The A.V. Club's Scores

For 3,336 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 1.7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score:
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
Critic Score 0
Score distribution:
3,336 music reviews
    • Metascore: 77
    • Critic Score 91
    There are 12 distinct songs on Idols Of Exile, united by Collett's light touch and sense of snap.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Critic Score 91
    Broudie... supplies the record with more thrust and polish than some of these half-written songs deserve.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 91
    Everything Wrong Is Imaginary is loosely and playfully conceived, but the stylistic goofing can't hide the exposed, bloody vein that runs throughout.
    • Metascore: 85
    • Critic Score 91
    There's a confidence here that carried over from Case's remarkable 2004 live album The Tigers Have Spoken.
    • Metascore: 76
    • Critic Score 91
    Ultimately, Future Women's fractured personality gives the album drama.
    • Metascore: 66
    • Critic Score 91
    Creatively, he continues to exceed even the loftiest expectations.
    • Metascore: 81
    • Critic Score 91
    This is a real, classic rock 'n' roll record, with powerhouse production backing a set of songs that actively engage.
    • Metascore: 80
    • Critic Score 91
    An album that sounds simultaneously deeply personal and in tune with confusing times.
    • Metascore: 76
    • Critic Score 91
    The stuff indie-rock fantasies are built on, with a gripping, theatrical sound that's like a hybrid of early Built To Spill and pre-Soft Bulletin Flaming Lips, adorned with pieces of the old Neil Young albums that inspired those bands in the first place.
    • Metascore: 80
    • Critic Score 91
    Compared to Maritime's ragged debut, Glass Floor, the new record is a fountain of confidence, forgoing its predecessor's fussy arrangements for simple structures and big hooks.
    • Metascore: 74
    • Critic Score 91
    [Rainer Maria] drapes songs in atmospheric echo while maintaining a steady, urgent beat--all of which provides a stage for Caithlin De Marrais' earnest, fully engaged voice.
    • Metascore: 78
    • Critic Score 91
    Boots fuses sexuality and celebration with naked politics just as seamlessly as he combines irreverent humor and heartwarming humanism.
    • Metascore: 85
    • Critic Score 91
    It's unlikely that any other album will sound much like The Drift this year, and even less likely that it could be forgotten if heard even once.
    • Metascore: 81
    • Critic Score 91
    As the price of success, The Obliterati faces significantly higher expectations. Once again, though, Burma succeeds and surprises by playing to its strengths while moving forward.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Critic Score 91
    A happily unpredictable record.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 91
    Like The Coup's strangely simpatico latest album, Lif's frisky, humane Mo'Mega redefines what a political rap album can be.
    • Metascore: 82
    • Critic Score 91
    Rather Ripped is unmistakably a Sonic Youth album, right down to the snatches of amp-on-fire distortion, the tuneless speak-singing of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, and an emphasis on guitar texture that includes amplifying each strummed string. But the conventional rock-song structures of "Incinerate," while not unheard of for Sonic Youth, here feel unexpectedly and warmly classicist.
    • Metascore: 80
    • Critic Score 91
    Even in its darkest moments, a humane glow envelops the album, which takes her already-arresting sound and expands it to widescreen.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 91
    Strap on some headphones and enjoy the ride.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 91
    A great summer record it remains, even in the dead of winter.
    • Metascore: 81
    • Critic Score 91
    Post-War is easily M. Ward's most accessible album to date, charged with a bouncy spirit.
    • Metascore: 69
    • Critic Score 91
    Most of To The Races is arresting and alive, filled with little moments--a snaky violin, a warm harmonica, a lilting melody--that serve as reminders of how important the concept of "performance" can be.
    • Metascore: 83
    • Critic Score 91
    Especially in its superior second half, the album resonates with casual ambition as it reconciles ?uestlove's effortless bohemian cool and sonic perfectionism with Black Thought's dark swagger, street-level sociology, and silver-tongued virtuosity.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 91
    These songs are complicated robots.
    • Metascore: 85
    • Critic Score 91
    This is Yo La Tengo in full 32-flavors mode, but somehow, as with similarly diverse past efforts like I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, they make it all sound cohesive.
    • Metascore: 74
    • Critic Score 91
    The band's fourth album Awoo keeps the lyrical restraint, but restores some of the energy of The Hidden Cameras' early work, in more of a rock 'n' roll vein.
    • Metascore: 73
    • Critic Score 91
    There's nothing here that Beck hasn't done before, but it sounds unexpected once again.
    • Metascore: 85
    • Critic Score 91
    The triumph of Boys And Girls is that it's full of the kind of songs that Finn's protagonists would crank up, relishing every power chord.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 91
    Van Occupanther's spell finally breaks a little more than halfway through its 11 tracks, when the songs begin to feel more fussed-over and conceptual and less organic, but the warmth never fades.
    • Metascore: 80
    • Critic Score 91
    His hushed voice and intricate acoustic guitar work fill the space with reflective songs that sound little like anything he's done before.