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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    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sound-Dust
    An ingratiating return to form that benefits from Sean O'Hagan's eclectic, elastic arrangements.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Walking With The Beggar Boys
    Elf Power has made its most straightforward album--and, perhaps not coincidentally, cooked up its most winning batch of songs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Red Light District
    In spite of a few missteps, The Red Light District marks the first time he's put all the elements together and delivered a great album.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gung Ho
    Smith has released her most direct and, not coincidentally, hardest-rocking album since 1978's Easter.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sonic Nurse
    On the whole, Sonic Nurse compiles a laid-back hour of elaborate plucking and rhythm from five veteran musicians who reserve musical violence and poetic anger for when it feels most appropriate.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Her Majesty The Decemberists
    This all may sound ostentatious or showy, but it isn't: Her Majesty aims high and hits a difficult mark, delivering glorious, sometimes fantastic tales without ever getting boorish.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Is A Woman
    As an experiment in consistency, Woman is an unqualified success, but it's hard not to occasionally miss the unpredictability of the past.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Cookbook
    Proves incontrovertibly that she doesn't need Timbaland's beat mastery to create a compelling album.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Our Gun
    In Our Gun fulfills the group's early promise, integrating touches of Radiohead-style avant-garde atmospherics into a set of songs that are on the whole shorter, looser, and punchier than any of its predecessors.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chavez Ravine
    Chávez Ravine never romanticizes its subject. It simply makes it seem unnatural that any place where people lived, dreamed, died, and formed a neighborhood could be made to disappear.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brainwashed
    Harrison never seemed to recognize the difference between philosophical profundities and the sound of a catchy song, and that may have been his greatest gift to the world. Brainwashed offers a fine, final reminder of that gift.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Universal Truths And Cycles
    When Pollard is at his best, as he often is here, it's the rest of the world that sounds out of step.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heathen
    A graceful marriage of synthesizers, guitars, and post-modern croon, Heathen summons the same air of romantic unease found on albums like Station To Station and Bowie's late-'70s collaborations with Brian Eno.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Face The Truth
    Malkmus has long made a game of languishing, but he now sounds refreshingly eager to turn off the scoreboard and let his songs coach themselves.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Girls Can Tell
    Girls Can Tell abandons some of the more familiar modern-rock tendencies of Spoon's previous albums, favoring the ambitious structures of art-rock and offering an impressive meeting place between traditional new wave and the abrasive, angular qualities of Wire and Magazine.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All City
    On All City, Northern State does what visionary rap acts have done throughout the genre's history: It re-creates hip-hop in its own image, molding it into a potent vehicle for singular aspirations, anxieties, and dreams.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Magnificent
    DJ Jazzy Jeff still makes music that matters, which can't be said of his former partner.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kiss & Tell
    At 35 misfire-free, ballad-free minutes, the new Kiss & Tell benefits from a consistency that finds room for versatility.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything Ecstatic
    It's the sound of a music fiend obsessively pawing at his record collection and troubling over ways to pay it proper tribute.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Soul Journey
    Soul Journey finds her and collaborator David Rawlings making subtly searing front-porch folk-country, often sparing the embellishments for songs that are by turns raw, spare, direct, and achingly pretty.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All This Sounds Gas
    Like early Pavement tracks, PSOI's songs find pop hooks almost in spite of themselves.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Favourite Colours
    The results [on previous albums] came off a little mannered, but on Favourite Colours, the band finally exhibits an integrated command of its genre obsessions, playing chilly-but-urgent music with a distinctly Sadies flavor.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bloodflowers
    The album does seem to pick up where Disintegration left off, offering long, casually cathartic songs driven by minor chords and loopy, languid drones.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Seven Swans
    Like Nick Drake or, more recently, Damien Jurado, Stevens serves his songs best with near-whispers, delicately breathing them into existence. [31 Mar 2004]
    • The A.V. Club
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What's Next To The Moon
    The fact that its 10 songs are all Bon Scott-era AC/DC covers seems oddly secondary.... There's nothing earth-shatteringly special about reinventing old songs this way, but it's striking how well the lyrics match Kozelek's weary delivery.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Sold Gold
    After 10 tracks of diffident, postmodern songcraft, I Sold Gold ends on a small note of triumph with the tinny synth-pop anthem "The Tulsa Trap," an inspiring statement of purpose about breaking the bonds of a provincial living to go out and "give the people what they need."
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Haha Sound
    Broadcast invokes the spacier reaches of Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, but Haha Sound is a retrofit well-tailored enough to wear a cloak of its own.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am A Bird Now
    Antony's musical presence haunts and hypnotizes long after he's left the stage.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aerial
    It's a stirring return to that special place behind the eyes of Kate Bush, where every raindrop contains universes within universes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Loose Screw
    Loose Screw captures the group's classic mix of grit and sentiment, illustrating how to make a good album that neither ignores the past nor shamelessly apes the present.
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