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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    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Alive 2007
    The intensity simply builds and builds, until it becomes wondrously hard to sort the noise from the rhythms, and vice-versa.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Beautiful Thugger Girls
    Few artists manage to balance wide-eyed eroticism with genuine warmth, and fewer manage the feat while packing multiple albums’ worth of hooks into each song. For Thug, it’s just his default mode.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Remain In Light
    Kidjo’s Remain In Light, now arriving in studio form, is a stunning transformation that sheds the nervous, alien nature of these well-worn songs, turning them into something more human, danceable, and, in some cases, more meaningful.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Sing-Sing And I
    And even though Sing-Sing's elements of homage lead to some songs more underdeveloped than charmingly minimal, the duo never sounds less than bright and engaged.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    21st Century Breakdown
    Green Day took small steps out of its comfort zone on American Idiot, but Breakdown finds the band going bolder, mixing in elements of mariachi ('Peacemaker') and klezmer ('¡Viva La Gloria!'). Still, the band members never spend too much time away from their bread and butter: heavily melodic punk.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Townes
    Townes isn’t so much a straightforward covers album as a trip inside Steve Earle’s experience of listening to, befriending, and trying to be Townes Van Zandt. As such, it may be the most personal album Earle has ever recorded.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Money Store
    Even its bleakest sentiments and harshest sounds invigorate.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rise Above
    Dirty Projectors leader Dave Longstreth clearly had more than a remake on his mind--a mind whose wandering ways will be worth following for years to come.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Harbors
    All Tiny Creatures will probably play second fiddle to Volcano Choir for the foreseeable future, but the group shows that Collections Of Colonies Of Bees has a deeper bench than anyone probably realized.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    To Realize
    To Realize refreshingly errs on the side of taking on too much new territory, and gives post-punk bands, noise ghouls, and psychedelic droners alike something to envy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Tower Of Love
    The record feels small but impeccably crafted, like a toy soldier.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Last Night on Earth
    The Last Night On Earth might leave some of Noah & The Whale's old audience behind, but the band appears to be headed in the right direction.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Underclass Hero
    The band's smartest and most mature-sounding album yet.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Fade
    Yo La Tengo may not be as daringly innovative as it once was, but, in targeting its experiments to a cohesive purpose, the band successfully fulfills Fade's grandiose scope.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Bless Off
    Bless Off not only pays homage to the shaggy SST sound of the late ’80s, it also blasts a cauterizing hole through the self-importance of heavy music circa the 21st century.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Thee Physical
    Though the music often suggests a frozen remove, Egedy's voice conveys a need to connect, which smartly reinforces the album's lyrical themes of feeling isolated and disconnected from the physical self.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Brave And The Bold
    The Brave And The Bold is one odd duck of an album, with two unsympathetic musical personalities paying tribute to 10 other unsympathetic musical personalities by making a record that doesn't sound at all... expected.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ships
    It isn't fair to Smith to imply that Ships is Danielson's play for a Stevens-level breakout, but the record is definitely an assured, ambitious follow-up to 2004's ramshackle Brother Is To Son.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Trans-Continental Hustle
    While Hustle isn't a breakthrough on par with If I Should Fall From Grace With God, it's certainly one step closer.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Thank Your Lucky Stars
    It would have been a shame for Thank Your Lucky Stars to have been misspent or glossed over; as is, the full sonic and emotional weight is tremendous.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Thank Me Later
    Drake may be powerfully conflicted about stardom, but on his cohesive, bittersweet, assured debut, he proves himself worthy of the sometimes-blinding spotlight.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Tapes
    These guys have excellent taste, and they construct an entertaining mélange on Tapes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Circuital
    My Morning Jacket's new album, Circuital, does dial back the weirdness of 2008's Evil Urges.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Partygoing
    Not everything here works.... The rest, delightfully, sounds like nothing else around.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Fur & Gold
    Closing with a bonus cover of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire" ends things on an uninspired, Tori Amos-like note, but by then, most will be too far under Khan's spell to notice.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Metropole
    Though the punk scene has changed dramatically since the band’s last album, The Lawrence Arms have re-established its place in it simply by staying the course and remaining self-assured.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Skeleton
    Mostly, Skeleton is jagged and weird....But if you can take the knocks, the band is at its finest when embracing discordance.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    A Dotted Line
    It’s a ready-made best-of album, superb in execution but light on surprises--the major exception being the new-wave-inflected speed-folk of the percussive Mother Mother cover “Hayloft.”
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Want One
    Want One blows his music up to Cinemascope size.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
    A culmination of Bright Eyes' decade-long habit of reviving folk-rock conventions and social engagement for a generation raised on the celebratory egomania of rap and reality television.
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