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
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Always Ascending
    Always Ascending has its moments, even if it’s not the musical rebirth Franz Ferdinand sought.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Here Come the Runts
    The variety of genres here impresses the most.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Criminal
    While that poetry-journal melodrama grows a tad exhausting by album’s end, there are plenty of deliciously bitter pleasures here for anyone who similarly loves brooding in that blacked-out, candlelit bedroom of the mind.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Microshift
    Overall, Microshift is the sound of a band pulling itself out of the abyss on the back of its most buoyant music yet.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Blood
    It’s more minimal than The xx, more romantic than the most heartsick R&B, with drums pulled straight from ’70s studio sessions. In other words, it’s a lot of things, while still sounding like nothing else out there.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Man of the Woods
    Unfortunately, Man Of The Woods’ thematic depth hasn’t quite caught up to the rest of his ambition. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it does make for a record that’s not quite as transcendent as it was built up to be.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Down Below
    The title and lyrics suggest an inferno worthy of Dante, but music this simultaneously hooky and heavy could only have been concocted north of hell.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    All Melody
    A vibrant, exploratory album born from Frahm’s newly constructed Berlin studio and the freedom to experiment it allowed.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Snares Like a Haircut
    Snares Like A Haircut finds Dean Spunt and Randy Randall making a warm, self-assured reunion, with each other and that scene-leading musical style.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Semicircle
    It’s a rousing party record, but when the music stops and the lights come on, it all blurs together into a fun but forgettable time.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I Like Fun
    “Lake Monsters” gives rocking sci-fi tribute to mysterious beasts that should please longtime fans, “The Bright Side” borrows from the ’60s British Invasion, and “Push Back The Hands” also turns sweetly nostalgic—though there’s no need for looking backward just yet, as the TMBG song machine is still operating at full force.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Official Body
    The Official Body proves why it’s remained durable over so many iterations and, for the London trio, across three albums. There’s a directness to its pleasures that’s unflagging for all 10 tracks here.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life
    It may lack the punch of Nikki Nack, but for those willing to hang around and appreciate its jammier approach, it’s a cathartic, worthwhile stop along the Tune-Yards catalog.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ruins
    It’s a very familiar take on Americana, full of heartbreak and yearning, but a damn reliable one.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    POST-
    While that sounds incredibly daunting--and like a really tiring listen--the album’s most impressive trait is that it makes all that vital work feel joyous and communal.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Saturation III
    Like its predecessors, the album is hit or miss, but the batting average remains uncommonly high for a project like this.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Revival
    Revival isn’t even interesting enough to warrant all of the critical beatdowns it’s taken in its short time in the world. Instead, it’s boring and predictable, which are greater threats to the Eminem legacy than anything else.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Finding Shore
    If the actual product doesn’t always measure up to that quirky ingenuity--or if it is, on the whole, just a touch too chamber-music stately to reach the mind-expanding heights of Eno’s ’70s and ’80s team-ups with Robert Fripp, Cluster, Harold Budd, et al.--Finding Shore still contains moments that are plenty interesting, even downright beautiful. In those, it doesn’t really matter how they were created.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    How to Solve Our Human Problems, Pt. 1 [EP]
    What stands out about the first entry in Belle & Sebastian’s three-part EP series How To Solve Our Human Problems is how much it, like 2015’s Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, sounds like the work of an out-and-out band.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    From a Room, Vol. 2
    Stapleton’s gravelly vocals sell his own openly emotive songs like no one else could, the poetic imagery in tracks like “Scarecrow In The Garden” transcending typical beer-and-babes fodder.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    War & Leisure
    Miguel wears War & Leisure’s looseness well, and even if he doesn’t reveal much of himself, he still has the charisma to pull the whole ensemble off.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Songs of Experience
    Songs Of Experience, U2’s 14th studio album, revs up the ambition, to embarrassing results. It finds the group desperately searching for a radio hit while pontificating on American exceptionalism, shoehorning the Syrian refugee crisis into not one but two love songs--and on consecutive tracks, no less.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Greatest Gift
    “Wallowa” is a harrowing, metaphor-packed epic about her battle with depression and eventual death. And honestly, everything else here is kind of icing after that one.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Utopia
    It is musically heady and rawly autobiographical, translating the most intimate moments into towering, skywritten love notes. It’s ruled by a divine feminine energy that interrogates toxic masculinity and, more subliminally, environmental issues. ... In other words, it’s a journey that’s easy to want to take with her.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light
    Light is two harsh, ugly sounds that sound harsh and ugly together, but the hint of a pop sensibility throbs underneath: a heartbeat faintly audible over the screams of hell.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rest
    The influence of Gainsbourg’s famous musical parents, both Serge and mother Jane Birkin, has been a constant in her music, but on Rest, she seems less daunted by her lineage, and she begins to bend it to her own ambitions.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Soul of a Woman
    After the James Brown frenzy of its opening tracks and the less memorable Motown-inspired middle ground, the album changes course. This reprise of Jones’ established work ends and listeners get a peek at what would have come next: an odyssey of densely symphonic funk and soul.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Memory of a Cut Off Head
    Although Memory Of A Cut Off Head might benefit from some more garage-rock grit and aggression here and there, its manicured tranquility leaves a lasting impression.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    If All I Was Was Black
    If All I Was Was Black is suffused with contemporary political resonance, married to Staples’ timelessly transcendent gospel-meets-bluesy-folk. That push-pull between sorrowful analysis of the current state of the country and hope for the future is its defining quality, and it works--mostly.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Low in High School
    Instead of your lonely, romantic proxy, he’s your surly, sometimes cool uncle who’s set in his ways but still capable of surprises. Low In High School has a few of those, most effectively on the mid-album epic “I Bury The Living.”
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    reputation
    The sparkling, writerly synth-pop of 1989 has been jettisoned almost entirely, replaced by thudding trap beats, Vegas EDM, melancholy Drive-wave synthesizers, and splashes of Miami bass. More often than not, it works.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Stranger
    His flow is less ostentatiously stilted than on earlier efforts, as if, now that this territory is being explored successfully by others, he no longer needs to exaggerate his outsider status. He floats into the vapor, drugged out and miserable, like the album itself.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Interiors
    A mostly mid-tempo record with a few solid standouts, including album-opener “Illuminant” and the vibey, spacey “Cosmonauts.” It’s still the third-best Quicksand album, but the distance between it and second place isn’t nearly as far as it might’ve been.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Phases
    With its plaintive lyrics, Phases further shows that Olsen, like those venerable musicians, is a persistent truth teller, an authentic voice no matter what style she’s working in.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Dusk in Us
    The Dusk In Us can’t match the apocalyptic power of a classic like 2001’s Jane Doe, but when Converge takes a victory lap, it still does it at a mad sprint.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    4eva Is a Mighty Long Time
    The tough, chest-beating first disc gives way to a second disc that’s just a little too fond of syrupy interludes. But as with his other releases, K.R.I.T.’s signature sincerity reigns supreme.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Revelations
    Revelations thrives in that dissonance between its lo-fi production and Shamir’s striking falsetto, with tracks like “Her Story” impressively melding Motown and grunge influences.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Plunge
    Beyond its aggressive peaks, there is also true beauty here, and even nuggets of stark synth-pop that call back to her past work.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Beach House III
    While 2015’s Free TC felt designed to impress, a little too encyclopedic and earnest for its own good, Beach House 3 takes its concept literally, soundtracking a hypothetical bender in a paradise where the comedown never arrives.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Screen Memories
    Chances are you’ll once again walk away with some of its lyrics rattling around your brain. On the other hand, those lyrics have never seemed more like open dares to take them way, way too seriously.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Turn Out the Lights
    Turn Out The Lights is beautifully crafted throughout, full of the kinds of songs that linger long after they’ve ended. Baker doesn’t make it easy, but fans wouldn’t have it any other way.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    III
    There are moments on III where the band stumbles--“Witness” ebbs just a hair too close to The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black”--but by and large, Makthaverskan has never been sharper than it is in the present moment.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Mirror Reaper
    Attention spans will certainly be tested, but surrender to the despair and Bell Witch’s slow-motion eulogy--delivered through a lonely ring of guitar, gently crashing cymbals, and stray funeral-home organ--hits like a blast beat to the heart.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    It's Alright Between Us as It Is
    It’s Alright Between Us As It Is feeds the body and soul.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    All American Made
    It’s the title track--a soft and heart-wrenching protest song that captures the struggle of living in the U.S.--that cements Price’s songwriting bona fides as a fiercely important voice in modern country.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Losing
    Even at that short running time, Losing’s 12 songs start to blur together toward the end, but the album’s many charms keep that from becoming a liability.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ken
    This record is a grower whose off-putting quirks--like the swampy electronic muck that surrounds Bejar on “Saw You At The Hospital” or the discordant droning foundation of “A Light Travels Down The Catwalk”--give way and blend with all the gloss underneath them into yet another strange, frequently gorgeous album.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Glasshouse
    While all of this could feel a bit scattershot in lesser hands, there’s a writerly clarity to her compositions that ties them all together into a cohesive statement of marital and maternal devotion.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Saga Continues
    It’s low-stakes stuff, but if you’re enough of a Wu fan to read this far, you’ll be happy the saga continues--at least for now.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Going Grey
    The Front Bottoms are more confident, and secure enough to confess to all they don’t yet know. It’s a privilege to listen in as they work it out.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lotta Sea Lice
    It’s a lovefest in the best way, and a worthy addition to both of their catalogs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Ooz
    All that aimlessness is certainly on brand for the hazy expanses Marshall so clearly wants to create, but like the seeping unctuousness for which the album is named, it threatens to engulf his more potent songs.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Nothing Valley
    With an infectious energy that shines through even the most plodding beats, the debut LP from Chicago’s Melkbelly is the kind of inspired noise-pop that similarly conquers 100 sound-alikes to lodge itself in the brain.
    • 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.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Masseduction
    It’s the best encapsulation of her vision to date, here fully under her control.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Colors
    Colors is solid--Beck doesn’t make bad records, whatever mode he’s in--and it flirts with greatness, but he’s at his best when he decides to either get loose or get serious, less so when he drives straight down the
    • 71 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Offering
    Offering’s second half becomes a stoned and fuzzy blur, its overall high settling into a pleasurable yet indistinct haze.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Take Me Apart
    There’s another EP in here that’s every bit as good as Hallucinogen, but as an album, Take Me Apart remains more proof of Kelela’s talent and still-unrealized potential.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Kid
    The Kid is truly an album to experience beginning to end, one with a knack for making you feel--as Smith sings on “An Intention”--“everything at the same time.”
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Weather Station
    There’s plenty to unpack lyrically, too, which makes it ideal for a headphones listen. You know, not unlike Blue or Court And Spark.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    As You Were
    For his first solo album, Liam Gallagher goes a long way toward establishing himself apart from brother Noel and the rest of Oasis. His most successful tracks here evoke Nashville rather than Manchester.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cry Cry Cry
    Cry Cry Cry is Wolf Parade’s most vibrant, energetic record to date.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Desaturating Seven
    It gets its message across in surprisingly approachable prog-funk hooks, the kind that might convince even lapsed fans and skeptics to give them a second chance.
    • 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).
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Visions of a Life
    In lesser hands, this kind of sonic disparity could be chaotic and confusing--but with Rowsell’s voice as the guiding light, Visions is a captivating, enjoyable ride.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Relatives in Descent
    It’s devastating music uniquely attuned to our current cultural moment, stridently political but less interested in dictating the problems or their solutions than in mapping the emotional topography of being alive and terrified in 2017.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Stranger in the Alps
    Stranger In The Alps alchemizes sorrow into redemptive beauty. It’s never about wallowing, but about slowly moving through it. That difference, played out over some incredible, wise-beyond-her-years songwriting, makes it one of the best albums of the year.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Three Futures
    There aren’t many hooks to be found here, which means a lot of Three Futures sort of blurs together. But it’s all hazily fascinating, flowing naturally through its various peaks and valleys, and it succeeds in Scott’s goal of being truly immersive listening--something that reveals itself to you in strange new ways each time you return.
    • 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.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    V
    Overall, V maintains a distinctively elegant gloom, The Horrors continuing to find intoxicating new shades within their gray moods. It’s an album that confirms them as one of the most consistently surprising, most artistically sophisticated, simply greatest rock bands working today.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A Sentimental Education
    It doesn’t hurt that every song given the Luna treatment--mellow, reverb-y guitars, Dean Wareham’s winning deadpan vocals--pretty much becomes a Luna song.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Luciferian Towers
    The band still builds giant sonic structures with guitars, drums, and violins, stretching out into song suites that can last for 15 minutes or more.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Thrice Woven
    Not since acclaimed debut Diadem Of 12 Stars has Wolves In The Throne Room rocked this hard and steady; in its sustained racket, it approximates one of the band’s live shows, which tend to be all blistering blitzkrieg all the time, drone passages withheld.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Hallelujah Anyhow
    Unsurprisingly, the stellar Hallelujah Anyhow often feels like a restless fever dream.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Strange Peace
    Metz could fall into the trap of making the same album over and over, but Strange Peace shows the band taking steps to subtly expand its sound. The attack remains, but it’s not as relentless.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Concrete and Gold
    On their ninth album, Concrete And Gold, Foo Fighters go all in on that classic rock love, resulting in a batch of songs that uses the past to give the band new life.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dedicated to Bobby Jameson
    Dedicated To Bobby Jameson is the most comfortable Pink’s ever sounded with his own success, turning legitimacy into a noble weapon: ambition.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Half-Light
    Half-Light is never less than interesting: It’s tremendously layered and fussy, but also sweet and light. It’s a hell of a start for a guy who’s been doing it forever.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Deer Tick, Vol. 1
    The first half of this Jekyll and Hyde act showcases the kind of skillful songwriters and musicians Deer Tick have grown into. The 10 tracks cover a lot of ground.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Deer Tick, Vol. 2
    For all the noticeable gains Deer Tick has made in its songwriting in recent years, Vol. 2 offers sufficient proof that it hasn’t lost its raw nerve.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Prophets of Rage
    It is an album of obvious statements set to equally thudding music, liable to move and inspire no one.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Try Not To Freak Out
    As a whole, Try Not To Freak Out is a joyful blast, a John Hughes soundtrack on steroids that never loses its sunny disposition.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Native Invader
    Native Invader isn’t as confrontational as Amos’ early work, and as a result, once or twice the album takes a brief detour into coffeeshop cliché. But even the sillier lyrical content is elevated by Amos’ talent for arrangement and distinctive snippets of melody.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    L.A Witch
    On their debut, the three weird sisters in L.A. Witch have conjured up a sexy, enigmatic album that looks forward by looking back.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Parallels
    For all its probity, Parallels is of a piece with its predecessors, another curvilinear and sinuous 30-minute odyssey from one of the most consistent and daring producers working.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Hanged Man
    This seven-year stretch has obviously been both reinvigorating and emotionally devastating for Leo. Fortunately, he’s channeled all that grief, anger, and inspiration into another 14 tracks packed with commentary and experimentation.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love What Survives
    It’s uniformly pleasurable, occasionally stirring listening, and Campos and Maker have excellent taste.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mountain Moves
    If Mountain Moves occasionally feels disconnected, it’s because the theme upon which it hinges--injustice--is, sadly, still as broadly defined as it gets. Fortunately, that disconnectedness makes for a bright, lively listen.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Antisocialites
    Rather than clashing, those two halves--one romantic and aspirational, one blunt and realistic--sharpen each other and create an album that delivers, and then some, on the promise of the band’s self-titled debut.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Okovi
    Zola’s latest, Okovi, is more homecoming than course correction.
Page: