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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    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Howdy!
    Trafficking exclusively in warm, timeless, pleasant power-pop, Howdy! represents the musical embodiment of its agreeable title.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rancid [2000]
    A refreshing eardrum-blaster...
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Street's Disciple
    Suffice to say, Nas' latest plus-sized, two-disc opus Street's Disciple isn't too big on economy or cohesion, but its passion and intensity are hard to deny.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sleeping With Ghosts
    Placebo may never reach an American audience past its established fans, but those fans ought to gravitate to Sleeping With Ghosts' uncluttered, moody niche.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Late Registration
    Late Registration, is every bit as ambitious as its predecessor, but without Dropout's strong narrative, it's less successful in realizing that ambition.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Greendale
    Songcraft occasionally gets sacrificed for the sake of narrative, and some tracks are easier to admire than enjoy, but by and large, Greendale still works as a Neil Young record.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Open Season
    British Sea Power's momentum flags down the stretch, but so long as it keeps generating songs like the hazy "Killing Moon" re-write "Like A Honeycomb," the band can return all it wants to the days of sweet sorrow.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Burned Mind
    After establishing its grim M.O., the album settles into a mesmerizing set that scours the edge it leaps over so unhaltingly.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Restless
    Restless isn't quite the metatextual running commentary on fame and persecution that The Marshall Mathers LP is, but, like Eminem, Xzibit has gone from addressing the dire circumstances that created him to focusing squarely on life as a rap star.... A weak patch roughly halfway in slows it down, but Restless accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: It consolidates Xzibit's new fan base while retaining enough classic flavor to avoid alienating Likwit Crew diehards.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strangers
    There's little rhyme or reason to it, and the whole doesn't equal the sum of its parts. But many of the parts are worth noting.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Art Official Intelligence (Mosaic Thump)
    But while packed with great songs--"The Art Of Getting Jumped" and "All Good?" also stand out--AOI is inconsistent, undermined by battle raps that feel limp and overly familiar coming from artists of De La Soul's stature. It doesn't help that the production tends to be weak and colorless, particularly when compared to the Technicolor vividness once provided by longtime collaborator Prince Paul.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Date Of Birth
    Date Of Birth doesn't reinvent hip-hop, but it mines considerable rewards just by operating within the style's familiar confines.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stillmatic
    Stillmatic wouldn't be a proper Nas record if it didn't contain at least a few regrettable detours into bad taste, and the album boasts its share.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Magic & Medicine
    Magic And Medicine's draggy Bob Dylan homage "Talkin' Gypsy Market Blues" shows the limitation of using old rock as window dressing, while the bulk of the disc presents a better-integrated fusion of varied hypnotic pop sounds.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ten
    Some of cLOUDEAD's lyrics are too precious and oblique not to shrug off, but the good ones rub rich images from their absurdist couplings. [24 Mar 2004]
    • The A.V. Club
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Forever Hasn't Happened Yet
    The songs are short and demo-quality, and though Doe still can't resist the rote roots-rock classicism that used to be beyond his means, the slapped-around sound of songs like "Heartless" and "Ready" should thrill longtime fans.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Permission To Land
    It's that subtle streak of accomplished mischief that separates The Darkness from the multitude of marginal bar bands that still play this stuff for real.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    She Loves You
    For better and worse, Dulli molds these bizarrely disparate song choices into shapes that suit his style, overpowering them on occasion, but only so as not to come across as slavishly deferential or dull.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Id
    Amazingly, the disc still feels cohesive in spite of its unpredictability, aided by can't-miss crowd-pleasers like the irrepressible disco-pop blowout "Sexual Revolution."
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    So Much Staying Alive & Lovelessness
    The result is a grand step back into listenability.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chocolate Factory
    Chocolate Factory is filled with the sort of come-ons and honeyed promises that even cut-rate dive-bar lotharios would dismiss as hopelessly cheesy, but Kelly stitches them together with such craft and invests them with such conviction that they become a strange sort of pulp poetry.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Funeral
    Funeral's layering of sound and wide-eyed posing can be overly dense, and though the band utilizes nice melodies and lively arrangements, the nostalgia-steeped-indie-rock-orchestra pool was pretty much drained before The Arcade Fire dove in.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Double Figure
    The disc ranges from Vangelis-esque dirges to beautifully chiming background music to sprightly pop melodies, and Handley and Turner rarely fail to give the impression that somebody is in the studio pressing the buttons.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lovers
    Lovers makes for an enjoyable, if exhausting, listen; at times, it sounds more like a sampler from a promising label than the work of one band.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Regeneration
    Hannon's latest takes The Divine Comedy in a promising new direction.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Private Press
    At first, The Private Press plays like a bland kiss-off to followers expecting a big-time event record. But once its blood has time to flow, the album swells from a strained capillary to a coursing vein.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Age Of The Sun
    Resembles Doss' prior work, except that many of the deliberately obscure sonic filters have been removed.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    blink-182
    The disc does meander in spots, and its most achingly sincere love songs become cloying, but it's easy to both enjoy and appreciate Blink-182's effort and evolution, especially when hooky pleasures continue to function as its primary stock in trade.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bright Ideas
    Bright Ideas sounds pretty much like a decent, later-period Superchunk record.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Forget Yourself
    Forget Yourself is overlong and largely unoriginal, but it possesses a craft and sophistication largely missing from many of its modern-day guitar-pop peers.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trouble in Shangri-La
    Though her newfound confidence mostly allows the disc to transcend the safe "comeback" label, her trademark witchy-poo persona is what actually makes the album so welcome.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sumday
    Is so dominated by mid-tempo story-songs that it rarely breaks through into the rapturous highs that Grandaddy is capable of producing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Welcome To The Monkey House
    Guest stars (from Simon LeBon to Tony Visconti) arrive at a faster clip than truly memorable songs, but the slick vibe allows the album to slink by until it arrives at bright spots like the transcendently trashy "You Were The Last High."
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Weezer [2001]
    Feels a bit repetitive and perfunctory the first time through, but it's resolutely unpretentious and airtight throughout, without a wasted moment or false move.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Burn The Maps
    Some of these exercises in frustration are simply frustrating, but for the most part, The Frames' perverse restraint matches Hansard's lyrics, which are all about lowered expectations.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beautifulgarbage
    Garbage is savvier than most in cobbling together the sounds of its influences.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Echoes
    The Rapture's much-anticipated Echoes doesn't represent a significant landmark along the way, but its pastiche-like approach to early-'80s Anglophilia is promising.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Standards
    Given that Tortoise's previous recordings have spawned a procession of remixes and re-imaginings, is Standards to be judged on its own merits, or as the raw material for music yet to come? As always, the band is poised between capturing a momentary, malleable inspiration and shaping that moment into some timeless anthem, and as always, it chooses to dither and delay, settling for a sometimes pleasant, sometimes maddening, almost always stimulating exploration of atmospherics.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Radical Connector
    A warmer, more leisurely update of 2001's Idiology, Radical Connector foregrounds vocals to more inviting, song-minded ends.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Employment
    A mini-compendium of Britpop from the '60s to now.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mezmerize
    While "smarter than most metal" sounds like faint praise, it may be the best way to describe the faintly praiseworthy System Of A Down.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Phantom Planet
    Whether Phantom Planet will be the second coming of Cheap Trick remains to be seen, but for now, it neatly fills the void for trashy, catchy power pop left by Urge Overkill's premature burnout.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Digital Bullet
    Digital Bullet is both every bit as self-indulgent as it sounds, and far better than it has any right to be.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The New Folk Implosion
    For impassioned Barlow fans, The New Folk Implosion's minute forward progress means a lot.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All About Chemistry
    Semisonic hasn't exactly turned into Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but signs of self-indulgence have crept into the music, as evidenced by the nearly eight-minute running time of "I Wish" and an abundance of strings and fussy production tricks. But [Dan] Wilson hasn't lost his gift for writing memorable, brilliantly crafted pop songs.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Up
    For the most part, it's a bleak, deliberate, decidedly mature meditation on death and grief.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    With The Lights Out
    The crown jewel for those without the patience or proclivity to wade through sketches of songs better heard in full, the fourth disc is a DVD of live footage from the beginning to the end.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Franz Ferdinand
    The album is largely content to hover around the one note it plays so well. [24 Mar 2004]
    • The A.V. Club
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Delirium Cordia
    Aside from [a] 20-minute stretch, though, Delìrium Còrdia holds up just fine as a suitably unwieldy, adventurous, patched-together series of instrumental bridges with no chorus to reach.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mississauga Goddam
    With Gibbs' nasal, cabaret-ready vocals drifting unobtrusively through the warm instrumental soup, most listeners could hum along happily without realizing that they're enjoying a song that celebrates soiled underwear.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All Rise
    The record clearly shows off George's talent and eclectic bent.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Drill A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What You See
    This is a slower, mellower side of the singer-songwriter, and it suits his moody ruminations.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    More Light
    The disc is loud, unfailingly melodic, and pretty laid-back.... Whether More Light will prove strong enough to once again set the tone of indie music, let alone contemporary guitar-rock, is another question entirely, though it's no doubt the last one on Mascis' mind. As usual, he sounds more concerned with unfashionable navel-gazing rock than earth-changing works of mass cultural importance and emotional resonance...
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Frozen Orange
    Producer Mark Nevers emphasizes vamping, letting songs rev up and down in such a way that listeners can imagine them still existing somewhere outside the disc itself.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Brother Is To Son
    The group's preaching drifts into cacophony at times, but the handcrafted feel and casual melodicism mostly make Brother Is To Son sound crumpled, heartfelt, and true.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fast Cars, Danger, Fire And Knives [EP]
    Rock's marathon verses are so long and involved that it takes a few listens just to digest them, which their density and harshness makes a little daunting.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    X.O. Experience
    In lesser hands, such a narrow lyrical focus might grow tiresome, but the group continues to make drunken belligerence seem downright charming, thanks to smart lyrics and perfect timing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Argyle Heir
    Continuing in the vein of 1999's The Albemarle Sound, Argyle Heir offers sun-drenched, intricately arranged pop with a pleasant approachability that masks its ambition.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Revelling/Reckoning
    Revelling/Reckoning represents DiFranco at her best and worst.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trust
    Trust is surprisingly uneven, but for Low, a modest step backward is still a step worth hearing and savoring.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Probot
    It's a righteous and wholly legitimate throwback to old-school metal's power and fury.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kittenz And Thee Glitz
    Kittenz features a few too many barely sketched ideas, but its rough-hewn surface ultimately tightens the psychic squeeze.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Red Dirt Road
    Red Dirt Road is sort of the Seabiscuit of country records--a cornball bit of entertainment that works because it carries great truths.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Platform
    Platform would benefit from greater lyrical diversity, and it suffers from moments of monotony and inertia, but it's a promising debut from a group that should only improve with time.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Surrounded By Silence
    Surrounded By Silence is never less than pleasant, but with the exception of "Hide Ya Face," it's seldom more than that either.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Magic Numbers
    The album becomes increasingly hard to hold onto. The band gets lost in the feel of hippie-era California and forgets that the musicians they admire were skilled craftsmen as well as aesthetic adventurers.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Playgroup
    The album favors songs over tracks, taking a rewind approach to a time before dance music took on dutifully functional connotations.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bright Yellow Bright Orange
    Bright Yellow almost never reaches the highs of the group's classic early albums, nor does it embarrass itself by straining to duplicate them.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quiet Is The New Loud
    Quiet Is The New Loud captures coffee-shop folk without its twee indulgences.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kiss Of Death
    Kiss Of Death is uneven: Like Kiss Tha Game Goodbye, it suffers from an apparent desire to satisfy every demographic at once.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heart
    More than a few songs... possess some of the kitschy cool of recent records by Ivy, Venus Hum, and Sixpence None The Richer, though they stick lower to the ground.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dreamland
    Dreamland's lack of ambition doesn't translate into irrelevancy
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I'm Lonely (And I Love It) [EP]
    Features Merritt doing what he does best: writing songs that are smart, funny, literate, and far catchier than anything on commercial radio.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Knitting Needles And Bicycle Bells
    Sounds a lot like a stately, plump version of The Rock*A*Teens.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life On A String
    Anderson's best work has always been simultaneously opaque and pointed, suggestive, and even topical, without being didactic. Those qualities apply again here.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth?
    None of the new album reaches the gaudy peaks of Do You Party?, but it bumps just as well through subtle atmospheres and strange detours.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Folklore
    Though few tracks on Folklore stand out, the album hangs together agreeably, thanks to its parade of offbeat influences and guest stars.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Creatures
    The record is as tuneful and spirited and bordering-on-goofy as anything in the Elf Power catalog.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Power In Numbers
    The group's old-school ethos begins to feel like formula on Power In Numbers, though that formula can still yield remarkable results.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fabulous Muscles
    It's harrowing and difficult, but occasionally insightful enough to be powerfully gravitational. [24 Mar 2004]
    • The A.V. Club
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Virginia Creeper
    Phillips' emotions sound somewhat confused, but his ear for pleasing arrangements remains sharp, and the album's best moments have a way of sneaking up from the background.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mink Car
    It's all funny, but also wise in a way.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Soul Sessions
    Sessions establishes Stone as a formidable interpreter.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Circulatory System
    Plays like a musical companion piece to Richard Linklater's film Waking Life.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beaucoup Fish
    Like its predecessor, though, Beaucoup Fish is too unfocused to prove consistently potent.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    God's Son
    God's Son is a worthy follow-up to Stillmatic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Weightlifting
    Weightlifting settles into an alternately joyful and reflective string of smart, gentle pop songs that should have fans of The Smiths and/or Crowded House waxing weepily nostalgic.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Naked Truth
    The Naked Truth could benefit from judicious cutting, but for its superior first half at least, it boasts the intimacy of a diary entry and the urgency of a kite sent straight out the penitentiary.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Draft 7.30
    An album that applies Confield's ideas to less embarrassingly stunted ends.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paid Tha Cost To Be Da Boss
    A strong (if characteristically overlong) album.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Seven's Travels
    Though leavened with self-deprecation and lacerating wit, Slug's unsparing self-analysis can feel a little solipsistic and oppressive, particularly over the course of the album's 70-minute run time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Remote Part
    Merely good-but-not-great.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Electric Circus
    Like The Roots' new Phrenology, Electric Circus possesses many of the weaknesses associated with ambition: a bloated running time, the faint aroma of pretension, an obligatory spoken-word piece, and songs that outlast their welcome.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Up The Bracket
    As fun as Up The Bracket can be, it might well be better if the group acknowledged that it's living in the 21st century.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Punk Rock
    Some of the songs have aged better than others, making this a better album for longtime fans than for newcomers.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Broken Social Scene
    Even a mellowed Broken Social Scene sports more energy and ideas than a dozen mainstream rock acts.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Creature Comforts
    Parts of the album seem arbitrarily sparse or less than sure of their ultimate direction, but Creature Comforts congeals into a whole that finds its mind below the surface.
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