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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    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    I'm Only Dreaming
    It’s a pleasant record, but an awfully safe and unchallenging one.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    So Much For The City
    The second half largely sounds like a lesser reprise of the first, as The Thrills' appropriation of older styles starts to feel less like inventive borrowing than a lack of imagination.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)
    As usual in Manson's world, the goal of maximum discomfort supercedes the music, which sticks to familiar and reliably doom-laden but catchy pop-metal on "Disposable Teens" and "The Love Song."... Here, he seems entranced by his own power, which may be why his dark worldview sounds baseless even as he offers sharp hooks others would kill for.
    • The A.V. Club
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    My Old, Familiar Friend
    How odd, then, that so much of Friend is a celebration of aimlessness that, coincidentally, quickly loses focus.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Taking The Long Way
    If anything, Taking The Long Way is overly blunt, as though the group felt it has an image to maintain. The anger feels calculated.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In Heaven
    Most of In Heaven, however, lacks tension, build, or direction.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Musicology
    Musicology is never bad, and though it does get bogged down in indistinguishable ballads, it usually finds a way to recover. [28 Apr 2004]
    • The A.V. Club
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    X&Y
    Only three songs really, truly deliver.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Metallic Spheres
    After a while, though, it's a bit like hiring a master painter to doodle a flock of birds into the background. Gilmour and The Orb meld enjoyably enough in their comfort zones. If only they'd focused more on pushing beyond.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gutterflower
    Nothing here pushes power-ballad buttons quite as overtly as past smashes "Name" and "Iris," but that shouldn't stop Gutterflower's songs from turning up in a Meg Ryan movie or two soon enough.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anxiety Always
    For all its impressive competency, Anxiety Always remains a bit too oppressively literal in its electro resurrection.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    You Are The Quarry
    Only when Morrissey's wickedly funny side emerges does Quarry find moments worthy of sharing shelf space with his finest.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    A Thousand Shark's Teeth
    Too often, Teeth sacrifices that for experiments that translate into beautiful arrangements, but turn songs as a whole into frustrating, incomplete muddles.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Ciara
    Though Ciara is a perfectly competent album, it’s the least interesting one she could have made given the winning hand she was dealt, and as she should know by now, winning hands only come around so often.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Carnival II: Memoirs Of An Immigrant
    Immigrant goes down smooth. Just don't expect it to linger.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Catch My Shoe
    The Ex has always absorbed the flavor of whatever it's paired with-and de Boer is mostly flavorless. His hiccupping, singsong vocals try to operate on the same level as Sok's raspy, poetic chants, but the result is tentative and forceless.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cranekiss
    Cranekiss is going for hypnotic, but too often ends up narcotizing.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ether Teeth
    Too much of Ether Teeth sounds like in-between patter for ideas that rarely coalesce.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Catching Looks
    Catching Looks shows promise, but Washington Social Club needs to minimize the structural repetitiveness on future releases, and maybe pony up for a production style with more physical oomph.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    13
    The head of steam 13 builds in its second half flattens with “Dear Father,” which concludes the album with an anticlimactic plop.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    After the Disco
    Since the driving tracks are bigger earworms than the carefully crafted, fragile ones, perhaps the duo would’ve done better to focus on the party, instead of what comes after.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soft Will
    The tempered songs of Soft Will, however, don’t feel thoughtfully restrained as much as deflated of enthusiasm.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Nude With Boots
    Nude sounds, well, a bit naked. Lean and not mean enough, songs like "The Kicking Machine" and "The Stupid Creep" are as conventional as anything the band has ever recorded.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Honeycomb
    Fall[s] somewhere between briskly entertaining and simply inconsequential.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Ride's Here
    For all My Ride's Here's inconsistency, it's blessed by Zevon, who retains one of the most distinctive and appealing vocal/lyrical cadences in rock 'n' roll.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Title TK
    Title TK comes off as unglued in an almost perversely restrained, even uneventful way.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    He Thinks He's People
    He Thinks He's People feels like an autobiographical mix-tape, with a few phases worth forgetting.
    • 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.
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