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
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Essence
    Williams sounds withdrawn and mysterious, awash in feelings that may be too personal to share this time out.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Piñata
    Piñata may not be Madlib’s best personal handiwork, but it’s well tailored to suit his partner’s impressive rhyming abilities.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Suspiria [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Its ballet scenes are climactic, cathartic centerpieces, dramatically illustrating the power of sound to move, to manipulate, to conjure. Yorke’s score is a shrine to that dark power.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Vampire Weekend
    The young band's saving grace is compactness, which not only saves thousands of dollars in kora-player and backup-singer bills, but also keeps things alert and accessible.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Seldom Seen Kid
    As ever with Elbow, the album is too long, ever ready to make room for more lush melancholy. But beneath the superficial drabness and gloom is a band as diverse as any of its flashier contemporaries.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Make Way for Love
    Williams’ emotive baritone, as ever, commands center stage, but it’s the album’s experimental elements (the Suicide-ish drum machine on “Party Boy,” the strange synth accompaniments throughout) and subtle psychedelia (as on the spellbinding “Can I Call You”) that push Williams’ sound to a more interesting and promising place.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Parallax
    It's a brilliant feat: to make a record about distance, Cox has written the most effortlessly approachable music of his career.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Jet Plane And Oxbow
    The album doesn’t always fulfill its ambitions, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially with results as muscular as this one.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Familiars
    With this rewarding album, The Antlers take the band’s wounds and find glimmers of redemption and hope.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Slowdive
    Slowdive is not a quantum-leap record, nor does it slavishly replicate past successes. Rather it’s another collection of thoughtfully written songs, filled with evident joy for the band’s reformation.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Black Times
    For the most part, the music backs up his mood. It’s faster, tougher, and more blood-boiling than usual, but it’s still malleable, growing to a furious peak on “Corporate Public Control Department” or slowing to a mournful groove on “African Dreams.”
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Honeys
    Honeys rocks in the perverse way only Pissed Jeans can, and like past releases, it’s a slab of flank steak in an indie world rife with tenderized veal.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Ride
    The Ride is both party and primer, taking listeners through what one set of musicians has learned about their craft over 30 years.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Coast Is Never Clear
    An even-better follow-up to Beulah's excellent 1999 album When Your Heartstrings Break, the new The Coast Is Never Clear features the San Francisco band running through a set of songs every bit as lovely as they are unpredictable, with tracks as likely to throw in a banjo as a Moog.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Success Is Certain
    Disorganized as it is, this is the environment he works best in, and Success smartly just lets him do his thing.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Compton
    Compton successfully crams the magnitude of his origin story into ambitious, densely packed sonics.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Human Performance
    Human Performance as a whole feels less rigid (and abrasive) and more personal in how it deals with restlessness and dread.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Writer's Block
    The band has smartened up, and now it's playing to its strengths.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    King Of Jeans
    In the past two years, Pissed Jeans has stewed in its own formidable digestive juices, and the result is a bold leap forward into hip-deep sludge.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Good Things
    Blacc's charismatic blend of gravitas and ease is what humanizes and vivifies Shine Through's ageless appeal.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Slave Ambient
    Slave Ambient doesn't recall the past so much as a bright, unexpected future, where bands like this inexplicably are still dreaming in new, refreshingly outsized ways.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Heartless
    Heartless proves, Pallbearer is more than capable of making those old moves feel fresh.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Townes
    Townes isn’t so much a straightforward covers album as a trip inside Steve Earle’s experience of listening to, befriending, and trying to be Townes Van Zandt. As such, it may be the most personal album Earle has ever recorded.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Silent Alarm
    It may fit neatly with the now-sound, but Bloc Party's debut album, Silent Alarm, feels more like a modern-day dance-punk standard-bearer than a second-stringer or also-ran.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love What Survives
    It’s uniformly pleasurable, occasionally stirring listening, and Campos and Maker have excellent taste.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Adore Life
    It’s a shame that so much of the Savages album feels like a songwriting rut, because the record’s lone moment of transcendence, “Adore,” also stamps out a repeating coda at its end.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Love Songs For Patriots
    The songs are heartfelt and witty, with the kind of deep sweep that makes listeners happy to be sad.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    For the Ghosts Within
    Ghosts isn't some staid, tasteful covers album. It's lush, yes, and frequently beautiful, but there's also something subtly unsettled about these songs.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Kid
    The Kid is truly an album to experience beginning to end, one with a knack for making you feel--as Smith sings on “An Intention”--“everything at the same time.”
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    De-Loused In The Comatorium
    Taken as a piece, the record's free-flowing synthesis of Santana, Yes, and Metallica is overwhelming in a good way.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Father of the Bride
    Father Of The Bride isn’t the shocking rebirth that might have been expected, given all of the information that trickled out about it over the past six years. Instead, it’s just far enough from expectations to surprise, but close enough to remain true. It’s a little messy and a little weird (and, again, a little long), but exactly the right record for Vampire Weekend right now.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Electric Version
    What's the point in complaining that Electric Version doesn't offer enough of one of its countless good things? The only thrill missing here is the enviable joy of hearing New Pornographers for the first time.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Point
    Given his prior eclecticism, it's stunning to hear the unified, boldly conceptual approach Cornelius takes on his new Point.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Facts Of Life
    The perfect soundtrack for the morning after the tacky sexuality of The Spice Girls and Robbie Williams.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Stage Names
    The Stage Names is a relatively straightforward roots-rock record, rounded out by clever, pop-culture-obsessed songs.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Overgrown
    James Blake’s talent is in his ability to smoothly synthesize disparate influences; his willingness to grow and develop while doing so is fascinating and frequently rapturous.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Silence Yourself
    This juxtaposition of dissonance and beauty adds more friction to Silence Yourself’s atmosphere, transforming a potentially monochromatic record into something with intriguing depth.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Leave It All Behind
    Nicolay has never been afraid to go soft and smooth, but his production on Leave It sometimes borders on easy listening.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mutilator Defeated at Last
    While not front-to-back pummeling, Mutilator Defeated At Last is fast and hard for much of its 33 minutes.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
    While this record remains absolutely likeable, it still sounds too much like the soundtrack for a concert that hasn't happened yet.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Where You Go I Go Too
    For all the promise held out by the idea of Lindstrom staring down long tracks with thematic aims, the range on display is surprisingly narrow. None of the narrowness is exactly bad, but the widescreen potential was so high.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
    Thoughtful, strange, spiritual, immersive, rewarding upon repeated and thoughtful engagement.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Cut the World [Live]
    The 12 tracks place Antony in an exposed and elegant state: away from the studio, under the lights of a concert hall, and engulfed in harmonies. On that stage, he soars.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Love Is Overtaking Me
    The songs--and especially their alternately playful, pained, and purposeful delivery--sell themselves.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Couple Tracks: Singles 2002-2009
    Granted, Fucked Up’s ambitious full-lengths are always going to snag the most attention. But when it comes to chronicling the group’s heart, recklessness, and rabid devotion to the fine art of the punk anthem, Couple Tracks is the true classic.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Real
    By not shying away from writing about messy relationships, hard truths, and personal failings, she’s created an album with incredible emotional and lyrical resonance.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Nearer My God
    It’s as impressive as it is expansive, a perfect showcase for modern emo’s elasticity.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Melted
    Melted is a true, terrific, and times gleefully terrifying mirror of its maker.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hot Thoughts
    Spoon is a master of hooky songwriting, but Hot Thoughts seems so bent on undermining it that the band undersells itself. Maybe Hot Thoughts is an apt title after all--it’s got great ideas, but the execution is lacking.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    At My Age
    There's a real person writing and singing these songs, with a lifetime's worth of joys and disappointments, as well as the wisdom to keep it all in proper balance.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Smoke Ring for My Halo
    Smoke Ring For My Halo is a repetitive album in the best possible sense, even if some of Vile's distinctive sound was shorn off along with the fuzz.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Discovery of a World Inside the Moone
    At once infectious and challenging, complex and direct, The Discovery Of A World Inside The Moone represents the new standard for those seeking to carry the torch lit by the Beatles and Beach Boys.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Murray Street
    Murray Street doesn't mark an epochal moment for Sonic Youth, but its familiar nods and new ingredients--from Steve Shelley's occasionally near-funky drumming to O'Rourke's tingly laptop textures--stake out another high point for a band achieving self-realization by reconciling self-absorption with a sigh and a smile.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Asleep In The Back
    Establishing a languorous mood right away, the album is all meandering, low-key moods and textures, with precious few focused songs on which to hang them.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Historian
    Historian stumbles occasionally, with some songs taking a while to get up the hill, but it’s rewarding because it carries such weight and commands such attention.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Rather Ripped
    Rather Ripped is unmistakably a Sonic Youth album, right down to the snatches of amp-on-fire distortion, the tuneless speak-singing of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, and an emphasis on guitar texture that includes amplifying each strummed string. But the conventional rock-song structures of "Incinerate," while not unheard of for Sonic Youth, here feel unexpectedly and warmly classicist.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    True Love Cast Out All Evil
    Not unlike Bob Dylan's Time Out Of Mind, this is an album by a grizzled veteran of rock's rougher roads who proves in his late career that he still has great work in him. Perhaps even better, Erickson sounds remarkably confident and optimistic; for all the tumult of his life, he's happy to be living it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    It's Blitz
    The main problem with It’s Blitz! is that the band’s kind of retreat to kicky electroclash feels a little late to the party. Too many other musicians have gone to this particular well over the past half-decade, and few of them had a Karen O at their disposal. Still, these synth-driven pop songs aren’t really much different from Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ guitar-driven ones.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Blank Project
    Neneh Cherry has been making music for 25 years now, but Blank Project proves that she’s absolutely free of any signs of creative stagnation.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    There Is Love In You
    There Is Love In You, his first proper album in five years, is smoother still, and to great effect—if this isn’t the best Four Tet record yet, it’s certainly a fresh face for Hebden.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Birth of Violence
    With melodies that are stretched thin and simplistic lyrics that feel even more so next to the sophisticated arrangements, Birth Of Violence’s dark beauty is like standing outside watching the stars in winter: stark, beautiful, and a little numbing.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Brothers
    Brothers is actively engaged in exploring how to make beloved old sounds relevant to now, and the result is that even classic Black Keys howlers like “Black Mud” and “Ten Cent Pistol” come off more vital in the new context.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Dream Is Over
    In many ways, The Dream Is Over is a record that perfectly captures the moment between bottoming out and rising above. Not many would be able to find this much strength when on the brink of collapse, but PUP’s never seemed all that interested in doing things the easy way.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Jarvis
    The main difference between Jarvis and Pulp's final album, We Love Life, is that the new record feels far less portentous, and more brightly poppy.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Post-Nothing
    While King’s hyperdrive approach to laying guitar brick rarely sits perfectly flush with Prowse’s cyclonic drums, every spasm on the recording sticks. The combined explosions never quit popping until the muddy sigh of the heartbreaking closer, 'I Quit Girls.'
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Saturation III
    Like its predecessors, the album is hit or miss, but the batting average remains uncommonly high for a project like this.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good Looking Blues
    Good Looking Blues marks only a subtle advancement over its predecessors. The songs are a little too similar to Laika's Sounds Of The Satellites, and therefore not terribly radical, but that just gives everyone else a chance to catch up.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Venice
    Fennesz follows precursors from the whole of ambient electronic music, but his dense and weightless structures owe as much to the cascading builds of shoegazer rock bands like My Bloody Valentine.
    • The A.V. Club
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Haha Sound
    Broadcast invokes the spacier reaches of Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, but Haha Sound is a retrofit well-tailored enough to wear a cloak of its own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Moon & Antarctica
    A sort of concept album about cold and distant places--creepy sound effects and odd nods to science and space abound--these 15 songs rarely settle into one place for long, opening with the characteristically potent "3rd Planet" before veering off into weird cacophony, jarring interludes, mellow meanderings, and general tunelessness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Album Of The Year
    Album Of The Year isn't as compact or viscerally exciting as the EP that preceded it, mainly because it's not as loud.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Primary Colours
    The Horrors have gone from terrifying to haunting, an effect that lingers far longer.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cry Cry Cry
    Cry Cry Cry is Wolf Parade’s most vibrant, energetic record to date.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    False Readings On
    False Readings On leaves you with as much unease as it does catharsis. But these steps forward make sense for the composer as he forges on.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Honor Found In Decay
    Despite flashes of greatness, the uneven, unfocused Honor Found In Decay feels more like a placeholder.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fading Frontier
    There’s a confidently dreamy quality running through most of the songs on Fading Frontier that gives off the impression of a group at peace with both itself and its place in the musical world.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Love Remains
    Love Remains is an immersive experience that transcends its chilliness (and speaker-crackling sonic limitations) through pure emotio.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Iron Balls of Steel
    Iron Balls has a lot more grit and gristle to it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Next Day
    The Next Day is not just a strong comeback, but a stunning, resonant piece of expression--an intimate communiqué that whispers at the soul without denying the labyrinth of identity that once made Bowie a self-contained echo chamber.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    New Multitudes
    The effect is both panoramic and cloistered, an aptly manic-depressive tribute not only to the band's source material and Guthrie's lasting relevance, but to the lonesome crowded West that so many have worked to document since.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Banga
    By the time Banga gets to its album-closing song Smith has delivered nearly an hour of those kinds of songs [meditations on creativity, immediacy, and centuries of human endeavor.]
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Holy Ghost
    In addition to being a powerful examination of self-worth and how it tends to wither beneath the responsibilities of adulthood, the record is also a testament to the band’s growth musically and thematically.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Tramp
    For the most part, the production serves to accent rather than overwhelm Van Etten's greatest asset, her voice.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! The Rolling Stones In Concert [40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set]
    The extra five Stones cuts earn their position as bonuses because they aren’t as good as the ones on the original LP. The DVD outtakes are just that, fleeting celebrity cameos or not....As for the opening acts, B.B. King’s five fine songs and Ike & Tina’s showbizzier seven represent neither act at their best--and besides, who buys a Rolling Stones box to hear them?
    • 81 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hiss Spun
    Hiss Spun is a full-on sludge-metal extravaganza, never content to go slow and heavy when it could be going slower and heavier. The bombast is overwhelming, and while there’s an admirable zeal to her drive for making almost every second as intense as possible, it begins to get numbing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Songs In Red And Gray
    Revealing a songwriter unwilling to compromise even when it hurts, Songs makes her return all the more welcome.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wonderful Rainbow
    For an album that changes pace only for intensely noisy noodling, Wonderful Rainbow shows remarkable range.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Under Construction
    In the long shadow of death, Elliott and Timbaland's funky, feisty, infectious music joyously celebrates life.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ivy Tripp
    It’s Crutchfield’s commitment to embracing both sides of herself--and not downplaying either--that makes Ivy Tripp the most accomplished record to bear the Waxahatchee name.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    True Meanings
    Forty-plus years into his career, the Modfather has once again ripped up his own playbook--and released a singular album.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tears Of The Valedictorian
    Tears Of The Valedictorian may be Frog Eyes' most accessible album, if only because Mercer sings as much as he yelps, and pulls back the reins on the band's thrashy, bashy art-folk long enough to let some melody creep in.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lay It Down
    Because Lay It Down recalls the sound of Green's best so well, it also demands comparison with his best songs, a benchmark the album never really approaches. But by any other standard, Lay It Down is a worthy addition to one of soul's most distinguished discographies.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aerial
    It's a stirring return to that special place behind the eyes of Kate Bush, where every raindrop contains universes within universes.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Onion
    Some tracks land in an odd middleground between the grandiosity Onion seemingly wants to achieve and the shambolic charm that made The Clams one of the most unique bands to come out of the Bay Area garage-rock scene. Luckily, that scrappy spirit lives on in the album’s many moments of glorious abandon.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Somewhere Else
    Somewhere Else may have the finesse of a professional with many years on the books, but it also has the languor that accompanies an amateur treading on uneven ground.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Bark Your Head Off, Dog
    There’s still experimentation here, with the band incorporating strings, harmonies, and even a verse of whistling (“How You Got Your Limp”), but the songs occasionally lack punch. Still, there are multiple high points to this likable album.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fever Ray
    Her eponymous debut as Fever Ray is countless times more claustrophobic and creepy than "Silent Shout."
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    AM
    Although it doesn’t always measure up to its ambitions, AM is easily Arctic Monkeys’ most realized record, and one that will further bridge the gaps for a band that began as bards for scruffy street tales.
Page: