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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    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Saturdays=Youth
    For all the awe kindled by the effectively perfect sound in a transcendent highlight like 'Kim & Jessie,' the real triumph is that M83 uses such a setting for more simple melody and emotion than ever before.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    You & Me
    In 'The Blue Route,' it hits home like a 30th birthday--and as the standout 'In The New Year' points out, realizing "It's all over anyhow" can be invigorating, a way of readying oneself for the next, far more interesting chapter.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    We're New Here
    The real triumph of We're New Here is that it doesn't feel like an album-length remix. Instead, it's a collaboration done the way Scott-Heron's best team-ups always are: after the fact, with time to consider the everlasting gravity of the man's words and wisdom.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Workbook 25 [Deluxe Edition]
    Although the mix sounds from another era, it also doesn’t sound compressed to within an inch of its life.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Persona
    Persona is uneasy listening, with heavier rhythms and more fragmented melodies than West deployed on previous works like Howl and Night Melody, yet it’s equally engrossing. It leaves a deep psychic impression--a truly “arthouse” album that begs repeated revisiting, to explore its many conflicting faces.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Z
    It's both rare and marvelous to hear a good band make its first really great album.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Wet Leg
    There are no dull moments on Wet Leg. With the winning pairing of two incredible guitarists and excellent songwriting, this is a near-flawless introduction. The record holds such a compelling collection of songs.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Kid
    The Kid is truly an album to experience beginning to end, one with a knack for making you feel--as Smith sings on “An Intention”--“everything at the same time.”
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blakroc
    Dash and the Keys score an undeniable win by keeping the samples homemade and the production pared down, and by hand-picking collaborators who know how to sink into a groove.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sleep Well Beast
    Those invested in the band’s slow-motion refinement of simmering melancholy will find that they’ve discovered yet more fresh nuance to that sound, as they seem to every time.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Some Girls [Deluxe Edition]
    Some Girls showed that the Stones could pull off the old magic using some flashy new tricks.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Little Oblivions
    With Little Oblivions, the singer-songwriter has made her most cohesive record yet. The resuscitation of a heavier sound works in Baker’s favor, while she still adds hints of the fragile gentleness that has captivated fans since her Sprained Ankle days.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    xx
    The result is sexy like early Portishead and thoughtful like Young Marble Giants--a perfectly formed debut with a genuinely new sound way beyond the sum of identifiable forebears.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What One Becomes
    What One Becomes shows Cook and Turner again occupying highly coveted space on the zenith of aggressive music--this time alongside Yacyshyn, the percussive mastermind. It’s hard to imagine a better metal record coming out this year.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Turtleneck & Chain
    The juxtaposition of white-boy geekiness with swaggering hip-hop posturing forms the core of The Lonely Island's smart-ass take on pop music, but the trio is also distinguished by obsessive cultural specificity on its sophomore effort, Turtleneck & Chain.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    District Line
    It plays much like a continuation of "Body Of Song," with the electronic elements even more streamlined and less obtrusive, save on the all-electronic 'Shelter Me.'
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Psychic Chasms
    Psychic Chasms is an excellent album of balmy psychedelia and breezy infectiousness.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The King Is Dead
    The King Is Dead spreads 10 songs across 40 minutes, and there isn't a bum track in the bunch.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blue Lines: 2012 Mix/Master
    Twenty-plus years later, it still sounds ahead of its time and remains an influential, genre-spanning work.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Warp Riders
    The Sword was long ago stamped with the epithet "hipster metal," and that isn't going to change with the release of Warp Riders.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Big Day
    The Big Day is a rare bouquet on full display; a stunningly realized array of color, sound, and sensation that swallows the room. Any structure at risk of pop cliché finds new life through Chance, whose mastery of composition creates spins on existing musical archetypes like new synaptic grooves being carved out for the very first time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What a Time to Be Alive
    What A Time To Be Alive is the rawest Superchunk album since the band’s 1990 debut and undoubtedly its most ferocious.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Way Out
    The Way Out provides the best introduction yet to The Books' nerdy experiments, but also to the duo's grand, goofy emotional range.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories the World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away
    Mew really does inhabit a place where few contemporaries can be found.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Valentine
    Throughout Valentine, Jordan reaches a new height of expression that practically demands to be heard and felt. ... Over Valentine, Jordan takes turmoil and heartache and creates something beautiful from the mess.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Courage Of Others
    Coming after the hauntingly archaic The Trials Of Van Occupanther, the more personal The Courage Of Others is bracing—stunning, even.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Celebration Rock
    Celebration Rock starts strong and stays there over the course of its eight songs and 35 minutes.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ghosteen
    He sounds simultaneously alone at the edge of the world and surrounded by benevolent spirits, a fittingly biblical cloud of witnesses who haven’t seen the power of God so much as they’ve moved through the fallout of their own atomic blasts; theirs is a communion of radiation. So it’s a bit of a surprise that Ghosteen is also Cave’s most accessible album since The Boatman’s Call.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Some Rap Songs
    Well, it can be [dour]. But it’s also ecstatic. Make no mistake: This is an album by one of the best rappers alive, elbowing slant rhymes and assonance into his disses (“Please do abort, I could feel when you’re forcin’ it / Still in a bore riddim”) and exhaling those singularly oblong sentences of his (“Galaxy’s the distance between us by Christmas,” he describes one foundering relationship).
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Every Open Eye
    The record feels like the kind a band releases just before it takes off. If Every Open Eyes turns out to be Chvrches’ breakthrough album, no one should be surprised.
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