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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    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sleep Well Beast
    Those invested in the band’s slow-motion refinement of simmering melancholy will find that they’ve discovered yet more fresh nuance to that sound, as they seem to every time.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Expect the Best
    On Expect The Best, Widowspeak returns to the looseness of its earlier output but drops even more of its guard, and the band’s ever-present nostalgia becomes a deeper autobiographical commentary on the passage of time and expectations.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Punishment of Luxury
    In the wrong hands, this kind of thing could come across as heavy-handed or detached, but The Punishment Of Luxury exudes warmth and empathy throughout.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Every Country's Sun
    Despite the odd misstep--like the distant minimalism of “1000 Foot Face”--the album soars with a vibrancy that sustains it over its nearly hourlong running time.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    American Dream
    It’s a beautifully produced, masterfully realized album, but it’s also a bit of a downer and an unusually slow burn.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Who Told You To Think?
    Milo’s still firmly making experimental hip-hop, bridging various through-lines of mind-expanding boom-bap, but he’s also etching his way toward the center, his art getting clearer with each step.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Villains
    On the whole, Villains isn’t Homme’s strongest collection of songwriting. That said, it’s the first Queens Of The Stone Age album where the sounds behind it are consistently strong enough to carry the load.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Invitation
    Invitation is strong enough as a whole to breeze past those weaker moments. Filthy Friends’ debut provides exactly what their lineage promises, and when it comes to supergroups, that amounts to coming out ahead.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Holiday Destination
    On her third LP, Shah displays the patience to let an idea stew. And she’s not moving on until she’s sufficiently chewed it over, swished it around her mouth, and dragged her tongue across her front teeth.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    A Deeper Understanding
    With much higher expectations weighing on the band, it’s produced a successor that shines up and builds on that breakthrough in every way.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Exile in the Outer Ring
    Dread surrounds Exile In The Outer Ring like a thick fog. As much as EMA empathizes with “the kids from the void,” her excellent album offers little comfort besides the gentle urging of “Hey, don’t go away” (“Down And Out”).
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Orc
    It’s a good balance of moods and sounds--a welcome trot from a band more inclined to sprint.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Beast Epic
    Beast Epic perfectly distills a career into a nearly perfect collection.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Science Fiction
    Brand New has put in the work, making a record that erases any doubts about whether the final product would live up to eight years of mystery and hype. And it’s effectively erased its past by making good on every far-flung expectation placed upon it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Painted Ruins
    In all, Painted Ruins represents the band’s strongest compositions since Yellow House--and still, there’s something weirdly revolutionary about this kind of formalism in 2017.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Warmth
    Taken all together, Warmth is an enveloping listen, whether you’re the type to get up and move to music, or just sit and overthink it.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    How Do You Spell Heaven
    How Do You Spell Heaven suffers from having a tad too much of Pollard’s lone influence, and as a result, it’s overloaded with the kind of mid-tempo filler that takes a few listens to really stand out. Even still, it’s a uniformly enjoyable listen, one that’s mostly upbeat.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Cost of Living
    Her message is crystal clear, as is the rest of Cost Of Living. Downtown Boys is determined to be the kind of band we need right now, delivering the kind of punk that that aims to change the world.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cage Tropical
    Cage Tropical possesses darker dimensions and inspirations, driven by twinges of velocity and an unsettled vibe. This combination suits Rose well: Her music may have emerged from a period of great turmoil, but, in the process, she’s found a new path forward.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Good Time [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    It’s a masterful job of homage, and—as with Thief and Drive before it--all those pulsating synths and cavernous low tones give the film much of its swagger, and they promise to intensify your own, far less exciting commute as well.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rainbow
    It’s a bold, focused, universal statement about freedom--from self-hatred, from paralyzing internal conflicts, from gender expectations, from negative influences, and (especially) from other people’s shit.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Bandwagonesque
    For fans of the original, Gibbard’s Bandwagonesque should be a nice, unsurprising treat; for fans of Gibbard’s who may not be familiar with the original’s charms, hopefully it’ll be a way in.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Hitchhiker
    For fans of Neil Young in the ’70s--his pretty undeniable peak--this one is fantastic. Beyond that, it could easily serve as an introduction to a generation that hasn’t heard his music.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dead Cross
    Whereas many supergroup albums feel tired and humorless, Dead Cross is a lean hardcore record that drills eardrums like a nitrous-addled dentist.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Call It Love
    This is a record that plays it safe musically, even as it probes uncomfortable emotional states and difficult experiences.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dark Matter
    Dark Matter is dense, complicated stuff, though it’s also an engrossing display of pop theater.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lust for Life
    While Del Rey’s voice remains firmly at the forefront, the spare arrangements encourage listeners to fill in their own emotional blanks for once.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Paranormal
    Somewhat unexpectedly, Paranormal is even more intriguing when it delves into heavier territory.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Everything Now
    Everything Now could stand to be more disciplined, though its looseness is also a reminder of how Arcade Fire leaped past its indie-rock peers by being an honest-to-goodness hot, swinging combo, feeding off each other and the crowd. Building off those chops and that adulation, Win Butler and his mates developed a sound as ornate, ceremonial, and transcendent as a church service.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Flower Boy
    Flower Boy is the first time he’s been equally as forthcoming in his actual music. His flow has tightened up, and for a man whose voice basically destined him for rap stardom, he’s become even better at stretching his booming baritone into novel shapes, employing a plethora of flows.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Add Violence [EP]
    Nothing on last year’s Not The Actual Events approached the grabbiness of “Less Than,” but that EP distributed its charms more evenly than Add Violence, which never tops its leadoff track.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mellow Waves
    Don’t let the lightness of Mellow Waves fool you; its pleasures are substantive and lingering.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Times Infinity, Vol. 2
    Throughout, the album is marred by dated, slathered-on digital effects or chintzy, ’70s romantic drama synth-strings, or laden with clunky refrains.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lo Tom
    Sometimes quick-and-dirty is the way to go, and with just eight straightforward songs, Lo Tom does it really well. It’s hard to say if anybody beyond the Bazan-devoted will jump on board--or even find a record like this--but his flock should be delighted.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Dear
    There are stray blasts of righteous melody, like the anthemic crescendos that erupt from the placid surface of “Beyond.” But most of Dear’s sonic earthquakes seem designed to rattle the bones, not catch the ears.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Soft Sounds From Another Planet
    While everything on Japanese Breakfast’s proper sophomore effort isn’t entirely fresh, and its structure is somewhat loose, there’s a confidence and crispness to Soft Sounds that shows just how fully realized Zauner’s formerly homemade experiments have become.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star
    Born On A Gangster Star zeroes in on Butler’s abstract state-of-hip-hop lyrics, epitomized by the booming, beautiful “Shine A Light.” Still, these delineations aren’t exact. Both albums seem to circle each other like binary stars, feeding off of and justifying the other.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines
    Both albums create worlds unto themselves. The gauzy, sensual Quazarz Vs. The Jealous Machines highlights the duo’s more melodic side, moving from lust and consummation to a film-noir spy flick, pursued by nebulous internet drones.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Need to Feel Your Love
    The latter song [“Meet Me In The Street”] sets the tone for the record, as it rails against the ugliness of privilege (“Silver spoon suckers headed for a fall / And justice for all”) and encourages an uprising against authority. Equally galvanizing is “Suffer Me,” a song about the Stonewall Riots, and “Expect The Bayonet,” which is about marginalized groups banding together to fight oppression: “If you don’t give us the ballot / Expect the bayonet.”
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Out in the Storm
    Each Waxahatchee album has felt like a big step forward, and Out In The Storm feels like the biggest one yet.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Funk Wav Bounces, Vol. 1
    It’s a winning bid for artistic credibility: not going for smarter, more complex, or bigger, just better, more fun. Full of island affectations, soft-rock gloss, and chintzy good-life strings, it is, at last, the sort of fun you don’t have to feel bad about the next day.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Every Valley
    Informative and moving, Every Valley doesn’t exist in the traditional space of an album--it’s almost music as journalism, or a musical collage version of This American Life. If nothing else, you won’t hear anything like it this year.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Boo Boo
    While these 12 tracks are typically lush, they also reveal him to be a pop singer and songwriter of endearing plainspokenness, capturing the intense introspection and confusion of a breakup.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Something To Tell You
    On Something To Tell You, HAIM’s innate sincerity and musical ambitions finally sync up, resulting in one of the more consistent, cohesive, and enjoyable records of the year.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    4:44
    4:44 is captivating because it both upholds that version of himself and buckles beneath its weight.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Hug of Thunder
    Hug is also a welcome retreat to those earlier records in terms of production, forsaking the leaner sound of 2010’s Forgiveness Rock Record for the shaggy excesses of both You Forgot It and Broken Social Scene.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    GN
    If the added instrumentation sometimes feels a bit forced—there’s some slide guitar that feels extraneous, a sop to tradition--it’s more than made up for by the artistry that underlines the rest of it.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lifetime of Love
    Remarkably, Archuleta has joined those random bits and pieces into something that feels like it’s always been together, a surreal broken record with songs that are able to grow and change, despite being snagged on hypnotic loops.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ruinism
    Altogether, Ruinism feels like a far more considered, cerebral effort than Lapalux has delivered before. It may not offer the uniformly sensuous pleasures of those earlier works, but it does a lot more to stimulate other parts of the body.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mister Mellow
    It is exceptionally pleasant to listen to, a seamless stretch of midtempo mood music that glides by in a neat narcotic haze. There aren’t so many standout tracks as there are standout moments, like the echoey crack of the hook on “Floating By,” or the moment the beat comes into dazzling clarity on “Million Miles Away.”
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Reflections: Mojave Desert
    Mojave Desert, appropriately, feels like the end of a weekend retreat: restorative, over far too soon, and with its finer points already quickly fading from memory, but all in all, definitely worth doing again.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Beautiful Thugger Girls
    Few artists manage to balance wide-eyed eroticism with genuine warmth, and fewer manage the feat while packing multiple albums’ worth of hooks into each song. For Thug, it’s just his default mode.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Melodrama
    What Melodrama confirms most of all is Lorde’s uncanny ability to drill down so precisely on grand emotional themes that would fell lesser songwriters. Tackling a bad breakup certainly isn’t new in pop music, but it’s delivered here with an honesty an energy that is uniquely her own.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Together At Last
    Another side-project song, Golden Smog’s “Lost Love,” gets sweetly chilled, and the Summerteeth deep cut “In A Future Age” loses some of its flair from the album version but gains intimacy. That’s true of this whole exercise, really, but the trade-off works fantastically well on those particular songs.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Murder of the Universe
    Overall this record requires a huge narrative commitment, with the payoff of a vomit coffin. Not worth it.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Big Fish Theory
    Big Fish Theory veers off the course set by its predecessor, bucking the sophomore slump by ditching the vast majority of his old collaborators and peers in favor of the sort of whole-cloth artistic reinvention generally associated with canonical greats like Kanye or Bowie. What’s even crazier is that he sticks the landing. It’s his second classic LP in a row.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pretty Girls Like Trap Music
    There’s no galactic change to his style here, just a further refinement of it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Underside of Power
    Underside feels like a quantum leap from [its 2015 self-titled debut] both musically and thematically, newly charged with the righteous anger of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and explosively unleashed by artists and activists who sense that this is their moment to seize. The result is a collection of songs that articulates that fury and despair with such authority, it deserves to become the soundtrack for whatever future documentary montage captures the mess of 2017.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    CTRL
    Ctrl is as tough as Damn is tender, and it knocks as hard as The Sun’s Tirade swoons.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    CHUCK
    Chuck’s a wonderful piece of American music, and ultimately as enigmatic and elusive as the man who filed it on his way out the door.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Abysmal Thoughts
    The new sounds heighten the bittersweet flavor, as Pierce opens up about feeling lonely, stupid, betrayed, empty, and at times, hopeful. If his life hasn’t exactly gotten easier, his music has never been better.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    City Music
    There’s a lot of musical shape-shifting on City Music, but the varied approach helps capture the gritty, up-and-down nature of a place that never sleeps.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Weather Diaries
    Weather Diaries is both recognizably Ride and a logical, tasteful update of its sound.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fake Sugar
    Ditto’s powerhouse voice remains a steely, piercing instrument imbued with Southern sass and dynamic range.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Iteration
    Mostly, Iteration offers only a minor darkening of Haley’s familiar neon-lit moods. It’s a great sound and one always worth returning to, but you’re left wondering how long Haley can keep it up.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Nashville Sound
    The result is Isbell’s most topical and far-reaching album yet, but one that’s also suffused with hope.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cigarettes After Sex
    What saves this El Paso-born, Brooklyn-based group from being just another trafficker of “Lynchian” indie-rock tropes is Gonzalez’s ability to capture moments and stretch them into lusty little pop daydreams.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Capacity
    Capacity may not be breaking any new boundaries. But with a songwriter as undeniable as Lenker, it doesn’t need to.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    City of No Reply
    City Of No Reply is an album of stylistic hybrids. Coffman’s voice stitches all of these disparate influences together, at home among glistening neo-soul and phaser-pedal funk.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Waiting on a Song
    Still, competent and charming as it is, Waiting On A Song never quite has the spark to rise above homage and carve out something distinct.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone
    While the lyrics can be blunt, even casual in their demeanor, they’re paired with plenty of sonic turmoil.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Gone Now
    While Gone Now features a few cuts that are much more piercing than you might expect, it doesn’t quite go all the way.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Somersault
    Far and away Beach Fossils’ finest record yet.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Goths
    As part of the band’s rich story, It’s still a journey worth taking, both for the band and listeners. But the latter will find themselves staring out the window, brooding over the gray and dismal scenery a bit more.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    You're Welcome
    You’re Welcome isn’t a mere homage to the history of popular music; the band has assimilated these influences into its own sonic approach. As a result, even Wavves’ familiar inspirations feel invigorated.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Life After Youth
    Life After Youth is a welcome reminder of why Land Of Talk was missed, and a promising glimpse at a second chance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Party
    All the fantastic background experimentation, bleating wind instruments, and appearances by Mike Hadreas (Perfume Genius) are ultimately too slight to lend the record much in the way of dynamics. Still, Harding’s command of her craft is evident and worth witnessing on Party--and worth keeping an eye on in the future.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    World Be Gone
    Ffor the most part, World Be Gone is better suited for relaxing after a rousing march or successful phone-bank campaign than something that would rally the troops.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rocket
    Even though Rocket sometimes feels messy, only a songwriter as prolific and uninhibited as Giannascoli can make the chaos this thrilling and affecting.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Harry Styles
    The sheer confidence on display here suggests he’s more than up to the challenge; hopefully the songs will someday catch up to his ambition.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Powerplant
    The rest of Powerplant’s brief 29-minute running time can’t quite live up to “123,” though it has plenty of powerful moments.
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