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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    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hive Mind
    For all of Hive Mind’s merits, it still has a tendency to get lost in its own grooves and retread some of the same territory, particularly in its slower, more intimate cuts. But this is still a step forward for this young, talented crew, housing nothing but scintillating performances from Syd and, in the rare moments when the group cuts loose, some seriously intoxicating funk.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Andorra
    In its journey from form to formlessness, the record feels like Caribou reaching back toward a primordial pool of sound.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Skyscraper National Park
    Hayden draws from the traditions of eccentric folk-rock, but his ragged, harrowing concoction of acoustic gentility and electric anarchy stands as a genre all its own.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Come to Where I'm From
    Arthur's shortcomings as a lyricist make his emotional palette seem as limited as his sonic palette is varied and, however layered the production, his songwriting nearly always follows suit.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Chill, Dummy
    There are moments where he falters, often lacking hooks to make a track resonate beyond its runtime, but those failings exist in flashes. What sticks with you is a sense of joy that surmounts all the anger and angst.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    B'lieve I'm Goin' Down
    It hews much more closely to Isaac Brock’s hallucinatory scorched-earth apocalyptic premonitions on Modest Mouse’s finest moments, and musically, it’s the purest distillation of Vile’s idiosyncratic style to date.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Whole Love
    As enjoyable as The Whole Love is-and it's an appreciable improvement over the wan Wilco-it still has some of its predecessor's slight, low-stakes feel.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ice Cream Spiritual
    Ponytail has rendered Ice Cream Spiritual insidiously infectious--and bursting with an oddly tuneful virtuosity that aches to share rather than show off.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Transgender Dysphoria Blues
    Although wrapped in a vague, overarching storyline about a transgender prostitute, Transgender Dysphoria Blues is the strong, strident sound of a heart-on-sleeve artist owning her newfound epiphany.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blood Mountain
    Blood Mountain is terrifying in scope as well as execution.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    AAARTH
    Aaarth is the band’s most off-kilter collection of anthems yet, working in tribal drumming, stuttering and overlapping vocal tracks, and some of the Middle Eastern influences Led Zeppelin famously tried on for size when feeling adventurous. Admirable though the experimentation can be, The Joy Formidable still hits its sweetest spot aiming for the nosebleeds.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Teen Dream
    Teen Dream is deeper in hue than its predecessors. Its blues are bluer, even while warmer tones abound, and Scally’s guitar emotes as lithely as the voice it dances with.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    ()
    It actually transcends its predecessor in its unsettling, under-the-skin beauty.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Option Paralysis
    With Option Paralysis, Dillinger stops to catch its breath--if you can really call it that--but the result is no less stunning.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Nine Types of Light
    Finding the beauty and the beat in unpredictable chaos-keeping the heart when the world falls apart-has always been TV On The Radio's specialty, and here, it sounds completely effortless.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
    Song after song returns to the same nightclubs for the same set of cocky put-downs and faintly misogynist come-ons. Meanwhile, the band fumbles through a sound that seems to have been assembled from pieces of retro-minded rock acts like The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand, but without the sense of purpose or history.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Shattered
    This is confident, uplifting music from a true-believing family man and sometimes electrician with no apparent desire to play stadiums or steep himself in mystique.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    METZ
    For all its abrasion and denatured noise, Metz isn't a statement of nihilism or finality; it's a bright, exploratory scalpel making the first of hopefully many incisions.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    1st Born Second
    The overreaching inevitably hurts the disc's consistency in spots, but it's easy to admire Bilal's ambition, and when it works, it works well. He can't quite do it all, but he does what he can as well as anyone out there, making 1st Born Second sound like the first highlight in a compelling career.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Poses
    As before, absolute consistency eludes Wainwright. Some mid-album selections suffer in comparison to standouts like the title track and the future sing-along "One Man Guy." But, also as before, his unique gifts make it difficult to mind.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Deliverance
    Mixes hip-hop and country with ease and grace.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mermaid Avenue Vol. II
    A worthy successor to the original, MA2 is another inspired reminder of Guthrie's relevance.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Untitled #23
    Minor quibbles aside, Untitled #23 finds The Church doling out sonic pleasures with masterful restraint.
    • 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.
    • 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
    Epic
    Epic might be a transitional work, but it finds Van Etten moving toward a strong, exciting sound.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Never Hungover Again
    Never Hungover Again isn’t a complete overhaul of the band’s sound, but with all the gentle twists on those charms, it ends up serving as a re-introduction.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Crack The Skye
    It’s the songs that matter most on Crack The Skye, and the songs have rarely sounded stronger.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Electric Lady
    Monáe has gone ahead and created her own world, one with her own rules. Sure, it’s a world built on a foundation of Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Duke Ellington, Ennio Morricone, and the countless other idea-seeds from which The Electric Lady grew, but it’s one Monáe has cultivated and shaped in her own distinct, unmistakable image.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper
    Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper doesn’t push boundaries so much as it delineates the contours of Lennox’s comfort zone.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Yellow & Green
    There's an abundance of good ideas here, all of them fearlessly pursued. Next time, the band just needs to hire an editor.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    ...Like Clockwork
    A record of decadent, perverse, feel-weird hits of the winter. Just in time for summer.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    In Conflict
    Pallett has always crafted emotionally rich songs, but he seemed on previous albums to be trying to worm his way into listeners’ heads via inventive cleverness. On In Conflict, he seems much more comfortable taking aim at the gut.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Freetown Sound
    What keeps Hynes grounded is his sense of emotion, demonstrated in the seductively smooth funk undercurrents of “E.V.P.” (featuring Debbie Harry), evoking George McCrae’s stunted yet whisper-like vocals.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Week That Was
    The Week That Was leaves "indie rock" behind, hops right over hip marching-band music, and lands square between the lofty obelisks of high-art pop and New Music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cookie: The Anthropological Mix Tape
    Cookie is so frequently brilliant that its periodic missteps feel like integral parts of a grand design.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Red Devil Dawn
    What sets Red Devil Dawn apart, though, is a sense of personalized tragedy that Bachmann hasn't addressed much before.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blacklisted
    The songs are spectral, yearning, and a bit opaque, the kind of music appropriate for a bar in which everyone has had a few and feels no better for it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bright Yellow Bright Orange
    Bright Yellow almost never reaches the highs of the group's classic early albums, nor does it embarrass itself by straining to duplicate them.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Internal Wrangler
    A terrific head-scratcher of a debut
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Qualm
    Like all of Hauff’s work, Qualm offers a lot to chew on while also resisting overanalyzing. You let it lure and lash you, let it move you or just move on.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Luminiferous
    This track [“The Lethal Chamber”], as well as Luminiferous as a whole, aggressively illustrates that High On Fire still deserves its place at the top of underground metal’s food chain.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Europe
    The result is a no less charming of a record, but one shadowed by maturity.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Canary
    Building from a base of loping country-rock, Southeast Engine frequently breaks into a full gallop, playing with wild abandon and outright joy even when singing songs about the Great Depression. The band gets a little too loose at times, resulting in songs that have a strong drive but never get anywhere.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love Streams
    Virgins is dark and brilliant and haunting as it raises the hairs on the back of your neck, while Love Streams washes over you--or sometimes floats by off in the horizon--due to its subtlety and complex, deliberate construction.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dark Matter
    Dark Matter is dense, complicated stuff, though it’s also an engrossing display of pop theater.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Broken Social Scene
    Even a mellowed Broken Social Scene sports more energy and ideas than a dozen mainstream rock acts.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Build a Rocket Boys!
    It isn't the type of album that will easily find its way into the hearts of those in need of a quicker, simpler fix.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Waiting Room
    Though Tindersticks is no longer angling for the pure dramatic sweep of its ambitious ’90s records, it remains a unique band, maintaining a sense of creativity (and making beautiful music) while working within limited themes.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Curse Your Branches
    Curse Your Branches--his first solo album, though Pedro was basically just Bazan anyway--pushes him into full-on agnosticism, though that changes little about his terrifically melancholy music.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mad for Sadness
    A surprisingly strong representation of the group's slow, sad appeal.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stephen Malkmus
    As accessible and eccentric as any album from Pavement's catalog...
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Demon Days
    It's all quite innovative and cool, and Albarn's deadpan vocals suggest a Han Solo-like seen-it-all interplanetary weariness. Too bad it lacks a track as tight and memorable as the fluke 2001 hit "Clint Eastwood" to anchor it in place.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    We are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
    This new pack is smart, immediate, and anthemic in the way only bedroom-pop fanatics can muster.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Totaled
    Totaled dives even further into the realm of the progressive-or at least post-punk's idea of it-with songs like "Look Alive" and "Never Been Better," dystopian downers that share more DNA with This Heat and Cabaret Voltaire than with Roky Erickson.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    America
    America ultimately embraces splendor and nobility, even as it acknowledges personal and social anxiety.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fearless (Taylor's Version)
    She has launched the re-recorded Fearless (Taylor’s Version), adding a mellifluous upgrade to an already remarkable album. Sure, it works as a throwback, but it’s mainly a showcase of Swift’s mature, confident vocals, with a sharper sense of musicianship and instrumentation this time around.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Teenage Hate
    The whole album sounds like it was recorded on a telephone, which means that on the rare occasions when the songs push past the two-minute mark, the noisiness obscures Reatard's power-pop and rockabilly-influenced melodies. But Reatard's self-deprecating sense of humor-matched to songs about how he "ain't got no home" and "don't give a shit about anything"--put all the youthful rebellion and sonic slop in context.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Favourite Worst Nightmare
    Arctic Monkeys are hardly the most important rock act in the world, or even the UK. But unlike a lot of their competition, they're a good band getting better.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Back to Love
    Where Hamilton's past albums have lured in listeners with their slow, sensual pull, Back To Love grabs them outright with the soul man's punchiest, most immediate batch of songs yet.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Now Only
    Elverum may spend the rest of his career grappling with his grief. It’s a tough, beautiful privilege to be invited along on that journey.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Salad Days
    Though DeMarco certainly hasn’t ditched his slacker aesthetic, Salad Days is nonetheless a strikingly mature achievement for the 23-year-old.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Monitor
    Clocking in at just over an hour, The Monitor is a self-indulgent statement, to be sure--but some of the best ambitious works are often the most personal.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Wide Awake!
    Wide Awake! is a full arc of an album, one that captures both Parquet Courts’ usual keyed-up exasperation and their new, hard-earned optimism.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Anxiety's Kiss
    Beneath all of the album’s foreign effects, there’s still Coliseum banging away on drums and pushing riffs with amplifiers: If only all those studio tricks hadn’t made the album feel so disjointed.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
    Laced throughout all of it are generous, wide-eyed melodies of a kind that makes for swooning sighs and curious feelings of instant nostalgia.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    8 Million Stories
    [Blueprint's] malevolent wit, distinctive delivery, and sinister take on the world finds a lyrical equivalent to RJD2's brooding beats.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You Are Free
    Rarely breaking from a single, unrelenting mood, Free has a tendency to repeat itself: It could stand to be broken up by more uptempo tracks like "He War," particularly since Marshall does well with them.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Rising
    Any suggestion of a musical crisis of confidence, however, vanishes with the album's first chord, which picks up pretty much where Born In The U.S.A. left off 18 years ago.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Come Away With Me
    A showcase for Jones' remarkable voice, the disc captures a singer whose rare instinct for interpretation always serves the song, rather than working against it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Burn Piano Island, Burn
    The album's clever turns don't take away from The Blood Brothers as a ravaging hardcore band; instead, they enlist chops in service of a manic vision all the more insinuating for its brutality.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hygiene
    Hygiene is a record wholly unconcerned about how derivative it sounds, or with how it fits into the wider rock landscape—happy instead to carve out its own niche, straddling genres with aplomb. That it’s so much damn fun to boot is the good part.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Everybody Works
    Everybody Works is a record about small, personal moments, like riding the bus or balancing work and art--as the title track expertly does--and that’s what makes it all cohere. It’s simply effective. In other words: It works.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Renaissance
    It's an appropriately elegiac, bittersweet conclusion to a solid though less-than-transcendent comeback album from a hip-hop icon who has survived to make good music, even if he hasn't exactly thrived.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
    What makes Eagle so strong is that the music stayed light, and those bucolic splashes of washed-out color contrast so well against Bill Callahan’s blues.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Shadows in the Night
    Due to the sparse, stripped-down arrangement of the music, there’s fortunately no place for him to hide, and his singing fits these songs much better than you might expect.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Do You Like Rock Music?
    While DYLRM? lacks the wild-eyed spits and howls of "Decline Of British Sea Power," it's definitely BSP's most rocking effort yet, replacing the sterility that plagued its sophomore slump, "Open Season," with stadium-sized bravado.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Chloe and the Next 20th Century
    There are songs about lovers remaining strangers and dumbstruck fools falling for each other, and musically, it is sleek. The whole record carries a surprising confidence in regard to affection, survival, and making ends meet.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Pulse of the Early Brain: Switched On, Vol. 5
    Most of the material on this fifth volume of Switched On studiously avoids the trappings of pop music, so hearing this Emperor Tomato Ketchup single as a coda underscores how Stereolab’s music is the product of careful choices and planned adventure, a combination that often produces compelling results as Pulse Of The Early Brain makes plain.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    This Is It & I Am It & You Are It & So Is That & He Is It & She Is It & It Is It & That Is That
    Her songs always at least suggest pop, and the sense of tune at their core adds an inviting thrill to Stern's fitful guitar and Zach Hill's ridiculously, miraculously agitated drums.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Fade
    Yo La Tengo may not be as daringly innovative as it once was, but, in targeting its experiments to a cohesive purpose, the band successfully fulfills Fade's grandiose scope.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Tourist in This Town
    It shows that Crutchfield has always been a star. Tourist In This Town is just the coming-out party.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Great Destroyer
    In making like a post-rock Crazy Horse, Low has found new ways to eke dynamic moments out of lingering notes.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Echoes of Silence
    It's Tesfaye's total commitment to his ghastly persona that makes Echoes Of Silence so entrancingly chilling.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    4:44
    4:44 is captivating because it both upholds that version of himself and buckles beneath its weight.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rooty
    Basement Jaxx traffics in some of the most shamelessly insistent and inventive beats around.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Frozen Orange
    Producer Mark Nevers emphasizes vamping, letting songs rev up and down in such a way that listeners can imagine them still existing somewhere outside the disc itself.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Confield
    Confield, Autechre's sixth full-length and its best release since 1997's Chiastic Slide, may also be its most ambitious.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Public Domain: Songs From the Wild Land
    Alvin's approach acknowledges the haunting quality that traipsing through history can evince; Public Domain is like a photo album of ghosts, where the images are recognizable but occupying some other plane.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Infinite Granite
    Infinite Granite is easy on the ears, a lush and transporting listen, but it also runs together in a way previous albums from this band—with their hills of jagged intensity and valleys of, yes, heavenly beauty—really didn’t. Here, we get only the beauty: a long, indistinguishable blur of pleasure.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Doris
    It often feels less like a finished work than a sketchbook, a jumble of beats and raps (about half of them from guests) with little in the way of hooks, choruses, or general songcraft to tie them together.
    • 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.
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