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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    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghosts Of The Great Highway
    Ghosts Of The Great Highway is all soft spots but no weak spots.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sweet Warrior
    Running nearly 70 minutes, Sweet Warrior is perhaps too indulgent in the album's flabbier second half. But fans surely are happy to let Richard be Richard.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Tarot Sport
    For most of the songs amassed here, it still takes around 10 minutes to get the job done--threading those thick synthesizer blasts and all that skittering digital manna through a brick wall of guitar fuzz--but Fuck Buttons succeeds at turning its unpredictable epics into masterpieces of pacing and strange beauty.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Currents
    Currents isn’t quite that [masterpiece] album, but it’s an enthralling listen nonetheless.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Pussycat
    14 tight and tidy grunge-pop tunes, playing everything herself.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rebound
    Rebound sees bits of the Fiery Furnaces sound creeping back in. There aren’t any backwards-mixed vocals or abrupt key changes, but synths and programmed drums return to augment a batch of songs somewhat less rooted in concrete storytelling details.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Heavy Ghost
    Heavy Ghost, Stith’s debut, is nothing short of a masterpiece of mood and texture, an album that sounds as if it was devised in equal parts by a seasoned composer and an inspired amateur.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Solo Piano III
    While those showier pieces grab attention on first listen, the more meditative ones slowly sink their hooks in, too.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Who Told You To Think?
    Milo’s still firmly making experimental hip-hop, bridging various through-lines of mind-expanding boom-bap, but he’s also etching his way toward the center, his art getting clearer with each step.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    A Shadow in Time
    Basinski’s work, like all ambient music, provides for endless, unresolved interpretation by its design--even when it tries to force its meaning on you.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Yoko
    Recalls an Americanized Delgados, or Camper Van Beethoven after it made the transition from happy college-rock to the grim Americana of 1989's masterful Key Lime Pie.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sling
    Cottrill delivers her most innately beautiful and well-orchestrated album yet.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Shepherd's Dog
    Beam invests each track of The Shepherd's Dog with a unique tone and a singular, even gimmicky arrangement.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Take Me Apart
    There’s another EP in here that’s every bit as good as Hallucinogen, but as an album, Take Me Apart remains more proof of Kelela’s talent and still-unrealized potential.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Transatlanticism
    A lush, impeccably produced, musically adventurous, emotionally resonant examination of the way relationships are both strengthened and damaged by distance, the album surpasses Gibbard's other career highpoints, which is really saying something.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Multiply
    How he makes good on such a seemingly noxious premise remains a mystery... but Lidell's star shines from whatever angle it might be spied.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Office of Future Plans
    Raging yet cerebral, Office Of Future Plans is by no means a radical departure for Robbins, but it does show him poised, with more focus and confidence than ever, at the midpoint between post-punk acidity and singer-songwriter sweetness.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Electric
    With Electric, they prove once again they’re up to the task.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Modern Vampires of the City
    The band itself probably doesn’t know quite what that is yet, but as a capstone to what it’s done so far, Modern Vampires Of The City feels pretty perfect.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We Love Life
    The band strikes the proper balance between ambition and pop instinct.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Send
    The band has rarely sounded so alive.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cast Of Thousands
    The song-structures possess Radiohead's abstract bent, but maintain Coldplay's engaging audience connectivity.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
    Despite its brevity, Asunder has more meat on its bones. And though it calls back to many of the strengths of early GY!BE albums, it also highlights an evolution of intent.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    El Camino
    El Camino is so relentlessly crowd-pleasing that it feels a bit inconsequential; there's no room for the sad, sludgy ballads that used to anchor Black Keys albums in the band's new, sugar-heavy music.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dream River
    Dream River doesn’t chew an inch of scenery; instead it dwells in knowing glances and haunted whispers.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hunter
    More than just grafting on its politics and themes of liberation, Hunter embodies them by capturing a freer, more complex--and queerer--view of its creator. Anna Calvi is on the loose.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tha Carter III
    He's the man of the moment, but the disc's best moments strive for timelessness and attain it.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Infinite Worlds
    In the eight songs that compose the record, there’s not a second that feels extraneous, making for 28 minutes of uncompromising and effortless genre-bending. It’s a stunning record, apparently for all parties involved.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Good Souls Better Angels
    If there’s a downside to the electricity in Williams’ veins on Good Souls Better Angels, it’s that the gentler material doesn’t have quite the same impact.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Everything's Fine
    It’s a sprawling and intentionally distancing record, but never less than fascinating.
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