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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    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Disconnect from Desire
    The lyrics never step beyond New Agey, four-elements platitudes, and the arrangements, even when ostensibly dark, never cut against the vocals' immaculateness.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Seeds
    Seeds reflects a band unconcerned with challenging its listeners this time and more interested in delivering a complete collection of competent, mark-bearing songs for the sake of proudly stating the existence of TV On The Radio in 2014.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    My Dear Melancholy, [EP]
    On Melancholy, the Starboy wallows in heartbreak. It can be a bit tedious, at least until French producer/DJ Gesaffelstein shows up for “Never There” and “Hurt You,” which plays like a two-part song.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bruiser
    As it is, Bruiser is an album with some promise, but not much.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No Line On The Horizon
    U2 might try to pass Horizon off as atmospheric, but it's really just a grab bag of underdeveloped ideas that never seemed to command the band's full attention.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Live Music
    The absence of sonic violence and impenetrable murk has made the Strange Boys sound unexpectedly emaciated and bloodless.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Roses
    The group has successfully channeled its signature sound after a decade of silence, but the lack of growth makes Roses feel stuck in the past.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    OST
    With better production and more focus, 8 Mile could have been a hip-hop version of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Instead, it's a frustrating collection that bogs down two of the best songs of Eminem's career with a lot of interchangeable filler.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Defend Yourself
    The sound remains the same, but the songs aren’t always there.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything Goes Wrong
    Most of their songs sound the same--warbled three-part harmonies over three-chord strumming--and the slick production only highlights that lack of breadth.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Futuristically Speaking...Never Be Afraid
    The music supplied by producers Hardfeelings UK, Basement Jaxx, and others is serviceable at worst and at times pretty great, but much of the subject matter that gets lost among flailing arms and flapping breasts during live shows is exposed as boring, cliché, and/or lame over the course of the album's 55 minutes.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Putrifiers II
    His [John Dwyer's] experiments seem less about evolution and progress, and more about exploring every permutation of his influences that are mathematically available to him. While that still makes for some decent songs, it's not nearly as exhilarating now that Thee Oh Sees' mix 'n' match methodology is so plainly evident to all but the most casual listeners.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    L.A.X.
    The Game has always borrowed from the greats. Here, he cannibalizes his own tired shtick so extensively, he lapses even further into self-parody.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Piece by Piece
    Piece By Piece sounds energized during these looser moments; it’s hard to shake the feeling the album would’ve been far better had it taken a few more risks.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Amanda Leigh
    Every subsequent song on Amanda Leigh, no matter the tempo or mood, offers a similar mishmash of pop sheen and anodyne country rock, with little to suggest a distinct artistic vision.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Terrorbird
    Imagination and ambition pop up all over Terrorbird. Unfortunately, it's tunefulness that's lacking.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    1000 Forms of Fear
    1000 Forms Of Fear certainly has the songs and contemporary sheen to make Sia a star in her own right, but it’s at the expense of both her emotional intimacy and her offbeat personality.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Northern Aggression
    Those who hoped Wynn would bring that inventive spirit and boldness back to his band for its third album will be disappointed: Northern Aggression is almost surprising in its straightforwardness.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Universal High
    At points, Universal High finds a hook and rides it somewhere new, but for the most part it’s content to time-travel to safe harbors, layering clean, jazzy guitar over simple grooves or dabbling in yacht rock.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Barking
    Despite its title, Barking is, in some ways, the most tuneful Underworld album yet, which isn't saying a lot.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dirty Gold
    A labored crossover grab that mistakes conviction for substance, Dirty Gold marks Haze as just the latest in a long line of promising mixtape rappers to whiff a major-label debut.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Out From Out Where
    But for all its diligent progressivism, Out From Out Where collapses under its own weight, sounding every bit as stubborn and hermetic as Autechre's infamous Confield.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Somebody's Miracle
    While Somebody's Miracle marks an improvement over Liz Phair, there's still nothing revolutionary, or even memorable, happening here.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Emperor of Sand
    Emperor Of Sand is both progressive and regressive, as Mastodon takes two different parts of its past and slaps them together. And while it occasionally works, more often than not Mastodon just sounds confused.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Critical Equation
    Dr. Dog’s music is usually far more engaging and inventive, so hopefully Critical Equation’s monotonous tedium is a mere blip.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crooked Shadows
    Of all his very short albums, this is his shortest, and where he once packed his songs with knotty chord changes and shout-along confessions, here he tends toward conventional structures and lowest-common-denominator couplets.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    More
    C has described More as more adult than her debut, and while no one is likely to mistake her for Serge Gainsbourg, it does draw on far more respectable sources than those of her TRL peers, leavening her trademark sound with disco, new wave, and electronica. At her best, C sounds like an American, more mercenary version of Saint Etienne's lead singer, Sarah Cracknell, as she lowers her already-thin voice into a breathy, evocative whisper.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man Against Machine
    Instead of building on Brooks’ strengths, Man Against Machine is firmly rooted in midair.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lost on the River
    The New Basement Tapes is a mostly pleasant collection of sleek and sometimes forgettable tunes.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gandhi Kahn
    Like its predecessor, the album features flashes of brilliance interspersed with Van Helden's weak spot for frustratingly clownish contrariety.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Damage
    Damage doesn’t offend, but it doesn’t offer much that’s memorable, either.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    An Awesome Wave
    An Awesome Wave washes over its beached listeners, pleasantly cooling them for a second, then making its retreat back into an ocean of sameness.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Black City
    In the end, Dear has successfully turned a tense, eerie mood into songs. They just aren't songs most people will feel like hearing.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Feel.Love.Thinking.Of.
    The only thing repeated, however, is an unfortunate pattern: For Feel’s every plus, there’s a significant minus, such that listeners could actually buy the album’s even-numbered tracks, and skip all the odds.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hysterical
    CYHSY has reeled back the infectious madness, softening the edges once made so acute by pinwheeling guitars, buoyant bass, and danceable rhythms.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ninth
    Where his menace once oozed, it now hiccups.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Own the Night
    While the average age of Lady Antebellum's members is a relatively youthful 28, Own The Night is purposely old-fashioned, even geriatric.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stronger
    The album suffers from a heavily produced electro-sheen, and ends up feeling more manufactured than magical.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's a Corporate World
    The Detroit-based outfit has pieced together a streamlined collection of pleasant but forgettable pop tunes that come and go without much punch.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mr. Beast
    Beast lumbers instead of flows.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Death Seat
    As a self-consciously serious singer-songwriter, Toth consistently underwhelms. As with Waiting In Vain, Death Seat showcases Toth's evocative, starkly poetic lyrics....But neither his voice nor his music effectively convey any of those bleak, morbidly witty themes.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    All Things Bright and Beautiful
    For the most part, the songs are unable to transcend their cheesiness, turning Young's formula from winning to wincing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Dreamer/The Believer
    It's a passable album of mostly neutral jams and bare-minimum production.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    After the Party
    While The Menzingers’ best work has always been about grappling with personality flaws in the interest of becoming a better person, After The Party only offers surface-level reflections, to the detriment of the band itself.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tangerine Reef
    The record captures all the noodling self-indulgence that makes the psych-poppers such a maddeningly inconsistent live act. But Tangerine Reef is an incomplete object in this form: It’s accompaniment, not feature presentation, the drowsy soundtrack to the iridescent undersea visuals of Australian filmmakers Coral Morphologic.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lightning
    In getting back to basics, however, the record leaves out the memorable hooks that make the whole formula work.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hall Music
    With Hall Music, Svanangen has proven he can compose big arrangements, but he might not write big music.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Sellout
    Easy as it is to root for the freaky underdog in any endeavor, Gray doesn't sound especially engaged here.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Places Like This
    In spite of Architecture In Helsinki's trademark bounce and imagination, Places feels far more like work than play.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Britney Jean
    Far too much of Britney Jean defaults to EDM-by-numbers and the numbing lyrical repetitiveness that appears to be Will.i.am’s calling card.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Woodstock--40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm
    For one weekend, they all happened to be picked up by a state-of-the-art Ampex tape machine. A few made history. The rest made background noise for half a million kids who behaved really, really well. That’s one for the books, all right—but not necessarily one for the ears.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Curtis
    He's still capable of cranking out a great single and the occasional clever verse, but he's yet to master the art of making a satisfying album rather than delivering a random assortment of demographic-pandering tracks.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Happens Next
    This record foments no curiosity, just indifference--and for a band built on commanding attention for its politicized music, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fundamental
    A politically charged album that's free of musical sparks.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Yours Truly, Angry Mob
    Kaiser Chiefs scramble to reclaim ground already won, sticking with lazily hooky songs sporting overcranked arrangements. The result? Charmless fare like the bombastic UK hit single "Ruby," and loutish lad-rock like "Thank You Very Much" and "My Kind Of Guy," which sound simultaneously pushy and forgettable.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Omni
    The spacey, psychedelic flourishes and harmonies have been ditched in favor of blandly inoffensive solos and big, arena-rock choruses. And there'd be nothing wrong with any of this if the songs were stronger.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Meet Glen Campbell
    There's nothing really objectionable here, but nothing transcendent either.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    AmeriKKKant
    AmeriKKKant is cathartically enjoyable, but it ultimately feels as inspiring--and effective--as tweeting Trump-Putin memes at Fox News.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    White Lies For Dark Times
    White Lies For Dark Times succeeds when cool and carefree; when the album ups the energy, however, it’s channeled through the formulaic licks found at on any average summer-festival circuit, suggesting Lifeline’s high standards were an anomaly.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bright Lights Of America
    Too much of the disc, like the histrionic "The Modern Rome Burning," swipes singsong, folk-stoked stridency from Against Me! and American Steel; the rest of it throws random orchestration at the wall and misses it altogether.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The House
    Maine turns in some of his best songs yet, with “Country,” “Now The Water,” and “Find Me” all showcasing his skill as a crooner, but around its midpoint, the album starts to sag. The House’s three interludes feel less like connective tissue and more like unfinished filler, and the album’s back half ends up seeming rote.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Good, The Bad & The Queen
    It's easy to respect the album's sustained washed-out tone, but it'd be nice if the songs were memorable past their running time. Intrigue without any payoff makes for pretty dull listening.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Smalls Change (Meditations Upon Ageing)
    Shearer’s vocals, especially on a four-minute-plus opus like the title track, unfortunately demonstrate why he was never that band’s lead singer, detracting from another promising rock opera like “Faith No More.” For die-hard Tap fans only.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Love You, It's Cool
    The overindulgence comes off as an indistinguishable wall of sound and, even worse, as a terrific bore.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Spine
    For most of The Spine, They Might Be Giants hammers its quirks into predictable shapes, mistaking catchy for listenable ("Prevenge"), layering on effects to bolster the dull ("Bastard Wants To Hit Me"), and generally delivering what's expected.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No Cities Left
    There's a strange, almost perfectly equatorial divide between five largely stunning songs, and six that might shine brighter in lesser company. As arranged, it's jarringly half-brilliant and half-blah.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Devil's Night
    But what was fresh and provocative at the time of Eminem's debut has grown somewhat stale; at this point, hismisanthropy feels as predictable as Gallagher smashing watermelons.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Just Push Play
    The acceptable outweighs the embarrassing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jessica Rabbit
    Sleigh Bells has grown up plenty since their 2009 lightning-strike arrival, but perhaps that strike is starting to feel like more of a distant memory than it should.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dive Deep
    Morcheeba's existence points out everything Air does right--both are calm and inoffensive enough to serve as dinner music, but only one aspires to more.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Secret Machines
    ['The Walls Are Starting To Crack'] is a refreshingly weird passage on a record that otherwise deviates little from the brawny but accessible psychedelia of the band's first two.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Block Brochure: Welcome to the Soil, Pt. 2
    Fatigue sets in hard on the second album, where the beats sound a good deal cheaper, E-40's eccentric flow begins to nag, and the overall energy nosedives.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece
    As always, Snoop oozes charisma, and he possesses one of rap's most irresistible voices, but R&G makes it clearer than ever that he has nothing to say, no matter how infectiously he says it.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Darkel
    It sounds like Air divided by two, but it's all too easy to hear what's missing.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beautiful Thing
    Yo-yoing of tempos and moods aside, whether it is on the stripped-down “A Hit Song” or the jerky, David Byrne-esque “Oh Baby,” Taylor sounds pretty emotional, a sadness underscoring his signature vocals throughout.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ready to Die
    With Ready To Die, Iggy And The Stooges have begun to spring back to life. Or at least shown signs of becoming convincingly zombified.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Strange Clouds
    Strange Clouds is ultimately too weighed down by joy-killing self-importance to match [his] debut's hit ratio.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You
    An album of songs that seem to be about love and loss but never quite connect emotionally, almost as though Case is so wrapped up in seeming ladylike that she never really remembers to let go.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Desperate Ground
    Desperate Ground has a tendency to sound monochromatic and homogenous.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hardwired...To Self-Destruct
    Hardwired is never embarrassing in the way of St. Anger or Lulu, but it’s rarely revelatory either. It’s not so much that Metallica is incapable of writing a good song in 2016; it’s just a little too complacent to write a truly great one.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Here and Now
    Even as Here And Now inspires massive eye-rolls, the nefariously catchy songs stick like stepped-in dog crap.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hood Billionaire
    Hood Billionaire is an overlong 16 tracks of Ross luxuriating in his excesses, including the most expensive productions this side of Watch The Throne.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Intimacy
    Bloc Party has a lot of ideas on Intimacy, but the band should have given itself more time to figure them out.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Body Language
    Long stretches prove mysteriously hookless, arid, or burdened by Minogue foregrounding a voice that withers in the glare of the spotlight.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Seventh Seal
    The Seventh Seal is a record that’s been made a hundred times or more--one that attempts to save rap while rocking beats that prove the producers aren’t sure what rap’s current state is.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ecstasy
    As uneven an album as Reed has released, it might be easier to take if there had been more of them in the past seven or eight years. Instead, it feels like the latest in a series of anticlimaxes.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Funhouse
    Pink can reach unusually stirring heights when in the right register. That register, on Funhouse, is something close to despondence with a lot of tiredness thrown in--just enough to make Pink forego her instinct for winking and simply sound pained instead.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Como te Llama
    The results aren't bad, just wan, and they make for one of the most characterless albums of the year.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Colonia
    Colonia peters out with three laments that lose their power when grouped together, and two instrumentals that waste opportunities to hear more of that wonderful voice.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No Business
    Like most of Negativland's oeuvre, No Business makes valid points via sometimes-annoying sounds.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Devin Dazzle And The Neon Fever
    Half of the album sounds phoned-in and flat.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No Love Deep Web
    Even at a meaty 46 minutes, the album still suffers from a feeling of writer's block.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo
    The sum of its charms--and there are a few--add up to something for only the most devoted in the Cuomo cult.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    York Blvd
    The new York Blvd. settles on likably shambling, lazily paced pop, but Acetone still hasn't quite cemented an identity for itself. The reason has a lot to do with the fact that, even at its most pleasantly languid ("Vibrato," "Bonds"), York Blvd. just isn't especially engaging.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Highly Evolved
    The record's big-rock sound works against it, as does its back-and-forth swing from melodic Britpop to room-filling volume.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    8
    Too many songs get halfway there, starting promisingly, then petering out quickly.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Different Ship
    Framing Temple's songs in display-case glass only reveals how little they have going on, and the tidy production saps his band of its best trait: its scrappiness.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Grotto
    It doesn't take long for her aimless acoustic picking and postgraduate lyrical poetry to dissipate into a dull gray haze.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Entertainment
    As long as Fischerspooner exists, it will likely excel at Entertainment’s titular activity onstage, but the days of that happening on studio albums appear to be waning.
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