwork of excess, abrasion, and indefinable beauty.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Play
    His most accessible, mature work to date.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Foliage: Animation Music
    Full of not-quite-familiar arrangements and you'd-swear-they-were-purloined specks of Sgt. Pepper, the album's many pleasures fly at the listener from every angle.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    13
    At first listen, it may be hard to figure out whether 13 is some sort of twisted masterpiece or the work of a once-great group losing the plot. Those who stick around to find out will be rewarded.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beaucoup Fish
    Like its predecessor, though, Beaucoup Fish is too unfocused to prove consistently potent.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Keep It Like A Secret
    With its layers of guitars and sharp lyrics, Keep It Like A Secret is a smart, challenging installment in a career that's been as varied as it is prolific.
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