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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    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Lioness: Hidden Treasures
    The result is a collection so clean-scrubbed that it sometimes seems to be eulogizing an entirely different singer than the one fans remember.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Dreams
    There isn't a bad song--well, apart from "Alone Again (Naturally)"--or a tacky arrangement on the album, but the material suffers from excessive familiarity.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Crash
    Overall, CRASH’s crystal clear production and iron-clad writing has all of the force behind it to propel the album into the stratosphere. But instead of putting the pedal to the metal in pursuit of a high camp sound, it stays in the slow lane.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Pete Yorn
    The self-titled album he bashed out with Pixies frontman Frank Black before the recording sessions for Back And Fourth is seeing the light of day, and in spite of Black's assertion that he was attempting to strip Yorn and his songs down to their core essences, the results feel anonymous, cycling through half a dozen different voices while displaying only fleeting glimpses of the effortless pop chops that made Yorn so inescapable a decade ago.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Ash & Ice
    Ash & Ice is an incremental creative step in the right direction for The Kills. But the uneven execution demonstrates once again that the band’s undeniable live chemistry and charisma doesn’t always translate perfectly to its studio work.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    18 Months
    This album is less a monument to the human experience and more a harbinger of the rise of the machines.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Le Noise
    The man responsible for enduring political anthems like "Ohio" and "Rockin' In The Free World" gets a pass for similarly mawkish songs like "Love And War" and "Angry World" that don't go any deeper than their titles. But Le Noise doesn't deserve the same concession.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    In The Dark
    At times, Parker Gispert's voice is buffed clean of any individual characteristics; at other times, it's contorted into a hackneyed imitation of Southern rockers such as Jim James. The album's best moments, unsurprisingly, are those in which the band lays off the mixing knobs.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    When Fish Ride Bicycles
    Fish feels a little warmed-over.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Egypt Station
    This is very much a Paul McCartney solo album: the uneven product of compulsive songwriting that includes several delightful songs, several terrible ones, and a lot in between. It wouldn’t be fair to say he sounds out of ideas, because this formula describes a whole lot of his non-Beatles albums going back decades.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Run Rabbit Run
    It’s a lot of talent (among the arrangers gathered is Philip Glass protégé Nico Muhly), and a little novelty--par for the course when it comes to Stevens.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    El Turista
    It also, sadly, carries on Rouse’s newfound emphasis on pleasant textures over passion and songcraft. Rouse never settles into any of these styles; he’s just breezing through.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Together/Apart
    Effective as it is, that voice wears thin over the run of Together/Apart's 16 mostly guest-free tracks, as Grieves' interchangeable choruses and pensive verses about lost youth and addiction's pull begin to bleed together.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Praxis Makes Perfect
    In the end, Praxis Makes Perfect is an uneven mix of gleaming ’80s homages and tunes burdened by their own ambition.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Mirror Mirror
    As much as the album buzzes with new energy-thanks to producer J.D. Twitch, hailing from the DJ duo Optimo-it also creaks with growing pains. Mirror Mirror is never as immediate as its predecessor, and it buffers its outstanding highlights in forgettable combinations of spooky textures, disembodied vocals, and bloodless guitars.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Metallic Spheres
    After a while, though, it's a bit like hiring a master painter to doodle a flock of birds into the background. Gilmour and The Orb meld enjoyably enough in their comfort zones. If only they'd focused more on pushing beyond.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Getaway
    The tame, disco-fried band they’ve become is the only group you’ll hear on the second half of the album, and the instrumental moments that provide redemption wear thin as Kiedis dampens their purpose.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    I'm Only Dreaming
    It’s a pleasant record, but an awfully safe and unchallenging one.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hamburg Demonstrations
    There is the sense here that he’s trying to get away from himself, to grasp at problems that loom larger than those in his personal life. It feels necessary, if not particularly memorable.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Yours Conditionally
    Even with some outstanding singles, the album as a whole finds the group somewhere between its comfort zone and a confident next step, with many of the songs bleeding forgettably into one another.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Eat the Elephant
    That nothing here much resembles the band’s heyday hits is theoretically admirable; this is not the work of a lazy nostalgia act. But as end-of-the-world music goes, it’s more whimper than bang.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The State vs. Radric Davis
    He’s clearly made The State to a template, and it suffers as a result, particularly when he blatantly courts radio on the unimaginative, lifeless likes of “Sex In Crazy Places” and the Usher-assisted “Spotlight."
    • 73 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Best of Gloucester County
    So while chants of "I love my Lord!" were deemed acceptable by listeners not used to listening to such things, Smith has finally offered something that might be a bit too unsettling: straightforward pop songs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Pleasure
    For the most part, Pleasure delivers less on the promise of its title with every rehash of the same, endlessly whirring formula.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Rhumb Line
    Mildness and friendliness help things flow along so nicely, in fact, that The Rhumb Line softens the impact of generally nuanced and energetic songwriting.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Winter Women / Holy Ghost Language School
    Holy Ghost Language School is something of an endurance test... Winter Women is more rewarding by design; it only suffers from excessive length and Friedberger's continued insistence on slathering songs with random waves of noise and self-conscious dissonance.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    All We Grow
    Carey has an eye for sonic detail that will surely benefit the next Bon Iver record, but on All We Grow, neither his songs nor the way he delivers them stick around once the blurry cacophony fades.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Automata I
    The first half of Automata (part two arrives in June) is almost too straightforward, offering plenty of what we’ve heard before from these Raleigh space cadets: the folkish plucking and mad noodling, the burps of intergalactic synth, the way a song like “House Organ” closes the safe distance separating Pink Floyd from Cannibal Corpse.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Band of Brothers
    Unfortunately for Nelson, Band Of Brothers isn’t the country legend’s best album of all time. It’s pretty good at best, a must only for reasonably hardcore Nelson fans.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Captain & The Kid
    There are way too many ballads and not nearly enough bounce, although it's nice to hear him really trying again.
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