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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    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    rEvolver
    Despite the title's promise of evolution, the record mines the same club-banging, shawty-romancing formula of the singer's boom years, to ever-diminishing returns.
    • 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.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square
    If the idea was to shore up the band's indie roots, Wheat has succeeded in the worst possible way.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Yours Truly
    Yours Truly is based on the same assumption as Sublime With Rome, which is that fans will appreciate the superficial similarities to a band they once loved, and won't look close enough to notice the gaping holes.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Again and Again
    Again And Again feels like it's skimming the dreaminess of that era without retaining any of its prickly quirk-or worse, any of its personality.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Reintegration Time
    Reintegration Time, the second album by Canada’s Shout Out Out Out Out, is ambitiously laid out, with lengthy, mostly instrumental tracks and a leisurely sense of pace. Too bad the electro grooves don’t offer much, nor does the ornamentation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Exister
    A handful of tracks manage to convey some sense of energy and urgency. Few of them, though, rustle up the dark hooks that used to be HWM's greatest strength.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Crash Love
    The limited palette this time around doesn’t do the band any favors.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
    Like Momofuku, the new record was knocked out quickly, drawing heavily on material left over from other Costello projects, but while the looseness worked for the driving rock ’n’ roll songs on Momofuku, the freeform ballads and back-to-basics roots workouts of Secret mostly fade into Burnett’s tasteful woodwork.
    • 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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Unbreakable
    An album that lacks both a mission statement and a sense of purpose.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The 2nd Law
    For a band so seemingly full of big ideas, Muse sounds on its sixth album like a hard-rocking collection of other bands, some that they've previously been compared to, and others new.
    • 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.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Shwayze
    Shwayze is remarkable only in how unremarkable it is.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Love?
    In general, though, Love? is as vague and unfocused as its titular inquiry suggests, a musical shrug that seems to mean even less to Lopez than it will to listeners.
    • 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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Head and the Heart
    Though the songwriting is sturdy, the choruses hearty, the melodies time-tested, and the recording vibrant, The Head And The Heart falters most on account of Jonathan Russell and Josiah Johnson's pre-packaged, Cracker Barrel lyrical conceits.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Louder Now
    That's not to say that Louder Now lacks charm--"Spin" and "Miami" excellently blend the band's acumen for punk punchiness and melody alike--but the album's numbing repetitiveness negates it.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Songs from the Sparkle Lounge
    A few bright spots don't make up for the album's general lack of immediacy or memorable hooks.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Nothing But the Beat
    Nothing But The Beat is obsessed with the sex, swagger, and sensation of club culture, and taken individually, its songs are well-made, euphoric paeans to the dance-floor gods; but a deficiency of texture and emotional build causes them to blend into a predictable, exhausting murk of smoke and lasers.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    We Don't Need To Whisper
    We Don't Need To Whisper feels like 50 long minutes of DeLonge proving himself as an artist.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    If Only You Were Lonely
    Unsurprisingly, repetition sinks If Only You Were Lonely.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Stadium Arcadium
    The trouble with virtuosity is that it doesn't always translate into songcraft, and the absence of even one hum-it-on-the-way-home track here raises the old questions again: Does this band even make sense? Are punk energy and funk grooves music's peanut-butter-and-chocolate or its oatmeal-and-sardines? And what's Anthony Kiedis talking about, anyway?
    • 59 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Relapse
    It’s less a relapse than a rehash, less a comeback album than the kind of album artists need to come back from.
    • 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Black Cocaine [EP]
    Judging by this underwhelming return, Prodigy's stint in the correctional facilities merely constituted time lost.
    • 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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
    May claims to be a devotee of Lee Hazlewood, and admittedly, that genre lends itself to cheese, but there’s a big difference between Velveeta and a good, fatty brie.
    • 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.
    • 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.
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