The Boston Phoenix's Scores

  • Music
Select another publication »
For 1,091 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 Pink
Lowest review score: 0 Last of a Dyin' Breed
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 956 out of 1091
  2. Mixed: 88 out of 1091
  3. Negative: 47 out of 1091
1091 music reviews
view
per page
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    King of Hearts
    True, Camu Tao hadn't mastered the art of songwriting: verses and choruses abound, whereas bridges are conspicuously absent. But even half-built tracks like "Bird Flu" and "Intervention" are proof that he could create engaging and catchy hooks alongside vocals that matched his new palette without diluting the hip-hop aesthetic. Such songs are tantalizing examples of unrealized potential--a sad indication of what could have been.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Thr33 Ringz
    So if Thr33 Ringz fails to shock, consider also that it fails to disappoint.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Backtracks
    CD2’s smoking live versions are where AC/DC defend their reputation as a well-oiled machine, as oiled up as the jugtastic fembots that permeate the music’s hyper-hetero fantasia. And the band’s testicle-laden metaphorical fodder is brought to life on the DVD’s music videos.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Just To Feel Anything
    The Ohio trio took their time with Feel Anything, arriving at this more focused, albeit less celestial, effort.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Together
    Together, the group's fifth record, is explosive and infectious yet tight and glossy, a far cry from the proverbial seat-of-the-pants audacity of their 2000 debut, Mass Romantic.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    jj no 3
    Their ability to re-create shrewd discordant pairings in a second set of simple pop songs and still leave fans uncertain as to whether the duo are cleverly cloying or cloyingly clever is what will keep listeners in suspense until the curtains have parted.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Romantic Comedy
    They might have lost a little bit of character, but thankfully Big Troubles remain reliable writers of catchy pop songs.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Baby 81
    The songwriting isn’t BRMC’s most memorable, but Baby 81’s noise-roots fumes are pretty thick.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Rain
    The recent full-band reunion "Volume 4" was a small triumph, but Rain may be even more satisfying, since it’s the best work Jackson has done with a line-up that’s not strict-rock-band.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Fragrant World
    Yeasayer remain the new-millennium kings of studio manipulation, and it's downright jaw-dropping that they're able to experiment so wildly in the context of such catchiness. Fragrant World feels like a victory lap.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cherish the Light Years
    The only real sore spot is Wes Eisold's overdramatic Robert Smith singing style -- his pain sounds fashionable and forced instead of penetrating and raw.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Further
    There's no risk here, but there's plenty that's right.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Our Love To Admire
    Attention to the smallest instrumental details and the finest points of every composition have become Interpol trademarks; more complex than its pop song structures might suggest, Our Love To Admire is well worth exploring.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Endless Now
    Endless Now is a record that will appeal equally to fans of the Buzzcocks or Blink- 182, and that rules.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Darkside, Vol. 1
    Joe is one of the last remaining beasts from the East, and as he demonstrates on the DJ Premier ringer "I'm Gone" and "At Last Supremacy" with Busta, he sounds better in his back yard than he does in trying to appease pedestrians with unnecessary Wayne and Jeezy cameos.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Not Music
    Inasmuch as Stereolab have accomplished pretty much everything they could, Not Music feels like a passive retread.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Coco Beware
    Part of Caveman's appeal, other than having the coolest debut album title in recent memory (a respelling of the moniker of the '80s WWF superstar), is making the complicated simple.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Crash Love
    Crash is easily A.F.I.'s best since 2003's "Sing the Sorrow," and the cheeky pop-punk chorus of 'Too Shy To Scream' is their first successful decree to boogie the night away.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Ladyhawke
    New Zealand multi-instrumentalist Pip Brown a/k/a Ladyhawke presents us with a treasure trove of found blips, as if the 1980s had been nothing but a gigantic mirror ball to smash and paste back together.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    See Mystery Lights
    Without a smidgen of a doubt, See Mystery Lights has egghead-party-album-of-the-year potential. But its value is greater than that.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    King Animal
    On the whole, King Animal is a welcome return, and though it doesn't reinvent the wheel, it reminds us why these guys were considered the architects of the Seattle scene.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    21st Century Breakdown
    It could have easily gone any of several wrong ways, but Green Day's punk has long since been tempered with pop's most attractive attributes, and 21stCentury Breakdown, like its predecessor, is unapologetically accessible and relentlessly exhilarating.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Inspiration
    Fortunately, getting the money isn’t all this follow-up to last year’s breakthrough Let’s Get It cares about, and the singles here are fire.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Free To Stay
    Free To Stay is all about hyper, exuberant tunes as accessible to Kidz Bop kids as they are to parents.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Only Thing I Ever Wanted
    It’s this willingness to experiment with sounds and percussion that distinguishes Psapp from their electro-organic brethren.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)
    Live instrumentation and organic jams keep it all from sounding très moderne, and though it touches upon some typical Air tropes (free-floating whispery shimmers, B-movie space sounds gone glitzy) the overall loosey-goosey methodology is refreshing.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Light At The End Of The World
    Erasure remain A-level, mid-tempo melody makers, crafters of classic romantic pop songs with electronica serving as the template.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
    Here the band, with producer Dan Carey (Hot Chip, CSS) at their side, dip their big toe into electro-pop, Afrobeat (sorta), new-wave seizures, and all manner of groove that bespeak body-rockin' pleasures.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Shallow Bed
    It's like a late-aughts hipster cocktail.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    House on the Hill
    The songs are what we've come to expect--approachable slacker jams mixed in with cursory love songs, and the occasional guitar solo that proves reverb and washed-out colors don't have the monopoly on nostalgia--but production is cleaner and energy levels are lower.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Join Us
    Cautiously, I submit that Join Us, their 15th album and first non-children's release in four years, has that old-school TMBG feel, as if the Unlikely Rock Band ditched the self-conscious weirdo-geek shtick for a more genuine weirdo-geek non-shtick shtick.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Tired Of Hanging Around
    It’s their honest simplicity that offers a refreshing contrast to the irony of neo-new-wave disco retreads that are all the rage in the UK.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Saturdays=Youth
    This is an album steeped in a generation’s worth of nostalgia, but unlike most rehashed coming-of-age exercises, Saturdays = Youth manages, in its own small way, to offer something entirely new.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Rad Times Xpress IV
    Rad Times is a towering paean to a time that never was, when too much was never enough, and a three-minute song could gloriously last forever.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Off With Their Heads
    Beyond a couple of guest-vocal spots from fellow Ronson client Lily Allen and an out-of-place rap from English MC Sway, Off with Their Heads covers pretty much the same territory as the Chiefs' first two discs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Six
    Although titles like 'Suicide' and 'Drugs' may seem a touch overt, the songs are not overwrought cliches.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Valhalla Dancehall
    The constants are there; the group come off as authentic in their earnestness, even with lyrics ("I love your celebrity/the VPL in the SUV") that might look slipshod on paper. But no new ground is being broken.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Knowle West Boy
    Knowle West Boy is a survey of Tricky’s sonic versatility--straightforward rock and oppressive, moody atmospherics all have a home here--and it is frequently gorgeous.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Orchard
    The Orchard cracks open a window to dreamy possibilities.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Within and Without
    Within and Without is chillwave 2.0. It takes the same hazy late-night bedroom synthpop, but amps it up exponentially, with live instruments (cello, bass, violins, drums), guidance from superstar producer Ben Allen (who co-produced Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion and Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest), and more meticulously crafted songs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Former Lives
    Gibbard's carving out new musical territory on Former Lives, while amplifying the broken heart of what makes his sound so wonderful.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
    If the down-and-out, early-MCR-worshipping emo set need the equivalent of an "It Gets Better" video to remind them how awesome life can be, no document could be more spirited and persuasive than Danger Days.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Manifest!
    With their debut full-length, Brooklyn pop quintet Friends have released the best pop album of the summer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tha Blue Carpet Treatment
    Even if the disc’s too long and there’s too much coasting here and there to qualify it as near-classic, there’s more than enough to convince doubters that Snoop can still deliver.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Atlantis: Hymns For Disco
    It’s still too lightweight to win any hip-hop race, but at least you’ll want to add K-OS’s name to your mental checklist as you peruse those small-rock-club listings.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ultraviolet
    Dream Date does more than achieve its purpose, which is to get bottoms leaking.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
    Cut in Nashville with ace session players, what might have been a disastrous mess in other hands coheres into one of Costello's most satisfying releases in some time.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    ...And the Ever Expanding Universe
    ...The Ever Expanding Universe provides a nice excuse to put on the headphones and look up at the stars. There's nothing wrong with having one's head in the clouds, but this band could stand to make the occasional contact with earth.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    In Light
    In Light is an impressive step forward--it seriously contends for the title of this summer's go-to indie-pop record.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Johnny Boy Would Love This: A Tribute to John Martyn
    Martyn's early-'70s blend of romantic blues and eerie valentines remains potent, and on this double-disc tribute, 30 participants give him a smooch of respect, trying to update the hazy passion he brought to his best work.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Anything In Return
    Anything in Return is his most melodic album.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Smoke
    On Smoke, his blog-buzzed debut, he offers a tuneful, mellow bedroom pastiche of trebly early-’80s punk funk, spirited, rhythm-rich worldbeat, and post-Beck white-guy R&B.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Hippies
    When listening to Hippies, it's difficult to forget that Harlem have professed their love for Nirvana, and still more difficult to suppress the urge to tell them to turn down that bass already.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Get Awkward
    What BYOP now lack is the element of surprise that made their debut such a kick; they no longer sound as if they had something to prove, and that drains their music of much of its charm.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    All I Ever Wanted
    I had to make several return trips to the lyric sheet to clear up which songs were love letters and which were screw-yous. But this sort of tone-deaf emotional bludgeoning tends to work in her favor on monstrous power ballads.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Running For The Drum
    Even if Sainte-Marie tries to cram too much into her joyous return to the limelight, Running for the Drum is proof that a path that began with the powerful "Universal Soldier" back in the early 1960s won't be fading gracefully into the usual sunset of folk retirement.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Clear Heart Full Eyes
    The mood ... is decidedly bleak- populated by disillusioned lovers and working class escapists, the lyrics splitting at the seams with dark religious imagery.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Audio, Video, Disco
    Justice never lose sight of the big picture, aiming to blow your minds and sub-woofers with equal determination.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Inner Mansions
    The Inner Mansions is much more interesting than your typical bedroom pop album.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Degeneration Street
    Degeneration Street is a bit of a tease, a solid alternative-rock album with some exciting sounds that afford only a peek into the Dears' potential.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Going Way Out With Heavy Trash
    Some things, like this album, are best left unanalyzed and simply enjoyed for their own bone-headed dedication to rockin’ out like a motherfucking banshee. Which Going Way Out does in spades and diamonds.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Catching a Tiger
    Her magnetic debut album doesn't aim to break new ground, but her rustic, Stevie Nicks–ish voice unifies the myriad sounds that position her as both a radio-ready alt-country chick and a young, hip folkstress who pulls off online covers of Lady Gaga and Kid Cudi.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hush
    Hush quells qualms with the relaxed assurance every third album should carry.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Fortress
    The Tigers have no trouble doing vivacious and catchy without being cloying, so it's a shame they've shelved that skill.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Original Colors
    High Places v. Mankind, took just criticism for being a run-of-the-mill indie record with no charisma, Original Colors is a more than respectable rebound.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Hysterical
    Hysterical is built for the long haul, and it appears, after a patch of rocky terrain, that Clap Your Hands are too.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Neck of the Woods
    Enlisting uber-producer Jacknife Lee (Bloc Party, Kasabian, R.E.M.) has brought some magic that keeps the mid-'90s flame--if not eternal--then at least at a reliable glow.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    VI
    These tunes shred as po’-facedly as any the Champs have recorded.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Depart From Me
    Confident non-jumpers shouldn't be concerned that this disc weeps with you're-always-dying-inside woe-is-my-love-life misery.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    4:13 Dream
    Even with a dozen records behind him, Smith, when he puts his mind to it, remains a master at crafting concise masterpieces of bouncy pop majesty.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Rapprocher
    Rapprocher does what last year's (s)excellent debut EP Journal of Ardency did so well, letting Harper be the pretty face of electronic compositions that, with her aid, become liberating, confident, oozing with inviting overtones.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hard Bargain
    Hard Bargain is a gorgeous album.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sleep Forever
    Sleep Forever is about accepting mortality, and if its skill represents the possibilities of their earthly journey, long live Crocodiles.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Seeker Lover Keeper
    The majority of the songs aren't much more than bare bones, with sparse piano and spacious, airy guitars, but it's the way the women work together so naturally that promises more than a one-off experiment.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Man on the Moon, Vol. 2: The Legend of Mr. Rager
    Brushes with the law and a cocaine habit sent his personal life on a turn to the dark side, something that's soon evident over the course of Mr. Rager's 17 remorseful tracks.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sun Bronzed Greek Gods
    The track's sonic cousin, "Burn Bridges," still stands tall on sparkly synth loops and bumper-sticker lyrics ("Burn bridges/Make yourself an island"), but the rest of the EP soars mostly on lo-fi surf pop made by landlocked youth using Casios and Fruity Loops in bored bedrooms.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    What Will We Be
    Even when Banhart seems more in a predicament than in the zone, he’s hopelessly inventive. Several songs experience complete transformations over their modest three-minute spans, succeeding like little daybreaks.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Ready For The Flood
    Nothing's as timeless as "Blue" or "Waiting for the Sun," but the thrill here is all about those two lonely voices that find each other, in this future of theirs, caught up in that rush of harmony.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Lex Hives
    If there was ever a worry of the Hives maturing- or simply becoming less like the Hives - there isn't anymore.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Funhouse
    Give Pink three spins and half a chance and by track five's killer New Order riff, you'll be singing 'Please, Don't Leave Me' back at her.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Delta Spirit
    A lovely, thoughtful album.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Messenger
    While lukewarm as a whole, The Messenger doesn't suck nearly enough to bruise Marr's status as a guitar deity on wheels.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    New Maps of Hell
    'New Dark Ages,' with its layered background harmonies, wall-of-sound instrumentation, and quietly propulsive drumming, is a 27-year career in a nutshell.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    NY's Finest
    NY’s Finest finds the legendary producer consistent, if not innovative.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Classics
    Ratatat never get as Daft funky or as outright punky as you’d want. But they never linger for too long in one place, and they throw more than enough cerebral curveballs to keep you on your musical toes.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Red Velvet Snowball
    No one song here will change your life, but there are some that could come close.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Sweet Sour
    They are a hell of a band if you're looking for catchy rock with occasional sparks of brilliance.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mirage Rock
    Mirage Rock might as well be the name of a new airy-rock subgenre, with luscious, echoey story-tunes rolling in like a soft mirage-inducing mountain fog.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    So Divided
    [It] depends less on the band’s gear-smashing antics than on their sense of tunecraft, which isn’t as highly developed.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Telephantasm
    Telephantasm is a solid retrospective for a Seattle metal band who got wrapped up in flannel, became an MTV staple, and left the game before ending up like Nirvana or, worse, Pearl Jam.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Clash the Truth
    The beauty of Beach Fossils has always been in the tension between Payseur's disaffected deadpan and the band's super-visceral live shows (before Beach Fossils, he spent years playing in hardcore bands) and on Clash much of that post-punk energy translates seamlessly.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Blue Songs
    The album stutters heavily in the middle. Hercules are a 12-inch outfit, and "Boy Blue" and "Blue Song" are failed attempts at varying the mood with some despondency. As if they wanted to make Blue Songs more than a collection of singles, which it isn't.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Pink Friday
    There's nothing particularly wrong with what Minaj has given us - her pipes are worthy of wide-ranging pop stardom - but the album is a misallocation of the talent and quirk that thrust her into the spotlight in the first place.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Young & Old
    Tennis are still cute as a button, but now they have songs to go along with the smiles.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Business Casual
    Their signature '80s homage is consistent across their songwriting, lyrics, album covers, and design - even their videos. And despite their claims to the contrary, the duo have enough self-aware irony to rise above the level of a throwback novelty act or a one-trick nostalgia pony.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Michel Poiccard
    So the Death Set essay a Jekyll/Hyde routine of dramatic contrasts, pitting lightning-fried guitars, unpredictable computerized effects, and goofy bullshit against mellow hooks and relative subtlety.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    LP4
    A good deal of the album (particularly the first half) uses the new-fangled instrumentation sporadically, as an afterthought to a slightly darker version of the duo's time-honored techniques. This is where LP4, though flawlessly produced, is messy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Formula
    The record bursts with energy and purpose, revealing the brilliance that advocates like the Roots’ ?uestlove have long suspected 9th had in him.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Elect The Dead
    In SOAD, Tankian’s vocal gymnastics and penchant for subversive lyrics are kept somewhat in check by the mix of muscle and subtlety guitarist Daron Malakian brings to the table. Here, there’s nothing to hold him back.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Broken Hymns, Limbs, And Skin
    When it comes to production values, Broken Hymns is a marked improvement from 2005’s self-financed "Head Home." Still, songs kinda meant to evoke the 1930s aren’t necessarily better or worse off with snazzier studio treatment.
Page: