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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    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Loyalty To Loyalty
    The loyalty to the exact sound--minus the real hooks--that got Cold War Kids noticed keeps things mostly stagnant.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Lioness: Hidden Treasures
    The result is a collection so clean-scrubbed that it sometimes seems to be eulogizing an entirely different singer than the one fans remember.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Long Gone Before Daylight
    Fans who enjoyed The Cardigans' evolution toward the challenging art-disco of Gran Turismo will likely be disappointed by Daylight, which at least superficially sounds like the kind of easygoing roots-lite better associated with Sheryl Crow or Bonnie Raitt.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Search
    With everything it has going for it, it should be a lot better than it is.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Dreams
    There isn't a bad song--well, apart from "Alone Again (Naturally)"--or a tacky arrangement on the album, but the material suffers from excessive familiarity.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Feel.Love.Thinking.Of.
    The only thing repeated, however, is an unfortunate pattern: For Feel’s every plus, there’s a significant minus, such that listeners could actually buy the album’s even-numbered tracks, and skip all the odds.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Gifted
    Whatever survived of the brain behind Mixtape About Nothing has been permanently atrophied by luxury and laziness. At least the crisp, live-band production, a carryover from Ambition, remains a treat.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Revolverlution
    Not surprisingly, Revolverlution is all over the place, but for much of its first half, the album sounds vital, impassioned, and kinetic, if not overly cohesive.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Secret Machines
    ['The Walls Are Starting To Crack'] is a refreshingly weird passage on a record that otherwise deviates little from the brawny but accessible psychedelia of the band's first two.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Morning World
    The album skates from tumbling tracks like “Pink” and “Morning World”—which are reminiscent of the slightly math indie-rock sound of the solid Polyvinyl band Aloha—to a jam like “It Starts At The Water,” which features static washes floating in and out of the atmosphere while an underground buzz burrows beneath a simple, chugging beat.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soul Punk
    It's a produced pop record with electronic, danceable bits and vocal harmonies that sometimes seem much too enamored with Michael Jackson worship.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Beekeeper
    Floats by without stirring much interest.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    La Bella Mafia
    Careens from style to style with heedless abandon and uneven results.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Sound City: Real to Reel
    Perhaps due to understandably lower expectations, Sound City has a better batting average when Grohl is collaborating with a lesser tier of legend--or with no legend at all.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Two-Way Mirror
    After a decade of excellence from like-minded groups such as Liars and TV On The Radio, Crystal Antlers can't help but sound like a mildly intriguing afterthought, even if Two-Way Mirror holds the line in hopes of greatness to come.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Under My Skin
    Mascara-streaked moods dictate an excess of ballads and rockers that trade in sterile nü-metal crunch, leaving Lavigne's pop-punk spunk by the wayside.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jeff Bridges
    The album might be an extension of its namesake's enduring Dude-itude, but this time he's takin' it a little too easy for all us sinners.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    My Shame Is True
    When Skiba’s on fire, he’s one of pop-punk’s best tunesmiths; but when he’s coasting, as he is throughout My Shame Is True, his songs feel less black than beige.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Plain Rap
    Sonically, Plain Rap picks up where Labcabin left off, and at its best ("Rush," "Guestlist," "Frontline"), it recaptures that album's sophisticated sonic slinkiness, if not its lyrical brilliance. Too often, however, Plain Rap sounds like what Labcabin's detractors unfairly accused it of being: mature and adult to the point of sounding hopelessly dull.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    El Rey
    His guitar hooks are reliable enough on El Rey, the seventh all-new studio Wedding Present album (compilations and live discs abound), and Steve Albini engineers them vividly enough, but it's the words that fail him.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Omni
    The spacey, psychedelic flourishes and harmonies have been ditched in favor of blandly inoffensive solos and big, arena-rock choruses. And there'd be nothing wrong with any of this if the songs were stronger.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Strange Clouds
    Strange Clouds is ultimately too weighed down by joy-killing self-importance to match [his] debut's hit ratio.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Crush Songs
    Crush Songs is sad and pretty and likely to be playing at an American Apparel somewhere near you, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s hardly the best work Karen O can do.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Strange Little Girls
    The disc looks, on paper, like an intriguing exercise. Unfortunately, it sounds, in reality, like little more than an intriguing exercise: With few exceptions, it's tedious and predictable, wearing its calculated concept far too boldly on its sleeve.
    • The A.V. Club
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hard Candy
    Hard Candy is a serviceable and sometimes very good pop album that also happens to be a confusing and even dismal Madonna album.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Konk
    They're reasonably tight, and each song is just melodic enough to seem catchy until its memory is erased by the next.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    L.A.X.
    The Game has always borrowed from the greats. Here, he cannibalizes his own tired shtick so extensively, he lapses even further into self-parody.
    • 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.
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