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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    • 100 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Exile On Main Street [Reissue]
    Everything that made it on the album--and much of what didn’t--belongs exactly where it is. (Yes, even the blazing but unfortunately named blues jam “Turd On The Run.”)
    • 100 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    London Calling [25th Anniversary Legacy Edition]
    The Clash's London Calling stands as one of the few unimpeachably perfect albums... but it doesn't necessarily gain from the added scrutiny.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Spiderland [Box Set]
    It’s a thoughtful look at a legendary act, and one that’s both long overdue and well deserved. Just as Spiderland rewards the patient listener, the box set rewards the patient fan.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blue Lines: 2012 Mix/Master
    Twenty-plus years later, it still sounds ahead of its time and remains an influential, genre-spanning work.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Graceland [25th Anniversary Edition]
    The music of Graceland is as stirring as always.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fetch the Bolt Cutters
    Fetch The Bolt Cutters is full of visceral, jittery, wonderfully imperfect performances that make the album feel like a dreamlike concert at Largo.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    SMiLE
    The new Smile not only justifies its bearing, but also serves as a major triumph.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Van Lear Rose
    Given a chance to be herself, Lynn responds with a powerful return to form. [28 Apr 2004]
    • The A.V. Club
    • 96 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    To Pimp A Butterfly
    On Lamar’s longer, denser, and even richer follow-up To Pimp A Butterfly, he stops holding the listener’s hand.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ghosteen
    He sounds simultaneously alone at the edge of the world and surrounded by benevolent spirits, a fittingly biblical cloud of witnesses who haven’t seen the power of God so much as they’ve moved through the fallout of their own atomic blasts; theirs is a communion of radiation. So it’s a bit of a surprise that Ghosteen is also Cave’s most accessible album since The Boatman’s Call.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Keep An Eye On The Sky
    With only three official albums to its name, Big Star doesn’t seem like a natural for the box-set treatment, but Keep An Eye On The Sky has plenty to offer both neophytes and longtime fans, dropping demos, alternate mixes, and selections from Bell and Chilton’s pre-Big Star work alongside album tracks and the two stunning sides of the only solo work Bell saw released before dying in a car accident in 1978.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Siamese Dream [Deluxe Edition]
    The meticulously constructed cathedrals of guitar sounds on Siamese Dream--so clean and melodic, yet also heavy-make the album more comparable to A Night At The Opera or Boston than Nevermind or Vs.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Histoire de Melody Nelson
    The album’s remarkable 28 minutes still push boundaries, not just buttons.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The SMiLE Sessions
    Wilson has always said he wanted to make a "teenage symphony to God." This Smile is so wonderfully close. Hallelujah.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Stankonia
    Many rappers derive inspiration from Clinton, but OutKast has constructed its own far-reaching and experimental mythology, drenching its surrealistic, Southern-fried flows in brilliantly executed funk, blissful soul, rattling live drums, spacey synthesizers, and psychedelic guitars.... In its messy brilliance, OutKast has created a hip-hop Sign O' The Times, a messy, vital classic and a major step forward for both its members and hip-hop as a whole.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    DAMN.
    Lamar trusts every idea to stand on its own. When you’re making art this substantial, vital, and virtuosic, there’s no need to wrap a tidy bow around it.
    • 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.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dopesmoker [Reissue]
    It's an album of endless pleasures, and its arcane, foggy-headed mysteries never stop revealing themselves.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Promise
    The two-disc The Promise collects 22 leftovers (including "The Way," an excellent unlisted bonus track), none of them previously included on Springsteen's Tracks box set, all of them polished, to one extent or another, in recent years. Some, like "Breakaway" and the title track--a longtime fan favorite previously released only in a version rerecorded in 1999--fit Darkness' themes perfectly.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
    He's the kind of libertine who needs to live on the knife's edge just to feel alive, and Fantasy is gloriously alive.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Icky Mettle [Deluxe Edition]
    The new double-disc edition of Icky Mettle explains why hopes for AoL were so high, and why those hopes may have been misplaced.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Madvillainy
    Like both artists' most transcendent work, Madvillainy retains its mystery and wonder after dozens of listens.
    • The A.V. Club
    • 93 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    A Crow Looked at Me
    Pain is the crux of Elverum’s career, and without resorting to any of his brutally stark instrumentation, he offers his most sobering full-length to date, and likely of all time.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Room 25
    From beginning to end, Room 25 is a testimony to the power of telling your story and the hope that can be found in doing so without apology. Like hearing the chorus of an old spiritual or having a long conversation with a close friend, each song is intimate in a restorative way. An unquestionable balm for uncertain times like these, this album announces Noname’s lyrical coming-of-age.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Some Girls [Deluxe Edition]
    Some Girls showed that the Stones could pull off the old magic using some flashy new tricks.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Live At Reading
    It’s a monster of a concert film in any case, with a band at the height of its powers--and not yet totally sick of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.'
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Love And Theft
    Love seems to come from a far more freewheeling Bob Dylan than the one on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, or virtually any other album he's recorded.
    • 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.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dolly
    The bulk of Dolly comes from the professionally tumultuous, creatively astounding period from the mid-’60s through the Wagoner split.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Blur 21
    The bonus material contains an abundance of amazing, weird, and brilliant moments. But the type of extras included-like a disc of demos from Blur's early years, when the band went by Seymour--will likely only interest completists.
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