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
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Nostalgia, Ultra.
    Like the rest of Nostalgia, "American Wedding" is dark, playful, a little tasteless, and absolutely riveting.
    • 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.”
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Harmonicraft
    Rather than merely aiming at populism, though, Brooks has set a new personal best for what he's been doing for almost 20 years: turning pop anthems into earthmovers.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    In The 7th Moon, The Chief Turned Into A Swimming Fish And Ate The Head Of His Enemy By Magic
    The result is even more appealing than Konono, drawing on likembes, the buzzing and drum-like tam tam, electric guitars, and half a dozen vocalists to create hypnotic, rich, complex polyrhythmic wonders.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Patch the Sky
    It’s fair to wonder how many more runs through the alternative-rock mill one guy will get, but if Patch The Sky is any indication, Mould’s still a long way away from being on the clock.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Out of Season
    Out Of Season makes Portishead's remarkable innovations sound like so much extra baggage to Gibbons' voice.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Us
    On Us, his deeply humane new album, that mad-prophet intensity can be exhausting, exhilarating, and downright transcendent.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky
    Where it leads, and who dares to climb it, is irrelevant; the fact that it so dizzyingly hangs between spirituality and perversion, austerity and decadence, is enough.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Looping State of Mind
    The Field knows how to tease until it's practically torturous, while somehow never qualifying for off-putting tags like "difficult" or "experimental."
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Ugly
    Not only does Ugly set a new standard for the band, it's also a grubby, triumphant call to action.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Food & Liquor
    By boldly expanding the parameters of mainstream hip-hop, Fiasco's threatening to make rap a welcoming place for geeks and iconoclasts as well as pimps and thugs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Real Animal
    Leave it to him to fascinate even when he just wants to clear out a few closets and keep on smiling.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    I Hate Music
    There isn’t anything new on I Hate Music, but there’s no need for it.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hospice
    There’s a straightforward appeal to the album’s dynamism and fatalism, but that appeal swells with each close listen.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Game Theory
    Especially in its superior second half, the album resonates with casual ambition as it reconciles ?uestlove's effortless bohemian cool and sonic perfectionism with Black Thought's dark swagger, street-level sociology, and silver-tongued virtuosity.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Faith in Strangers
    It’s an exciting step forward for an artist who could easily have been content to hang back.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Isolation Drills
    From GBV's earliest days, Pollard has displayed, in almost equal measure, a talent for catchy melodies and for daring eccentricity, with his best songs balancing the two instincts. That dynamic pervades Isolation Drills, with the tension producing some of the most instantly enjoyable songs of Pollard's career while maintaining a strong sense of experimentation.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Piano & A Microphone 1983
    Piano & A Microphone 1983 verges on postmortem voyeurism, but it’s also a unique insight into the way a notoriously private artist’s creative impulses fired.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Blunderbuss
    There are at least five songs on Blunderbuss that match the excellence of The White Stripes' best, and on the whole the album performs the tricky task of updating White's musical aesthetic without euthanizing its primal nature.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Apologies To The Queen Mary
    Apologies To The Queen Mary can be a little messy and unwieldy, but Wolf Parade's willingness to overreach charges songs like "We Built Another World" with real meaning, and palpable hope.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Until the Quiet Comes
    After multiple listens, the album reveals itself to be as nuanced, as subtle, and a lot more digestible than its predecessor, a sidestep into sonic territory that's no less admirable for its comparative somnolence.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Foil Deer
    By its end, Foil Deer asserts itself as a collection of some of the band’s best songs and some departures of varying quality.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Open Your Heart
    With Open Your Heart, The Men have taken that breath. And it's only made their hearts beat faster.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Attack On Memory
    With Attack On Memory, he's gotten closer to the big rock sounds in his head.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Words & Music, May 1965
    The clarity of Reed’s voice as a songwriter contrasts with the tentative musicality in kinetic ways, making Words & Music a rare thing: a historic document that is also compelling listening.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Skeleton
    Mostly, Skeleton is jagged and weird....But if you can take the knocks, the band is at its finest when embracing discordance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Wildflower
    Wildflower may not inspire the same years of obsessive unpacking as its predecessor, but the joyful feelings it leaves behind linger just the same.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Remote Part
    Merely good-but-not-great.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2
    This is the music Beastie Boys love whether it's trendy or not. Three decades in, they continue to school the kids.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Visions of Us on the Land
    Though the collab with Swift has resulted in easily Jurado’s most fascinating records as a songwriter, the wide-open road might be a little too inviting at times--because occasionally you need to consult a map for fear of driving off the end of the Earth.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Between My Head and the Sky
    The good news: Ono, as usual, doesn’t need our approval--not just because she’s rich and famous and fuck you, but because her music stands on its own.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sour
    Her debut record, SOUR, will be a contender for best pop album of the year. There are no filler tracks on SOUR. Each song represents a different side to Rodrigo’s artistry, embracing every influence that’s shaped her music, while still creating something fresh.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Skying
    Skying boasts countless vague allusions to waking up, seeing things, rain, and/or the ocean.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lisbon
    Lisbon is like a treatise on the untapped power of the have-nots, delivered by the kind of people who could turn a raw potato, a cup of water, and a pinch of salt into a five-star dish.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Eye Contact
    The crucial difference is that new wave was the province of song bands; Gang Gang Dance isn't a jam band in the Grateful Dead mode, but stretching out is one of its top priorities, and the band writes its material by playing to tape and expanding the best parts.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Beyondless
    The group hasn’t abandoned its post-punk, just refined it.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Grinderman 2
    Cave and Co. have moved further toward balancing their Grinderman skuzz with Bad Seeds sophistication-which means it's not always as bust-you-up-on-the-barstool fun, but it's still a sleazy good time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Red Dirt Road
    Red Dirt Road is sort of the Seabiscuit of country records--a cornball bit of entertainment that works because it carries great truths.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Search Of... [Second Version]
    A strange, rewarding, unclassifiable journey into the sonic imagination of The Neptunes, and without a doubt the weirdest, funkiest disc ever released by a Britney Spears producer.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sung Tongs
    Snatches of certain songs owe a debt to weird-period Brian Wilson, but Sung Tongs sounds too hermetic and comfortable in its singularity to cast such a literal gaze.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good News For People Who Love Bad News
    The songs still rely on Brock's echoing guitar patterns and Mobius-strip lyrics, delivered in the voice of a harried, hip-hop-inflected square-dance caller, but though the vehicle stays the same, the scenery outside the window changes considerably.
    • The A.V. Club
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War)
    It's a challenging, even frustrating listen, but Amerykah stakes out Badu's place between vinyl crackle and tape hiss among things to be fond of, no matter how outmoded they become.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hidden
    These New Puritans are still figuring out the right balance, but Hidden remains an impressive step forward.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Special Affections
    Much of Special Affections is full of endless, nakedly straightforward laments like, "So I lay on the floor with the heart that I wore upon my sleeve when I lost your love" ("Play By Heart") or "If you want to throw a party, I can cry tonight" ("It's Not My Party"). It pairs well with O'Regan's knack for effortlessly infectious vocal melodies.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    PAINLESS
    Yanya’s voice, both grounded and airy, slides across PAINLESS’ 12 expertly crafted and unusually somber love songs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Wounded Rhymes
    At her core, this new snarling, burned Lykke Li is unfamiliar, perhaps even to herself, but it's to our benefit. We get to meet her all over again.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fear Fun
    Tillman soaks up the sounds, smells, and free-floating strangeness of his environment, and revels in its humanity.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Majesty Shredding
    Majesty Shredding lives up to its name and doesn't waste much time catching its breath, and along the way Superchunk delivers something that used to be expected of the band: an album on which every song sounds as inspired as the next one.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Be
    After blasting off into outer space with Electric Circus, Common returns to more solid ground with Be, but thanks to West, Poyser, and Jay Dee, the sounds are often nothing short of heavenly.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Megafaun
    Megafaun is as distinctive as its predecessors, showing a prettier, more approachable side to a band that appears to be constantly evolving.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Blaqkout
    The lyrics aren’t going to win awards for thematic originality, and there’s an especially egregious spoken-word bit poorly justifying the excessive use of the word “bitch,” but most of the time, Quik and Kurupt sound invigorated by each other.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Laurel Hell
    For someone who has historically bared it all in her work, it’s frustrating to hear Mitski craft songs with such surface-level musicality. Still, on a lyrical level, she conjures wonderful tales of sorrow and desire, with a pointed sense of brevity and a newfound ability to just let things go.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Brighter Than Creation's Dark
    As a collection of songs, Brighter Than Creation's Dark ranks among Drive-By Truckers' best, even though there are a couple of skippable tracks.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Hunter
    Hinds hasn't delivered a logical sequel to Crack The Skye, but The Hunter triumphs in a less profound, more immediate way: It's the first truly fun Mastodon album.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Scandalous
    This is a party record, wholly unconcerned with painstakingly recreating the past (à la Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings) or pushing the genre into the future (à la Cee Lo or Janelle Monae).
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Future Me Hates Me
    It can tend toward the simplistic--the title track apes early Weezer, for example--but the middle of the album (particularly “Not Running”) shows that when the band embraces its more rambunctious and harder-edged sound, it captures something powerful.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Live: The Storyteller
    The Storyteller's two discs lean a little toward Snider's funnier latter-day material, padding it heavily with banter and stories, as well as a fair amount of the more earnest, tear-jerking fare he's always snuck in between the laughs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Wild Flag
    Considering the personnel involved, it's no surprise Wild Flag works as well as it does, or that it picks up in a familiar place. It's just nice when a super-group actually lives up to the title.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Swim
    Swim finds Snaith diving back into pure sequencing, but the result is his strangest and gutsiest work yet.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Master And Everyone
    There's nothing aggressive or urgent about the record, and oddly, that works in its favor.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Shine A Light
    The group frequently wanders into still valleys before chugging back up, properly balancing bounce and punch--Constantines may be the best band since Archers Of Loaf to marry intelligence and brute force.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Think Tank
    If it is the end, Blur has gone out kicking as always.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Harlem River Blues
    For all its strengths, Harlem River Blues never comes together thematically. Like his characters, Earle never seems to know where he wants to be.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Grinderman
    A thorough reminder of what's majestic, funny, bizarre, and poetic about Cave.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Hopelessness
    Compared with the morose, string-laden music Anohni is known for, this is an Ariana Grande album, but it remains experimental and emotional enough to feel natural. Anohni is broadening her audience--not courting a broad audience.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Twenty-Five for the Rest of Our Lives
    By effortlessly pairing clamorous aggression and thoughtful introspection, the record strikes a delicate balance not easily accomplished by the average teenage garage outfit.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    You Could Have It So Much Better
    Starts off strong and rarely wavers, for better and worse.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It Still Moves
    It Still Moves courts the easygoing, the wistful, and the devastating all at once, and the group's strange, wonderful gift is that it understands how those three moods are all shades of the same blue.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Electric Messiah
    The band’s eighth studio album towers alongside its best work, offering both peerless, full-speed-ahead blitzkriegs (like the title track, dedicated to late Motörhead frontman Lemmy, a kindred spirit in grizzled delivery and powerhouse shredding) and slower, heavier epics like the 10-plus-minute “Sanctioned Annihilation.”
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Visiter
    It's a winning formula The Dodos repeat throughout Visiter, and yet never run into the ground.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    God's Favorite Customer
    There’s little to adorn most of these songs—lyrically economical, sonically without much pageantry--but the intimacy and honesty results in some of Tillman’s most stunning songwriting.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    We're New Here
    The real triumph of We're New Here is that it doesn't feel like an album-length remix. Instead, it's a collaboration done the way Scott-Heron's best team-ups always are: after the fact, with time to consider the everlasting gravity of the man's words and wisdom.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Sunset Tree
    The cleaned-up sound and aggressive posturing make The Mountain Goats sound like a youthful Bruce Springsteen backed by The Waterboys.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Nikki Nack
    Nikki Nack, Garbus’ third effort, is polished, meticulously produced, and very much a studio effort.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Soused
    Pairing the somber and overpowering baritone bravado of Walker—not to mention his mad-poet mystique—with the subterranean thunder and tumbling towers of holy-hell from the core duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson seemed like the perfect marriage. And it is.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Idiology
    Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner continue to create soundscapes that blur the line between programming and live musicianship, and sometimes between Earth and outer space.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Age Of
    The result is a remarkably accessible, yet still resolutely avant-garde work, with Lopatin taking various musical forms--cough-syrupy R&B jams, country ballads, baroque chamber pop--and wresting unexpected nuances out of them, the same way he does that harpsichord.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Four the Record
    The bevy of writers and co-writers guiding Lambert results in a ranging, not especially cohesive album that makes up for the occasional dud (the schmaltzy power ballad "Better In The Long Run," a duet with Lambert's husband Blake Shelton) with plenty of solid earworms (the catchy mid-tempo "Safe") and a couple of welcome left turns (the loping, back-porch sing-along "Easy Living").
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Loom
    Though Loom can occasionally feel familiar, lacking in grand ambitions, its still-confident songs are meticulously crafted and packed with moments of shimmering pop splendor.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    New Hymn to Freedom
    New Hymn To Freedom, the English trio’s second album, is a remarkably lucid 45 minutes of spontaneous composition, a civilization of sound and emotion conjured from nothing more than the in-the-moment interplay between keyboardist Luke Abbott, saxophonist Jack Wylie, and drummer Lawrence Pike.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What a Time to Be Alive
    What A Time To Be Alive is the rawest Superchunk album since the band’s 1990 debut and undoubtedly its most ferocious.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light, Vol. 2
    At its best, Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light II shimmers and mesmerizes like a mirage; but like a mirage, it also quenches less than it should.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Live Love A$AP
    Live Love A$AP's only real fault is that it's so willfully superficial.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    obZen
    The result challenges brain and body, sure (just try headbanging to obZen), but it also dares any other metal band to write a more ferocious album.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Devouring Radiant Light
    The 46-minute Devouring Radiant Light lets the band breathe. It sounds like they needed it--the record’s longest songs are its best.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Star Wars
    Star Wars is absolutely that journey to challenging parts unknown, and, thankfully, it’s a trip worth taking.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Music Tapes for Clouds & Tornadoes
    At the core of them all is Koster's invested, angelic voice and his singing saw.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    American Gangster
    Judging by this surprisingly strong return to form, Jay-Z might want to consider spending less time in the office and more time at the movies.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Morph The Cat
    There's something weirdly compelling about hearing Fagen settle into this particular rut, especially on a set of songs about growing old in an age of terror.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Field Songs
    Though that rustic snapshot edges perilously close to self-parody for Whitmore, the track ["We'll Carry On"]--and Field Songs as a whole--also sharply defines his elemental strengths.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    23
    The softer focus fits them exceptionally well.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Black Up
    A killer second act.
Page: