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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    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    More Rain
    The result is an album that rocks out a little more than its predecessors, while not giving up the factors that made Ward’s music so great to begin with.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Enter The Vaselines
    The original sound of "The Way" has been greatly cleaned up here, and a few songs’ endings have been elongated slightly.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Transference
    Transference features immediately winning songs like "Who Makes Your Money," "Written In Reverse," and "Got Nuffin," all thickly groovy in the classic Spoon style, and it breaks some new ground on the aching, twangy "Out Go The Lights," which finds Daniel paying homage to Factory Records.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Planet of Ice
    While not a huge sonic leap forward for Minus The Bear, Planet shows the band eager--and more than able--to take a deep breath and explore its emerging maturity and depth.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    It's Frightening
    At 10 songs and 35 minutes, there’s no filler, not even on the obligatory final comedown 'Leave It At The Door,' which is all fluttery woodwinds and exhaustion.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Big Fish Theory
    Big Fish Theory veers off the course set by its predecessor, bucking the sophomore slump by ditching the vast majority of his old collaborators and peers in favor of the sort of whole-cloth artistic reinvention generally associated with canonical greats like Kanye or Bowie. What’s even crazier is that he sticks the landing. It’s his second classic LP in a row.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Something More Than Free
    Isbell’s lyrics on Southeastern sharpened to a poignancy that he’d mostly hinted at before, and though Something More Than Free may not repeat Isbell’s album-of-the-year accolades, it continues the magic of that breakthrough LP.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Virgins
    Although never quite retreating from Hecker’s signature techniques, Virgins still finds angular ways to stun.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Kensington Heights
    Far from an easygoing slice of complacent contentedness, Kensington Heights finds the band pinpointing its angry energy with expert precision, rather than flailing with the wild abandon of old.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Harmonicraft
    Rather than merely aiming at populism, though, Brooks has set a new personal best for what he's been doing for almost 20 years: turning pop anthems into earthmovers.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    23
    The softer focus fits them exceptionally well.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Oddfellows
    That's Oddfellow's overriding vibe, as well as its greatest asset: tighter songs and sturdier structures, with more room left for atmosphere, exploration, and subversion within them.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Plunge
    Beyond its aggressive peaks, there is also true beauty here, and even nuggets of stark synth-pop that call back to her past work.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    American Gangster
    Judging by this surprisingly strong return to form, Jay-Z might want to consider spending less time in the office and more time at the movies.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Wondrous Bughouse
    With Wondrous Bughouse, Powers has deftly managed his expanded musical toolset to craft an impressively sophisticated and compelling--yet often unsettling--collection of psych-noise arrangements, with much to burrow into and explore on repeat listens.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pageant
    No amount of perma-teenage angst can dim PWR BTTM’s light, and by owning the hard work it takes to love yourself and others, particularly as a queer person, they celebrate the beauty and value of our lives.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Until the Quiet Comes
    After multiple listens, the album reveals itself to be as nuanced, as subtle, and a lot more digestible than its predecessor, a sidestep into sonic territory that's no less admirable for its comparative somnolence.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Live At The Olympia
    Though it isn’t a concept album, Live At The Olympia does tell a story about the remarkable staying power of one of the best rock bands of the past 30 years.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Electric Messiah
    The band’s eighth studio album towers alongside its best work, offering both peerless, full-speed-ahead blitzkriegs (like the title track, dedicated to late Motörhead frontman Lemmy, a kindred spirit in grizzled delivery and powerhouse shredding) and slower, heavier epics like the 10-plus-minute “Sanctioned Annihilation.”
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Writer's Block
    The band has smartened up, and now it's playing to its strengths.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Go Away White
    Go Away White is more than a swansong. It's a minor masterpiece that proves Bauhaus has been nicely preserved.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Tripper
    Though Tripper lacks the noisy experimentation of the band's earlier work, it makes up for that in sheer brutality.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    ...Like Clockwork
    A record of decadent, perverse, feel-weird hits of the winter. Just in time for summer.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    For Emma, Forever Ago
    Wisconsin singer-songwriter Justin Vernon, who records as Bon Iver (a bastardized version of the French phrase for "good winter"), still manages to put his own stamp on a moribund genre with his quietly startling debut, For Emma, Forever Ago.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Shriek
    Departures rarely sound this confident--it helps that Shriek builds off of the major songwriting strides made by Civilian.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Real
    By not shying away from writing about messy relationships, hard truths, and personal failings, she’s created an album with incredible emotional and lyrical resonance.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Friends [EP]
    Ever the brilliant craftsmen, Gene and Dean display a sharp eye for genre-specific details, offering just the right amounts of cheese and hooks (not to mention their trademark vulgarity) on splendidly stupid songs.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Middle Cyclone
    All of Middle Cyclone is reliably Case-like, in that it seems unpredictable, unless you’ve listened to Case long enough to understand what she understands: that following fleeting impulses can be as rewarding as it is dangerous.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Mandy [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    It marks a turning point in his musical style, an embrace of the lush and layered as well as the heavy and metallic. Realizing that, and thinking about what could have come next, makes his death all the more tragic.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Congratulations
    It offers one sonic reward after another, and the band remains as inviting as ever. It's the nature of the party that's changed.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    And Nothing Hurt
    Nothing Hurt is the band distilled into its most affecting essence.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    At My Age
    There's a real person writing and singing these songs, with a lifetime's worth of joys and disappointments, as well as the wisdom to keep it all in proper balance.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Together At Last
    Another side-project song, Golden Smog’s “Lost Love,” gets sweetly chilled, and the Summerteeth deep cut “In A Future Age” loses some of its flair from the album version but gains intimacy. That’s true of this whole exercise, really, but the trade-off works fantastically well on those particular songs.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    You're Doomed. Be Nice.
    This is an album that wants to be heard. It’s also an album that wants to be listened to.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Flower Boy
    Flower Boy is the first time he’s been equally as forthcoming in his actual music. His flow has tightened up, and for a man whose voice basically destined him for rap stardom, he’s become even better at stretching his booming baritone into novel shapes, employing a plethora of flows.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Lady Killer
    It's the rare hip-hop album that might actually make for a good movie, but Green's sound and vision are so boldly cinematic that a big-screen adaptation would almost feel redundant.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Tio Bitar
    Tio Bitar finds Dungen streamlining its expansive pop-psych attack with a set of jams that hit with more clarity and intensity than ever.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Salad Days
    Though DeMarco certainly hasn’t ditched his slacker aesthetic, Salad Days is nonetheless a strikingly mature achievement for the 23-year-old.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dry Land is Not a Myth
    Bright and vibrant, Dry Land Is Not A Myth evokes a yearning escapism, fueled by playful energy that both sparks the imagination and compels movement.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    True Loves
    It's fair to say that Hooray For Earth is a relative latecomer to the indie synth-rock party, but it certainly makes for an interesting guest
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lese Majesty
    A brontide is an explosive sound believed to come from earth tremors. Fittingly, Lese Majesty resounds just as seismic.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    I'll Follow You
    Oakley Hall's almost indescribably transcendent quality burns through in songs like 'All The Way Down,' which rides amplified waves of fiery guitar and tuneful wailing, while evoking the reassuring fellowship of church camp.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hospice
    There’s a straightforward appeal to the album’s dynamism and fatalism, but that appeal swells with each close listen.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    American Dream
    It’s a beautifully produced, masterfully realized album, but it’s also a bit of a downer and an unusually slow burn.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    MITH
    The musical spaciness only enhances his already-considerable dignity and the gravitas of his songwriting, making Mith a powerful, prophetic collection.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    New Leaves
    New Leaves--Kinsella’s fifth full-length as Owen--was influenced by marriage and fatherhood, and even if he overindulges now and again (if his bones feel old in his early 30s, imagine how they’ll feel at 50), it proves that emo can grow up and still sound wonderfully relevant.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Heretofore
    Megafaun already ranked among the most adventurous bands in its genre; hopefully with Heretofore, curious Avetts and Mumford fans will join the ride.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Brooklynati
    A huge evolutionary leap forward from the group’s charming 2006 debut "Moonlighting," Brooklynati brings together the whole package: gorgeous beats, thoughtful rhymes, strong song concepts, and a laid-back, cohesive vibe.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    So This Is Goodbye
    These songs are complicated robots.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    All Melody
    A vibrant, exploratory album born from Frahm’s newly constructed Berlin studio and the freedom to experiment it allowed.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    These Four Walls
    These Four Walls is like a 50-minute, 11-song tour through the Scottish scene’s past, present, and future, emphasizing how much of the country’s best pop music has been concerned with transporting listeners to specific places, so we can all linger there together.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lungs
    Florence Welch has a penchant for dramatics. But what would be a dubious distinction for most twentysomethings becomes an advantage when paired with Welch's otherworldly vocals and a trio of top-tier British producers who elevate her Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Lungs, to something that manages to be grandiose, relatable, and incessantly catchy all at the same time.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Strange Little Birds
    20-plus years after forming, each band member is still fired up to mine new sounds and approaches for inspiration. That willingness to be uncomfortable and look beneath the surface makes Strange Little Birds a rousing success.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Valtari
    Sigur Rós delivers a nearly percussion-free batch of ambient soundscapes that may frustrate fans of its more direct predecessor, but ranks among the group's most elegant records.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    My Woman
    My Woman is one of the realest albums of the year.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters
    The songs on Fourteen Autumns are loud, and graced with long-line melodies that are easy to hum, but there's nothing quick or disposable about them.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Swim
    Swim finds Snaith diving back into pure sequencing, but the result is his strangest and gutsiest work yet.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    21
    The songs hold to simple instrumentation and simple structures that allow Adele's raspy, expressive voice to develop the story in the verses before she delivers the hook.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cross
    An engaging study in contrasts and a killer party record.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    What We Saw from the Cheap Seats
    There's not a weak track on the record, and there's something arresting in each song.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    You Are Not Alone
    You Are Not Alone is ultimately timeless rather than retro.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Do You Like Rock Music?
    While DYLRM? lacks the wild-eyed spits and howls of "Decline Of British Sea Power," it's definitely BSP's most rocking effort yet, replacing the sterility that plagued its sophomore slump, "Open Season," with stadium-sized bravado.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Black Ice
    Black Ice will trigger nostalgia in the devout, but inasmuch as the album reaffirms AC/DC's power, there's nothing backward-looking about it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Jay Stay Paid
    Posthumous projects are often ethically iffy, but the presence of Dilla’s hero Pete Rock as musical supervisor should reassure fans that Paid is about celebration rather than exploitation of Dilla’s life and legacy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    El Pintor
    At a concise 10 tracks clocking in right at 40 minutes, there doesn’t seem to be much fat to trim on this record.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Everything Wrong Is Imaginary
    Everything Wrong Is Imaginary is loosely and playfully conceived, but the stylistic goofing can't hide the exposed, bloody vein that runs throughout.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Preteen Weaponry
    On Preteen Weaponry, it patiently carves its own landscape and brews up the weather to go with it.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Starry Mind
    Overall, Starry Mind finds P.G. Six beefed up and just starting to hit its stride.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Bloodmoon: I
    A group that has long found new, thrilling ways to go hard and fast is softening and slowing its assault, locating (thanks to some choice guest contributors) new dimensions of the Converge sound: songs that slither rather than gallop and whisper instead of roar.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Offend Maggie
    Nearly all the songs on Offend Maggie find different ways to achieve a surprisingly full, evocative union of Deerhoof's pop sense and experimental whims.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Year Zero: The Original Soundtrack
    Year Zero is a successful revisit and reminder of what Black Mountain does best: riff-based psychedelia with a decisively modern bent.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Clutching Stems
    In short, this is a powerful re-focusing of the Ladybug Transistor sound.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    No Color
    No Color is the noisiest, prettiest album of The Dodos' career. It's good and on.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Because Of The Times
    Because Of The Times isn't likely to make anyone forget Lynyrd Skynyrd. But it's still one of the most consistently surprising and vibrant rock records since, arguably, Aha Shake Heartbreak.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Tomboy
    Both less sunny and more accessible than Person Pitch, Tomboy is broken down into bite-sized, relatively straightforward morsels of melody buttressed by percolating polyrhythms, twinkling guitar, piano-based hooks, and Lennox's choirboy emoting.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Badlands
    Every inch of Badlands is coated in sheets of echo and shadow, giving the record an atmosphere much more in tune with the darker, twisted tones of his influences than his bedroom-bound peers. Even when Badlands softens up, as it does with the shop-window balladry of "True Blue" and "Lord Knows Best," the result is every bit as unsettling as it is romantic.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hair
    As pleasurable it is to listen to, Hair sounds like it was even more fun to bash out.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Maraqopa
    Fittingly, Maraqopa finally puts Jurado in a position to shine.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    1989
    What his version of 1989 does best is illustrate the strength of the source material. With the radio-ready gloss stripped away, these songs compare to the best moments in Swift’s back catalog.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sorry To Bother You
    It's a concept album, a bold provocation, a statement, a riot, and a hell of a party to boot.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    untitled unmastered.
    It may be a while before Lamar releases a project with such low stakes again, so take Untitled for the casual gift that it is: a bonus disc that improbably holds up as an essential album in its own right.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    My Finest Work Yet
    he 10 tracks that make up My Finest Work Yet feel even more present, more in the moment, while never sacrificing any musicianship. Paul Butler’s production makes a gorgeous chorus out of the potential cacophony of a roomful of instruments and voices. The arrangements are as precise as ever, the track order gradually revealing a narrative that includes wrongdoings, incitement, and action.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Mr. M
    Mostly, Mr. M is exemplary Lambchop because its so unmistakably Wagner's vision.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Acid Rap
    What he’s accomplished with Acid Rap is nothing short of remarkable: Just two years removed from high school, and with no label support, he’s crafted the most assured breakthrough Chicago rap release since The College Dropout.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Swing Lo Magellan
    By the dazzlingly innovative and heartfelt record's end, the band has worked in a bit of everything it has to offer, and offered it with winning sincerity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Visions
    On her 4AD debut, Visions, she continues her march toward accessibility, rendering hazy, quixotic sketches into tangible, hook-heavy electro-pop.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    4:44
    4:44 is captivating because it both upholds that version of himself and buckles beneath its weight.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Jim
    On Jim, Lidell course-corrects by choosing a warmer, more organic palette. It's a retro-soul record minus the bleeps and whistles, and it exposes Lidell as the charming, confident vocalist he is.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Who's Feeling Young Now?
    Punch Brothers' third album as a group, Who's Feeling Young Now?, sees Thile and company continuing their evolution into a more egalitarian enterprise, sounding less like a hot-shit mandolin player with a crack backing ensemble and more like a band--and something like a rock band, at that.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    WIXIW
    WIXIW eventually opens to reveal cunning depths.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    La Isla Bonita
    It’s a microcosm of this superb album, one that finds Deerhoof reaching a pinnacle on its most assured, compelling work to date.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Excitement Plan
    Beneath the disheveled exterior is an ace storyteller with a Raymond Carver-esque gift for mapping out the troubled contours of a character’s life with a few well-chosen details.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bridging the Gap
    The elegance and exuberance of its dancing carries over into its defiantly escapist music, which celebrates hip-hop's endless sonic possibilities with a winning mixture of theatricality and a finely honed spirit of adventure.... Rooted in a love of hip-hop abundantly evident in valentines to the art form ("Rap Song," "Request-Line"), it still takes it in new and seductive places, making Bridging The Gap a heartfelt, infectious classic.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Beauty And The Beat
    He's made a cosmic artistic leap and fused together decades, styles, genres, and races with his remarkable sophomore effort, Beauty And The Beat.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Time (The Revelator)
    A winsome, beautiful collection of songs... Welch has never seemed more assured, building a creatively expansive work out of modest ingredients.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Blueprint
    Trades the chilly, futuristic minimalism of S. Carter for a warmer, more organic sound rooted in the soul and funk of the '60s and '70s
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Covers Record
    The unrelenting bleakness that pervades most of Marshall's music can be oppressive when taken in excess, and The Covers Record's gloom is exacerbated by the fact that its instrumental accompaniment seldom entails more than a piano or guitar... That barren approach can't match the stunning elegance of 1998's Moon Pix... but it is appropriate: The Covers Record is Marshall laid bare, and it needs no embellishments.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mass Romantic
    More than the sum of its influences--even if it occasionally feels like a stack of Cars, Cheap Trick, and early XTC albums melted together--Mass Romantic throttles from strength to strength.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Broken By Whispers
    The album is driven by Wratten's sensitive voice, ringing guitars, haunting synths, pattering drum machines, and some of the most beautiful songs you'll ever hear, like a cross between Cocteau Twins and The Cure.
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