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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cloud Nothings
    The Cleveland teenager slashes though catchy melodies like broken guitar-strings on his full-length debut as Cloud Nothings, as if mad dashes of melodicism grew on trees.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Friend Opportunity
    Friend Opportunity is adventurous and strange, but not insular. It lets everyone share the triumphant feeling of a puzzle reaching completion.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    What Will We Be
    On this, his major-label bow, the (now beardless!) prince of freak-folk has harnessed his many left-field tics and energies to craft his most elegantly driven work yet.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sky Blue Sky
    It's an album of shiny surfaces and great depths.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Trees Outside The Academy
    Moore turns inward and turns down, which works to his advantage.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Weathervanes
    Weathervanes' intriguing, thought-provoking lyrics and concept-album nature-it's about a boy who falls in love with a girl ghost-make it a literate-pop gem.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Warm Heart Of Africa
    Though Radioclit seems to draw production ideas from the already existent ether--largely the African-Western pop alliances of the ’80s--that does nothing to take away from this fascinating and happy moment captured on record.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was
    Unlike the singer’s rootsy solo work, Down In The Weeds is rich in what brought many of us to Bright Eyes in the first place: the drama. ... There’s the mature reflection he intertwines with his urgency. There’s his hard-fought optimism. And there’s the embrace of community, the sense that Oberst doesn’t want to stare down these songs alone.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Entanglements
    While certain details are kept shrouded, the acts and emotions are hyper-real, and the story's arc is plenty navigable.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Forget
    Twin Shadow manages to stand out in a cluttered genre thanks to world-beating, danceable hooks and a surfeit of style.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    New Adventures in Hi-Fi [25th Anniversary Edition]
    For die-hards, having these extra tracks in one place, rather than scattered across CD singles or long-lost downloaded MP3s, is a plus; for the unfamiliar, these extras help flesh out the main album’s contours. ... A fascinating chronicle, New Adventures is finally—and rightfully—taking its place as one of R.E.M.’s best, most consistent works.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Brain Thrust Mastery
    Brain Thrust Mastery wouldn't exist without the '80s, but We Are Scientists offer up more than just retro-rock, even when they get as danceable as The Killers.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Melted
    Melted is a true, terrific, and times gleefully terrifying mirror of its maker.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Together Through Life
    For all the pain and peril of the lyrics, there’s a lot of sly humor, too, underlined by the album’s loose, joyful sound.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    To The Races
    Most of To The Races is arresting and alive, filled with little moments--a snaky violin, a warm harmonica, a lilting melody--that serve as reminders of how important the concept of "performance" can be.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Double Cross
    The Double Cross is just an unapologetic celebration of Sloandom, and a safe place for those who believe good dual-guitar breaks--like the ones on the stomping "Unkind"--are the reason why we're here on Earth.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    April
    April, his third full-length under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, and the first made up of new songs since 2003, easily bears the weight of expectations, proving once again that he really does transcend any slowcore or singer-songwriter tags that have been tossed his way.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Ear Drum
    Sexual and spiritual, conscious and just plain fun, Eardrum is a master class in lyricism from a man supremely comfortable in his own skin.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Seventh Tree
    The disc is buoyed by an underlying pop sensibility, epitomized by the bubbly 'A&E' and 'Caravan Girl.'
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Seeker Lover Keeper
    Yet songwriter trio Seeker Lover Keeper's debut album is as frictionless as a walk on the moon, full of the welcome sounds of mutual appreciation.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Glitter And Doom Live
    As usual, it’s worth any amount of trouble to hear Waits live.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Gossamer
    Despite the emphasis on struggle, Gossamer couldn't sound more assured.
    • 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.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Charity Starts at Home
    With his gloriously grown-up solo debut, one of the smartest, most incisive lyricists alive proves it's possible to grow older in hip-hop while retaining your dignity.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    You're Dead!
    You’re Dead! is his most confidently structured work yet.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Empros
    Empros doesn't just defy gravity, it defines it.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Diaper Island
    While he's certainly revisiting his familiar aesthetic, VanGaalen has refined his style, resulting in a focused, cohesive album with a rocker's confidence powering through each track.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Silver Age
    It does mark another 10-year shift for Mould, one in which he revisits old haunts, clears out the weeds, and plants a fresh flag.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dye It Blonde
    Teen dreaminess aside, Dye It Blonde shows that Smith Westerns' giddy mash-ups of stately Beatles melodies and T. Rex swagger play even better when buffed to a high gloss.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Shields
    On an album that touches repeatedly on the barriers people build between each other, the members of Grizzly Bear have forged further ahead into sweet synchronicity.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pick A Bigger Weapon
    Boots fuses sexuality and celebration with naked politics just as seamlessly as he combines irreverent humor and heartwarming humanism.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lover
    As always, Lover is an album Swift made for her fans. But it also feels like a record she made for herself, unburdened by external expectations and her own past.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Audio, Video, Disco
    What Audio, Video, Disco does best is show off what a pair of good producers can really do-namely, simplifying technical musicianship into head-throbbing dance music.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Shrines
    The band's ability to put repulsive images and to a danceable beat makes Shrines a knockout.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    A House Safe for Tigers [OST]
    It's one of the strongest efforts in Hazlewood's catalog, capturing his toughness, sentimentality, and oddball pop songcraft.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Information
    There's nothing here that Beck hasn't done before, but it sounds unexpected once again.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    DAYTONA
    For the first time since going solo, it all feels of a piece. ... The sonic setting he [Kanye West] places this performance from Pusha in is an absolute masterpiece of minimalism.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Bad as Me
    Bad As Me is entry-level Waits for newcomers, and for longtime fans it's a fun reminder of Waits' ability to be a badass when necessary.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    I See You
    The result is the most eclectic, multidimensional, and ambitious album of The xx’s young career.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Process
    It’s the best R&B debut since FKA Twigs’ LP1.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Apollo Kids
    Even without that tribute to the early days of hip-hop, Apollo Kids would still boast an ingratiatingly retro feel, as Ghostface returns to the soulful formula that served him so well on The Pretty Toney Album and Fishscale. Ghost never went anywhere, yet Kids feels like a comeback all the same.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cape Dory
    Nearly everything is likeable and will surely sound even more so come summer, or any other time someone wants to remember what it's like to be young and in love.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Real Life Is No Cool
    The result is an album that squeezes a lot of air and atmosphere into songs that take no more time to make their point than Nu Shooz’ “I Can’t Wait.”
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Art Angels
    It’s slick and gritty, fun and funny, and horrifying and grotesque all at once. It will also make you shake your ass like nothing else.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    A Deeper Understanding
    With much higher expectations weighing on the band, it’s produced a successor that shines up and builds on that breakthrough in every way.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Stage Four
    Stage Four reverberates because it’s a concept album, the tracks linear and part of the greater whole.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache
    While other groups that release so much material typically lapse into mediocrity at some point, both of these bands are seemingly inexhaustible wells of brilliance. One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache is a perfect example.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pretty Years
    Pretty Years is joyous, revelatory, and the moment where the varied sounds of those past three records all come together.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    This Is...
    It’s a refreshingly fun album with no pretenses, just plenty of sing-along hooks and dancefloor jams.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    One True Vine
    Not every song on One True Vine is quite as compelling [as Low cover "Holy Ghost"]--the Funkadelic cover "Can You Get To That" is a little uneven—but Staples sings with such grace and dignity that it remains a moving listen.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Life is Good
    Life Is Good leaves Nas in his comfort zone, where the vital music of his youth proves a rousing platform for commenting on matters of middle age.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Mirror Reaper
    Attention spans will certainly be tested, but surrender to the despair and Bell Witch’s slow-motion eulogy--delivered through a lonely ring of guitar, gently crashing cymbals, and stray funeral-home organ--hits like a blast beat to the heart.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dreaming Of Revenge
    King's vocals (on four of the 11 tracks) are more of a distraction than they were on "Red," though they add just the right amount of spice to make Revenge enjoyable from beginning to end.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Is Survived By
    Is Survived By is Touché Amoré feeling comfortable in its own skin, while remaining unafraid to shake off some of the dead flakes acquired over the years; and the group is all the better for it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    We The Vehicles
    Compared to Maritime's ragged debut, Glass Floor, the new record is a fountain of confidence, forgoing its predecessor's fussy arrangements for simple structures and big hooks.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Begin To Hope
    Even in its darkest moments, a humane glow envelops the album, which takes her already-arresting sound and expands it to widescreen.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sugar
    In spite of the "grunge revivalist" tag that gets hung on Morris and crew, though, Sugar doesn't have much of a retro feel; rather, it imagines a world in which My Morning Jacket and Band Of Horses woke up, got loose, cranked it up, and explored some of the darker, weirder corners of their world.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972
    If Archives is ultimately less of a career-redefiner than Decade, that’s only because Young’s become such an entrenched part of rock history that his career has been exhaustively picked-over. Aside from the heretofore under-explored surf influence, there are really only a few new connections made or questions raised with Archives.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit
    Sometimes extends the fantastic first impression of songs like “Avant Gardener” and “History Eraser” into a far more memorable and cohesive proper debut for Barnett.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Repave
    The album remains surprisingly cohesive, effectively splitting the difference between the fussed-over refinement of Bon Iver and the sometimes unfocused experimentation of Volcano Choir’s first album, 2009’s Unmap. It’s a balancing act that pays off.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Halcyon Digest
    Halcyon Digest isn't always a cohesive listen, but the record gels where it counts--it's all great.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The ArchAndroid
    Monae's inexhaustible swagger and singular style sell both the high-concept theatrics and the schizophrenic sonics.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Forever Becoming
    By stepping back and taking stock, Pelican has reconnected with what made it a pioneer in the first place: force, vision, and soul.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lie Down In The Light
    The songs are full, lush, even sparkling, and their teeming arrangements--woodwinds, electric piano, summer-afternoon copulations of banjo and violin--are the best of his career.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Old Ideas
    Fittingly, the album is all warmth, putting Cohen's improbably expressive smoker's purr in the middle of simple yet sumptuous instrumentation.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Scene Between
    Despite his plunderphonic techniques, he’s a classic pop songwriter, and The Scene Between comes awfully close to being a classic pop album.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fever Ray
    Her eponymous debut as Fever Ray is countless times more claustrophobic and creepy than "Silent Shout."
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lost In the Dream
    The War On Drugs aims for listeners’ feelings about them, and for our collective radio unconscious. On Lost In The Dream, they nail us good.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Our Inventions
    Our Inventions is ultimately an album for modern nostalgists—folks who miss the crisp electronica and springy pop that originally put Morr Music on the map.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Get Guilty
    Get Guilty is a stirring set of memorable power-pop, given a personal spin via Newman's habit of delivering hard-to-parse pronouncements, like some kind of mad-eyed, curiously convincing soothsayer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Record Collection
    Record Collection is more than just an homage to style: The writing is diverse and thoughtful, and the contributors are used in such a way that they're allowed to show off without showing up the songs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Animal Years
    An album that sounds simultaneously deeply personal and in tune with confusing times.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Ugly
    Not only does Ugly set a new standard for the band, it's also a grubby, triumphant call to action.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Chris
    Chris more than anything revels in fluid identities--whether gender, personality, mood, or otherwise--and the way they free people from expectations and limits. By extension, this frees up Christine And The Queens from musical conventions, and propels the group to the precipice of greatness.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    La Cucaracha
    La Cucaracha is just another sprawling Ween record--fans will love it, neophytes will be confused—but it's the best sprawling Ween record since 1997's "The Mollusk."
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Cool
    Though its conceptual component feels fuzzy and abstract at best, The Cool oozes geek chic with terrific songs, smart, dense lyrics, and nimble, eclectic production.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Realism
    Longtime fans will appreciate that Realism sounds more like classic Magnetic Fields than anything Merritt has done lately, but they’ll especially enjoy the pithy bleakness of songs like “Seduced And Abandoned” (with its built-in explanation: “and baby makes two”) or the gleefully smart-aleck Facebook references in “We Are Having A Hootenanny” (in which a chorus of voices urges listeners to “take our personality quiz”).
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Clockwork Angels
    The highs are higher, the lows are lower, and the dynamic is even more exhilarating.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    LP1
    Few debuts possess such control and ambition all in one; LP1 is the rare album that manages to sound both lived in and completely futuristic.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    RTJ2
    The sequel takes the simplistic thrills of the debut and expands the duo’s natural chemistry. With Killer Mike grounded at the album’s emotional core, El-P is free to indulge in his intrepid production tendencies.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Familiars
    With this rewarding album, The Antlers take the band’s wounds and find glimmers of redemption and hope.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Acousmatic Sorcery
    What comes through most clearly on the album is Beal's burning desire to be heard, however it was going to happen, and a confidence that his talent deserves it.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Bay Of Pigs [EP]
    Using different sounds to create the same tune over and over, Bejar and Destroyer create the feeling of a tale told again and again by different people. It’s a haunting effect, well worth its unusual frame.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Let England Shake
    The muted atmosphere shouldn't fool anyone, though; Shake is an album so roiling with poetic indignation, all it can reasonably do is steam.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    From A Compound Eye
    It doesn't sound substantially different from what Pollard has done before... but the record cycles through Pollard's disparate influences in songs as charged-up and fully realized as anything he's delivered in maybe a decade.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
    This is Yo La Tengo in full 32-flavors mode, but somehow, as with similarly diverse past efforts like I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, they make it all sound cohesive.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    La Radiolina
    He's a one-man musical melting pot who synthesizes several continents' worth of ideas, sounds, and slogans into one swinging all-night dance party. This is internationalism at its funkiest.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Marissa Nadler
    Marissa Nadler is indeed expansive, but it presses on the chest and pulls at the soul in its own feathery, ethereal way.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Skit I Allt
    The record has a powerful structure, too, building in intensity over its first half, then peaking with the explosively catchy title track before tailing off purposefully and settling into melancholy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Bloom
    With Bloom, they have mastered their sultry formula.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Washington Square Serenade
    An angry Steve Earle is something to behold, but watch out for the man when he's in love.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Wondershow Of The World
    The record is an achingly beautiful paean to companionship, whether musical or romantic, but it also embraces the mess of togetherness.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Are We There
    Are We There offers an artist in full command of her voice and her instrument, a woman who knows exactly what she wants to offer listeners and who isn’t afraid to accompany the barest streaks of sunlight with thousands of clouds.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Red (Taylor's Version)
    Red (Taylor’s Version) has a happy, free, lonely, and, yes, confused vibe; quoting “22” feels appropriate in this case—it doesn’t get old, it just gets an incredible upgrade.
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