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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    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    David Comes To Life
    They're also bracingly potent and screamingly vital; David Comes To Life is the work of a band openly aspiring to be great, and pulling it off.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Soused
    Pairing the somber and overpowering baritone bravado of Walker—not to mention his mad-poet mystique—with the subterranean thunder and tumbling towers of holy-hell from the core duo of Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson seemed like the perfect marriage. And it is.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bend Beyond
    Woods works well to find the right space for each instrument, maintaining the balance between accuracy and capriciousness that continues to define the band.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fortress
    The follow-up [to "Kezia"], Fortress, mines similar territory but cranks the ferocity even higher.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Yonder Is The Clock
    These are all-American songs of devastation and alienation; they’re also loads of fun and damn hilarious much of the time.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Undun
    With the tight, concise, ferociously focused Undun, however, the immensity of the project's ambition is matched by its seamless, masterful execution.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Hundred Million Suns
    A Hundred Million Suns might just be Snow Patrol's biggest, most genuine effort yet.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Achtung Baby [Super Deluxe]
    Achtung Baby sounds a like a typical U2 record--a terrific U2 record, arguably the best record U2 has ever made, but not exactly the decisive break from the band's past it is remembered as. What Achtung Baby instead represents is U2's last great creative gasp.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964
    He sounds like what he was beneath the myth he was already constructing for himself: a man with a gift for words and music, sitting in a small room and hoping someone outside would listen.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Crying Light
    A startlingly powerful album meted out with supreme control.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blood Mountain
    Blood Mountain is terrifying in scope as well as execution.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Hairshirt Of Purpose
    At a time when it’s once more trendy to declare that rock music is dying, there’s a band like Pile putting lie to that hyperbole and still pushing the form to its outermost limits.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
    What's lost is considerable: namely, the justly vaunted lyrical chemistry between Andre 3000 and Big Boi. But what's gained is even more remarkable: the powerful, singular, undiluted visions of two of rap's most fearless sonic explorers.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    I Am Easy to Find
    The National’s never been afraid to dial things down, but it’s rarely sounded as vulnerable as it does here--song after song, Dessner’s vibrant, moody arrangements serve to reflect Berninger’s precarious balance of hope and frustration.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Beast Epic
    Beast Epic perfectly distills a career into a nearly perfect collection.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Earthly Delights
    Lightning Bolt exists in a wholly different context than it did four years ago, but Earthly Delights ranks up there with the group’s best work.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Goodness
    It’s a record that, by its end, is a profound statement. It just requires a little patience for it to be heard.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Bones of What You Believe
    She, Doherty, and multi-instrumentalist Iain Cook have crafted one of the year’s best albums, which means that buzz won’t be dying down any time soon.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Black Messiah
    Black Messiah confirms that music holds the power to challenge and comfort, to take us someplace spiritual, political, and existential. It’s beautifully, devastatingly human.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Channel Orange
    Channel Orange is so arrestingly smooth that all of its unusually shaped pieces fit together as a seamless whole.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Love & Hate
    Love & Hate is a massive leap in accomplishment for Kiwanuka.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    69 Love Songs
    Alternately recalling the best work of Blondie, Leonard Cohen, Depeche Mode, and dozens more, 69 Songs About Love is a sprawling masterpiece of White Album-like proportions.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Body, The Blood, The Machine
    It's 36 minutes of loose garage rock with massively catchy melodies sugarcoating the biting sarcasm.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sunbather
    What’s undeniable is that moments from Sunbather will resonate long after the pointless babble has died down, proving that sometimes the greatest beauty can only be found in the face of chaos.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What Now
    A record so good it answers its own title question and makes you eager to ask it again.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Seek Warmer Climes
    Seek Warmer Climes is itself predatory--but with a delicate, skeletal shudder, it turns that hunger into a lonely howl.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Celestial Lineage
    The latest of those hymns is Celestial Lineage--and as great as the group's two previous full-lengths were, Lineage is the first to truly, fully capture the Weavers' unholy vision of sylvan majesty and pagan mystique.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fucked Up Friends
    A rock-solid Aesop Rock cameo is icing atop this sorely overlooked platter, which easily one of 2008's best driving records.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bermuda Drain
    The power-electronics attack of Prurient's past remains at the core of the album, particularly in the serrated, disembodied title track. Even at its most blunt and abusive, though, there's a dynamic subtlety and blown-out ambience that lulls sanity to the brink, then dangles it there.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Civilian
    The added dynamism in Wye Oak's music makes the prettiest passages of Civilian that much more arresting, and the demons lurking beneath them all the more real.
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