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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    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    St. Elsewhere
    St. Elsewhere deftly balances solid songcraft with free-floating weirdness for a project that's suavely international but unmistakably American.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Drums And Guns
    What seemed like a radical departure two years ago now sounds like a waystation on the journey to this more disjointed, more fragmented, more demanding, and ultimately more rewarding work.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    War & Leisure
    Miguel wears War & Leisure’s looseness well, and even if he doesn’t reveal much of himself, he still has the charisma to pull the whole ensemble off.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Magic Whip
    It’s a testament to the band’s intangible chemistry that The Magic Whip doesn’t feel like an Albarn (or a Coxon) solo effort; the album sounds like a Blur record. And despite its flaws, this new music is insidiously catchy, with plenty of unorthodox hooks that linger after the record ends.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The London Sessions
    On the one hand, there are no screaming yahoos baying requests; on the other, there's none of the give-and-take energy so crucial to live performance. So why bother? Mostly, it's the little things.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hold On Now, Youngster
    The Welsh band's debut full-length captures more believable, crackling punk energy than most hardcore bands.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Somersault
    Far and away Beach Fossils’ finest record yet.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Plot Against Common Sense
    Plot smoothes some edges and makes others more ragged, but the songs, shaped by the sharp guitars and martial drumming, are some of the strongest Falkous has ever written.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Major Arcana
    Major Arcana is a markedly assured debut, one that makes Speedy Ortiz an act to watch. Like its songs, the band’s detonation is inevitable.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    1972
    Rouse shadows the sophistication and perfection of classic pop, trying to replicate its power to make listeners feel more at peace with their awkward relationships.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Covers Record
    The unrelenting bleakness that pervades most of Marshall's music can be oppressive when taken in excess, and The Covers Record's gloom is exacerbated by the fact that its instrumental accompaniment seldom entails more than a piano or guitar... That barren approach can't match the stunning elegance of 1998's Moon Pix... but it is appropriate: The Covers Record is Marshall laid bare, and it needs no embellishments.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
    As is often the case with that genre [Too Pure acts like Seefeel], certain songs feel aimless and in dire need of an editor. But when they coalesce (as on the tender lament "Recent Bedroom" or the gentle Jesus And Mary Chain pop of "Ativan") it creates a beautiful, truly immersive world tailor-made for hiding and healing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Less Than Human
    In its deceptive simplicity, Less Than Human plays like the most focused and consistent DFA-affiliated album yet.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Yuck
    Yuck's self-titled debut is a well-timed early-'90s period piece through and through.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Embryonic
    Embryonic presents a band discovering that the far edge of an idea is often more compelling than its core.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Glowing Man
    Gira feeds on the drawn-out, high-tension passages of accelerating cymbal crashes and swelling guitar dissonance, many of which exist on the 25-minute “Cloud Of Unknowing.” But while the axis on which that track rotates features deconstructed, incohesive drum rolls and a kind of radiant summoning from Gira--one that bleeds and pools into negative space you didn’t know existed--the plodding, sinister rhythm that precedes it proves more hypnotic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Cyrk
    Cyrk is a bright, airy affair.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Scissor Sisters
    Scattershot.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Transcendental Youth
    It's another perfectly observed collection of songs made real by Darnielle's deceptively plainspoken poetry.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Microcastle
    The bolder sound signals that Deerhunter is now less concerned with the scarring effects of loss, conflict, and the passage of time, and more concerned with the ways to escape those things--even if that escape is fleeting.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    You Are Not Alone
    You Are Not Alone is ultimately timeless rather than retro.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    a ghost is born
    For the most part, Ghost channels its shaggy sound into pop music. True, it's pop music that constantly threatens to erupt into noise or fade into silence, but it's still hard not to hum along.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Crack-Up
    The band has always prided itself on ornateness, and in that sense, Crack-Up is its richest release to date. But more often than not, all that fussiness robs it of any impact.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Dialogue
    On the whole, Black Dialogue emerges as a triumph, an impassioned 12-track hip-hop manifesto even a mother could love, assuming of course, she hasn't affixed a Bush/Cheney sticker on the bumper of the family station wagon.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Packs
    Now two LPs and four EPs deep, Droog projects are broadcasts from a smoke-filled, permanent-midnight club, his verses spit with the off-the-cuff ease of a dude feeling it that night. At this point, he’s already got one thing Nas never had: consistency.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    A Deeper Understanding
    With much higher expectations weighing on the band, it’s produced a successor that shines up and builds on that breakthrough in every way.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rainbow
    It’s a bold, focused, universal statement about freedom--from self-hatred, from paralyzing internal conflicts, from gender expectations, from negative influences, and (especially) from other people’s shit.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    New View
    It’s keenly observed, totally genuine, and eminently listenable, though one can’t help but miss the choppy energy and anxious undercurrents of Personal Record. Maybe comfort-zone types work best in tight spots.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Going Out In Style
    Besides being one more fun and heartfelt slab of well-crafted, Celtic-rooted punk, Going Out In Style serves another purpose: It provides that much more source material for Mark Wahlberg's inevitable Dropkick Murphys biopic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Sweetener
    Confident and empowered, Sweetener illustrates once again that Grande is an unparalleled pop chameleon.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Sweet Heart Sweet Light
    From its opening moments, in fact, Sweet Heart packs in one of Pierce's most impressive works yet.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    MM..Food
    Mm.. Food? is a weird, amorphous album that somehow feels simultaneously dashed-off and like the culmination of everything Doom has been working toward his entire career.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Villains
    On the whole, Villains isn’t Homme’s strongest collection of songwriting. That said, it’s the first Queens Of The Stone Age album where the sounds behind it are consistently strong enough to carry the load.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Phantom
    With I Phantom, Lif creates a funny, sad, profound world, populates it with memorable characters, destroys it, and ponders the meaning of it all.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Old Kit Bag
    As the disc turns down one shadowy corner of the soul after another, it's hard not to wish that the witty, romantic, storytelling Thompson would show up to give the other guy a break, at least for a song or two.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Insignificance
    Insignificance's ingeniously subtle songwriting project is one of O'Rourke's most affecting yet.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Coral
    Had the band not approached it with such skill and obvious joy, it might run the risk of sounding indulgent, but The Coral sounds happy to let its old 45s melt together in a glorious puddle.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Kveikur
    It’s breathtaking as well as bloodcurdling.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Twelve Nudes
    The record is as raw as a scraped knee and more furious than a woman scorned, a brick through the window of our reactionary era that draws inspiration from the equally pissed-off first wave of punk rock.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
    It's all darkly beautiful, because Barnes continues to emote more through the music than through his words.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Bravest Man in the Universe
    While The Bravest Man In The Universe bears little surface relation to Womack's best-known music, it is-like "Stylo"-in line spiritually with what Womack's all about.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Age of Adz
    As an expression of a restless artist trying to stretch his own limits, The Age Of Adz is simultaneously admirable and exhausting.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lord of the Birdcage
    Lord Of The Birdcage probably won't be this year's "new" Robert Pollard record for long, but it might very well be the one worth remembering.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Break It Yourself
    It's extraordinarily intimate at times, especially given the overarching theme of heartbreak and broken connections that suffuses the album.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Replica
    Its great strength and most beguiling feature is its ability to sand spiky textures down into soothing ones, and to transform the anodyne into the anxiety-inducing, simply through repetition.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Wilderness
    Explosions In The Sky have crafted an updated version of themselves that’s ready for 2016 ears without sacrificing the band’s identity. The record might divide some longtime fans, but it’s a necessary risk to take to ensure the band’s continued relevance.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sorry To Bother You
    It's a concept album, a bold provocation, a statement, a riot, and a hell of a party to boot.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    If All I Was Was Black
    If All I Was Was Black is suffused with contemporary political resonance, married to Staples’ timelessly transcendent gospel-meets-bluesy-folk. That push-pull between sorrowful analysis of the current state of the country and hope for the future is its defining quality, and it works--mostly.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hair
    As pleasurable it is to listen to, Hair sounds like it was even more fun to bash out.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Offend Maggie
    Nearly all the songs on Offend Maggie find different ways to achieve a surprisingly full, evocative union of Deerhoof's pop sense and experimental whims.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Sound & Color
    Sound & Color drops some of that urgency in favor of a hefty dose of experimentation, and while the results are intriguing, the record can’t help but meander a bit.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Shining
    The Shining's biggest flaw is that it feels awfully slight, thanks to a run time of less than 37 minutes.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Ascension
    A bloated and often beautiful portrait of political and emotional anxiety that longs for nothing more than to break away from the systems that brought us to this current moment.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All Is Dream
    Mercury Rev's ongoing foray into a strange sort of beauty overload remains a noble endeavor, but it inspires more admiration than emotional attachment.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Future's Void
    For an album born of such hermetic origins, The Future’s Void resonates with deep concern over the state of the world.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Icky Thump
    If nothing else, this record is fun.
    • 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.”
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Crying Light
    A startlingly powerful album meted out with supreme control.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Argument
    Considering the breadth and depth of his work with Hüsker Dü, Hart doesn’t need to secure his legacy; that’s already been done. But with The Argument, he’s substantially and staggeringly added to it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heart
    More than a few songs... possess some of the kitschy cool of recent records by Ivy, Venus Hum, and Sixpence None The Richer, though they stick lower to the ground.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue Boy
    Longtime fans may be put off initially by the loose exuberance of "This Boy" and the bluesy goof "Not Too Big," let alone the ska-flavored fluke "Never Been Done," but even these atypical tracks play to Sexsmith's strengths.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kid A
    Largely abandoning any elements of rock music, the disc ebbs and flows like Aphex Twin, the hypnotic loops of distorted beats and hissing, humming synths bravely replacing the usual recipe of drums and guitar.... For all its flaws and intentionally alienating tactics, Kid A defies expectations and sets the bar ever higher for the would-be copycats, who could learn a thing or two about taking risks.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let Go
    Virtually every song on Let Go hits its mark in one way or another, dispensing consistently remarkable moments that range from the sweet minor-key swoon of "Blizzard Of '77" and "Neither Heaven Nor Space" to the sleek, bouncy new wave of "Hi-Speed Soul."
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
    It’s merely an excellent companion to Hood’s recent work with his regular band, with several songs--including the Springsteen-like 'Pollyanna' and the smoldering guitar workout 'Walking Around Sense'--ranking with his very best.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs
    While some of the headier experiments fail to rise above their inherent monotony, the results are usually singularly beautiful and beautifully dense.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    White Silence
    While Cave In's only constant to date has been change, the disc sums up everything that's made the band so beloved and bewildering over the years.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Aw C'Mon
    A cohesive collection of brisk, poppy songs in the accessible mode of the band's 2000 breakthrough Nixon.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Real Life Is No Cool
    The result is an album that squeezes a lot of air and atmosphere into songs that take no more time to make their point than Nu Shooz’ “I Can’t Wait.”
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Return To The Sea
    A tighter, more controlled version of The Unicorns' wackiness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Mirror Traffic
    The major advantage that Mirror Traffic has over its predecessors-beyond the swifter tempos and fuller sound-is that it's longer, which means that even though its percentage of keepers is about the same, the overall number ticks up.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Band of Joy
    What was once Plant's bold reclamation of self has become a little pat, but it's hard to complain about the predictability of Band Of Joy when the songs sound so good, with their softly sawing guitars, syncopated rhythms, and voices rising from the fuzz, strong and sure.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    One True Vine
    Not every song on One True Vine is quite as compelling [as Low cover "Holy Ghost"]--the Funkadelic cover "Can You Get To That" is a little uneven—but Staples sings with such grace and dignity that it remains a moving listen.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Gorilla Manor
    Except for an impressive reinvention of Talking Heads' "Warning Sign," the rest of Gorilla Manor takes it a bit easier, but these boys never ramble without reason. Even slower bucolic numbers like "Who Knows Who Cares" demonstrate Local Natives' knack for crafting emotive moments that never feel bathetic, as well as technically proficient pop that, in spite of initial impressions, never seems studied.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Suckfish
    [Has] tracks that find lots of deceptive variance within their rigid constructs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    April
    April, his third full-length under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, and the first made up of new songs since 2003, easily bears the weight of expectations, proving once again that he really does transcend any slowcore or singer-songwriter tags that have been tossed his way.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Black Panther: The Album
    It all works, really. The tracks play it safe, but the project itself does not, an audacious exertion of energy from one of the planet’s most universally revered musicians.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Thursday
    It's a rare songwriter who can craft music that's so repellent yet also so irresistible.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Honest
    For an A-list rap album, Honest is refreshingly small in scope. It resists grandiose production flourishes, message songs, ambitious themes, run-on suites, and most of the other tropes rappers over-rely on to telegraph importance. Instead it just lets the bangers rip, freeing Future to cruise down his preferred lane unimpeded.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Tigers Have Spoken
    It's not a Case overview, but a standalone country-rock classic.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Kill For Love
    The ambience is fine enough, but it's probably worth just waiting for the movie.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pleasure
    Pleasure isn’t all novelty. It’s a demanding record expressing demanding emotions.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    American Slang
    The band's third LP, American Slang, represents a welcome, organic progression. It's more varied in style than the excellent (but samey) The '59 Sound, and the songs feel more original-the product of Brian Fallon's notebooks, not his record collection.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Little Deeper
    Though Dynamite sometimes comes across as a moralistic scold, her slinky delivery and understated sexuality undercut the self-righteousness that sometimes infects Deeper.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Under Cold Blue Stars
    The album's hypnotic passages and resounding moments all surround the singer's typically simple, memorable melodies, but the highlights of Under Cold Blue Stars are the lyrical phrases that Rouse chews up and blows out.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Silence Is Sexy
    Silence Is Sexy is yet another collection of pointed and intriguing meditations (in German and English) on love, life, poetry, and metaphysics, with part-time Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld's creaky grumble drifting in and out of Goth territory.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Whatever
    As a producer, Green Velvet is a master of the kind of darkly banging jack-track house that evokes dank airplane hangars and prickly acid nightmares.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Since We Last Spoke
    Since We Last Spoke finds RJD2 sounding like some blessed creature who's able to tune in every radio station in the world, past and present, and mix them together into a cohesive whole.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Abendrot
    While Abendrot doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it follows in emo’s tradition of skewing toward prog, if not in sound then at least in ideology.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Ooz
    All that aimlessness is certainly on brand for the hazy expanses Marshall so clearly wants to create, but like the seeping unctuousness for which the album is named, it threatens to engulf his more potent songs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    7
    With 7, Legrand and Scally have gotten freer themselves. This is the sound of a band that knows itself extremely well and yet, in seeking outside perspectives and embracing imperfection, has discovered a whole new level to explore. If this album feels like an alternate-reality Beach House, it’s because Legrand and Scally have altered their reality.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Left by Soft
    The record is a spotlight for his delightfully unhinged guitarwork, which veers frequently into long, eloquent solos.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fever
    Like all of his albums, it’s good but not great, a consummate professional continuing to perfect his craft.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
    Multi-instrumentalist/producer Junior masters JS's many loves without having to scale them down, and expands Don't Stop's compact party into a show of force.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Great Chicago Fire
    The overall feel is of skilled vets taking a break to play around, tossing out ideas for barroom jams and wild mash-ups and then daring themselves to bring them to life.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dye It Blonde
    Teen dreaminess aside, Dye It Blonde shows that Smith Westerns' giddy mash-ups of stately Beatles melodies and T. Rex swagger play even better when buffed to a high gloss.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    After the Party
    While The Menzingers’ best work has always been about grappling with personality flaws in the interest of becoming a better person, After The Party only offers surface-level reflections, to the detriment of the band itself.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Hallelujah Anyhow
    Unsurprisingly, the stellar Hallelujah Anyhow often feels like a restless fever dream.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Last Romance
    Arab Strap's dark, funny, miserable, and--gasp--catchy The Last Romance sounds like the album Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton wouldn't let themselves make in the past, but finally relented to.
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