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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    • 66 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Magpie and the Dandelion
    These songs are nice and they’re pretty, but have no bite, no substance, and no real pizzazz.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    ARTPOP
    For as flamboyant as she is, Gaga’s never lacked sincerity; ARTPOP’s lack of substantial personal connection and its tenuous grasp on reality makes it a tough record to like.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Magic Hour
    Nostalgia-driven fan-funding is a useful way to see which short-lived phenoms have anything left in the tank, but Magic Hour suggests Luscious Jackson is a little too far removed from what drove the group to make music in the first place.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    What The...
    Demons used to be what drove Black Flag toward hitherto extremes of punk-rock brinksmanship, and there are glimpses of that savagery on What The.... Mostly, though, it’s a footnote to a legacy that never needed one.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Louder
    Sadly, a compilation of tracks randomly culled from the best Rachel Berry solos recorded for the show would yield a stronger album than this one made up of originals.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Kiss Me Once
    Kiss Me Once is a disappointing record that tries too hard to mold Minogue into something she’s not.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Turn Blue
    Feelings are always “heavy” or a “burden,” and love is consistently “dark” or “light”; it’s thematic territory that feels stale for the band, and the result is an album that aspires to talk about the complex nature of relationships, yet has nothing meaningful to say.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Ultraviolence
    Ultraviolence moves away from more pop-friendly territory and instead languishes in a sleepy, sad aesthetic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    World Peace Is None of Your Business
    The future is here; love has not brought us together, nor has the bomb. Morrissey, having left himself no other options, makes do with a shrug.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    New Glow
    On New Glow, they’ve either finally dumbed things down too much, or simply reached the end of where this rudimentary songwriting can take them.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Freedom
    Freedom never seems to settle on a single direction, but it’s hard to say whether that’s good or bad.... But it’s when Refused attempts to sound modern--through ultra-slick production tricks and modern sonic collage--that the album truly falters.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    VII: Sturm und Drang
    A generic album.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    HitNRun: Phase One
    [Co-producer and engineer Joshua] Welton tinkers too much with too many EDM toys, and often the result is a cacophonous collision of EDM’s lamest trends. When this album does succeed—which it does on its back half—it’s because Prince and Welton have achieved a balance between dance and funk in which each genre brings out the best in the other.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Hymns
    Themes of loss, grief, and finding meaning in one’s life are buried deep within the subtext of the record. It’s just a shame that after listening to Hymns, we’re no closer to finding any kind of revelation or spiritual bliss.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    California
    California is the sound of Blink-182 desperately trying to remain relevant by outsourcing its creativity.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    AIM
    AIM sounds like a field recording made in the middle of a bustling Sri Lankan market: colorful, flavorful, and most of all, noisy. These inescapable Eastern vibes prove to be a blessing, uniting an otherwise fragmented album.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Honeymoon on Mars
    On most of Honeymoon On Mars, the band seems resigned to the apocalypse and modern society’s devolution, resulting in a shockingly limp record overflowing with empty bluster.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    He's Got the Whole This Land Is Your Land in His Hands
    These songs would never be mistaken for any other band—by that same token, it’s often so obtuse it feels like it’s not meant for anyone but its creators.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Bloodlust
    For every track that maintains an admirable speed-thrash spirit (“Walk With Me,” “Raining Blood”) there’s another that sounds more silly than rocking, like the cheesy posturing of “Here I Go Again,” a dark metal song as imagined by Roger Corman.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    I Can Spin a Rainbow
    “The Sun Still Shines,” suggests that Palmer and Ka-Spel should have really focused their energies on composing interstitial music for a stage production.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Witness
    Despite the presence of bulletproof hit-makers (Max Martin, Sia, Jeff Bhasker) and inventive electro artists (Purity Ring, Hot Chip, Duke Dumont), the record is curiously flat, a shapeless slog that feels remarkably sluggish.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Sacred Hearts Club
    Overall, Sacred Hearts Club also signals a return to Foster The People’s more electronic origins, but not in the inventive way that was used on Torches. Rather, it comes off as hackneyed copy, full of the predictable EDM/trap beats that every other chart-topper has shoved in somewhere.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    New Facts Emerge
    It’s not bad--it’s certainly not an Ersatz GB, or Are You Are Missing Winner (though its half-assed cover art certainly comes close). But now that I’ve written it up, off it will go into the pile, never to be played.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Pacific Daydream
    The Weezer frontman continues to tap that increasingly dry well, his dusty lovelorn longings for perfect summer nights now sounding completely formulaic.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Visitor
    Young and the youngsters he’s playing with here sound like they wrote and jammed these songs out in a few days, relying on the strength of his sentiment to carry them through. But a jam session with some cranky speak-singing on it doesn’t make for a great album, and it’s not going to make any new converts, unfortunately--either to Neil Young’s politics or his music.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Drift
    Where other records by The Men showed they could pull from someone else’s playbook and make something their own, Drift’s hodgepodge of styles ultimately makes The Men sound like they couldn’t settle on what they wanted to do.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Virtue
    For every adequate Strokes throwback or Radiohead soundalike, Virtue antagonizes you with two formless freak-outs cobbled together from influences as wide-ranging as ’90s R&B, Arabic chants, “Monster Mash,” and a shocking amount of nü-metal.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Donda
    More than half of this album is complete filler. No one’s missing “Okok,” “24,” or “Remote Control.” A soulful choir is not enough to save “Never Again.” On this record, there is none of the production genius we’ve come to expect from West. ... And that’s the thing that’s missing most from this record, with all its myriad problems: No one edits West anymore, not even himself. And that’s a damn shame.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Breathe
    Breathe is fine for what it is, but each time Leaves bandleader Arnar Gudjonsson launches into yet another midtempo space-rocker in which he shifts from a mushy monotone croon to a lilting falsetto, the move becomes less a genuine expression of personal style and more a shameless attempt to get with the new rock mainstream.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Folktronic
    It's all so clever and thought-provoking that it's almost possible to overlook that, in most other respects, it's not especially good.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fake Songs
    The spoofs are pretty much just lazy, fooling-around-in-the-studio exercises, which also holds true for most of the non-fake songs on Fake Songs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pelo
    Guests from Chicago's music scene, including Mekons singer Sally Timms and members of Tortoise, bolster the already-solid playing of the Navins' regular contingent, and while the songs aren't particularly sharp, the music (produced by the Navins, John Herndon, and John McEntire) most definitely is.... Can something be so smooth that it just slips away? For all its pleasantness, Pelo comes awfully close to this invisible ideal, an achievement in its own right but not an especially engaging one.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sound of Water
    Saint Etienne has made an egregiously Cardigans-esque wrong turn, abandoning impeccable craft and Motown melodies for the breezy if aimless experimentation of its wildly uneven EPs.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hyacinths and Thistles
    [Merritt] leaves vocal duties entirely to his guests here, an impressive group that includes new-wave forebear Gary Numan and '70s warbler Melanie alongside an all-star collection of indie-rock fixtures. Unfortunately, he's given them some of his weakest material to date, delicate but forgettable songs that often sound like discarded leftovers from 69 Love Songs.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    14 Shades Of Grey
    Not memorable enough to be bad, not heavy enough to pack visceral power, most of these songs–even radio-friendly ringers like "So Far Away"–are indistinguishable from the work of a hundred other bands with misspelled names, hotshot producers, plentiful tattoos, and optional silly facial hair.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Airdrawndagger
    Airdrawndagger fades so listlessly into the annals of anonymity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dear Heather
    Mostly, Dear Heather just coasts on poetic phrasing and inoffensive tunes.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Palookaville
    Palookaville's highlights promise the sweat and smiles that have become Fatboy Slim's stock in trade, but its surprisingly dull lulls offer nothing more promising than a blank expression.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Meteora
    Mercifully brief but mercilessly repetitive, Meteora is little more than a tolerable rehash of a formula that's been on the wrong side of its sell-by date for some time now.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Around The Sun
    In eliminating both the mystery of its early years and the restless spirit of more recent times, R.E.M. leaves just exactly what R.E.M.-haters probably felt the band made all along: midtempo, largely hookless adult rock.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Cocky
    Cocky plays it safe, tinkering slightly with Devil's formula but generally delivering virtual carbon copies of its monster hits.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Masquerade
    Yet another overreaching, overlong musical erector set, the album offers an uneven, conceptually muddled tour of the rapper's current musical obsessions, from gritty underground hip-hop to Caribbean music.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fatherfucker
    Nearly all of Fatherfucker falls back into ostensibly bracing anthems that sound plain stupid in such abundance.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Strange Little Girls
    The disc looks, on paper, like an intriguing exercise. Unfortunately, it sounds, in reality, like little more than an intriguing exercise: With few exceptions, it's tedious and predictable, wearing its calculated concept far too boldly on its sleeve.
    • The A.V. Club
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Eat at Whitey's
    Everlast's pretensions and ambition still outstrip his talent, however, and the distance between the two makes Eat At Whitey's both intriguing and frustrating.... like a defensive tackle trying his hand at ballet, he's far too clumsy and limited a singer and songwriter for the delicate material he attempts.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Under Rug Swept
    Her personal revelations too often ring false and crass, and nothing undermines a confession like calculation.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    American IV: The Man Comes Around
    His song selection has rarely made less sense.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Boomslang
    Boomslang's heavily treated vocals, nondescript songwriting, and swirling, noisy production doesn't leave much room for personality to pop through.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Last Temptation
    Rule is up to his old tricks on Temptation, wrapping thuggish sentiments in candy-coated R&B-flavored tracks, shamelessly dispensing 2Pacisms, and yelling his catchphrase "Murder!" at regular intervals.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pain Is Love
    Ja Rule's only real gift is for crafting undeniable pop hooks. That talent is underrated, but it still does little to cover up the rapper's derivative lyrics and crassly recycled 2Pacisms.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Title TK
    Title TK comes off as unglued in an almost perversely restrained, even uneventful way.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mad Season
    "Last Beautiful Girl"... would be good enough to inspire a wholesale reassessment of Matchbox Twenty if the material surrounding it weren't so average.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Day Without Rain
    Self-seriousness and artistic water-treading aside, there's nothing wrong with A Day Without Rain. It's just that few households need more than an hour or so of Enya music, and Shepherd Moons and Watermark serve that purpose far more effectively.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Devil's Workshop
    Devil's Workshop is the shorter of the two discs, and the better by virtue of brevity and energy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Process Of Belief
    Plunges right back into oppressively rigid formula.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    New Danger
    A sprawling mess.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    C'mon C'mon
    Though she's a master of the explosive chorus, too much of C'Mon C'Mon sounds calculated around that talent, dropping hooks into otherwise unremarkable songs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Fire Theft
    Oddly formless and forgettable, The Fire Theft finds Sunny Day Real Estate diminished in more ways than one.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Destiny Fulfilled
    Destiny Fulfilled sounds distant and detached, and its pronounced ballad-fancy only occasionally raises a flag for the group dynamic it serves to restore.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Street Dreams
    While a delight on guest appearances, he has yet to prove that he can construct memorable songs, let alone a solid album.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Snare
    With the murmured, strictly cadenced vocals, The Snare resembles an especially wan, uninspired rap record.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    England, Half English
    While his rhetoric remains fiery, the material is weak.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    You're the One
    Though not exactly a bad album, when contrasted to the remarkable Graceland and Rhythm Of The Saints, it sounds as arbitrary as a collection of B-sides.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Production
    What could have been a huge breakthrough instead sounds staid, as if he were so used to rocking the house that he didn't want to risk rocking the boat.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Purple Haze
    Purple Haze lumbers drearily through a sea of gangsta-rap clichés.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Beekeeper
    Floats by without stirring much interest.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Rebirth
    Though Lopez often comes off as little more than a featherweight studio concoction, Rebirth contains a few moments with the sugary snap of fresh Bubble Yum.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bleed Like Me
    Garbage's latest approaches a kind of shimmering technical perfection, but remains strangely, stubbornly uninvolving.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In Space
    Pleasant in parts, embarrassing in others, In Space sounds more like an okay album from any of a dozen Big Star-inspired bands than like Big Star itself.
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