The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,513 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Post Human: NeX Gen
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,972 out of 5513
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5513
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5513
5513 music reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Re: ECM
    Too often it becomes mere background music, albeit always pleasant and sometimes even interesting.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Blood
    Tense, brooding and often raw, the artist's world-wearied voice is cast off against a dramatic backdrop, the results not unlike a darker take on Elbow's experiment with the Hallé Orchestra.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gracious Tide, Take Me Home
    Paul Gregory's crackling electronic interventions and homespun production job--listen out for the creaking floorboards in Keep on Trying--do much to roughen the edges, but not enough to give this perfect music real character.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Will The Guns Come Out
    Songs are taut and brief, the guitar/drum arrangements stripped to absolute basics and El Khatib squawks his lines as if his switchblade is giving him grief.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Last Days of Meaning
    It's an awkward concept that might work better on stage, but Hurt is in fine form and the songs are a reminder of Sawhney's skill as a composer, and of the musical variety of multicultural Britain.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Days
    These tracks are so instantly memorable, so curiously familiar--and so uninspiring, despite their loveliness.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mylo Xyloto
    A lot of it just sounds like standard-issue Coldplay, replete with echoing guitars, woah-oh choruses and vocals that signify high drama by slipping into falsetto.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
    For now, it'll do that it's a more enjoyable album than Oasis' latter-day catalogue.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fabriclive 59
    Radically different eras--the 70s, with David Borden, and the 00s with Burial--somehow come together thanks to the constant tisk-tisk of the beat, and Hebden's ear, finding illuminating parallels and contrasts.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Turn in the Dream-Songs
    The fine line between cute and twee is ever present, however, and at times his tendency towards knowing self-assessment can grate. But he's certainly never boring.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ceremonials
    Ceremonials always sounds wonderful--producer Paul Epworth has created a warm, soft, four-poster featherbed of sound for Welch to emote over--but it never really satisfies.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Replica
    If Replica occasionally drifts--literally–-too close to the whiffy bongs and flotation tanks of 90s chillout, it's never predictable, and is best experienced in a continuous sitting.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hello Sadness
    Written while reeling from the scorpion sting of heartbreak, Gareth Campesinos' lyrics to his band's fourth album are navel-gazing in the extreme.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stage Whisper
    Gainsbourg's voice sounds thin and adrift against too much noodling, and it only emphasises how much of a studio performer she is.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fallen Empires
    Although the variation in styles doesn't make for the most cohesive album, the default mood is still downbeat but anthemic--songs for couples to cling tightly to one another while raising mobiles in the air.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Geronimo!
    Geronimo! promises to be a retro delight. Then, sadly, it fades.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    At Your Inconvenience
    It's a heavy, ambivalent confessional, but Green's precocious personality and distinctive flow manage to keep it fired up.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Life II...The Journey Continues (Act 1)
    It feels elegant, refined and, for the most, part up-to-date. But it's also far too long and ... the ballads feel weighed down with listlessness and sentimentality.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sticks + Stones
    You end up with an album that tells you nothing about Cher Lloyd and everything about the people around her: specifically, that the dominant force in British pop music doesn't appear to have a clue about pop music.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lioness: Hidden Treasures
    There are early recordings that would probably never have seen the light of day had the artist lived.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Birdy
    [A] pleasant but pointless exercise.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everybody Get Close
    It offers a potted career history and a guided tour of the music that inspired the transformation.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Undun
    What it isn't--quite--is the magnum opus it could be. The second half loses impetus.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    At the Crossroads
    [James Carter is] at his earthiest and most accessible with this classic Hammond organ trio lineup.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In Case You Didn't Know
    Endowed with a decent white-soul voice that recalls Will Young, he and his tunes are never less than easy on the ear.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Relentless, Reckless Forever
    There is enough dirty riffing, rasped invectives and breakneck thrash on this, their seventh studio album, to appeal to the kind of metal aficionado for whom a belief in dragons and wizards isn't compulsory.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Last Day of Summer
    It's an intriguing sketchbook of ideas and, on the likes of I'd Have It Just the Way We Were and Shy Billy, it's surprisingly fully formed.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Purple Naked Ladies
    Thrilling and original. It's a dense but shifting mist of sound: snatches of vocals, meandering electric piano and guitar figures, synthesisers that move from enveloping warmth to jangling out of tune, topped off with Bennett's sweetly understated voice... [Yet] for all its flashes of brilliance, it sounds more like a free download.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Something
    Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly, now a duo following Aaron Pfenning's departure, are on to something beguiling with this third album.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Resolution
    While there's plenty here to keep heads banging, there's not much to challenge the grey matter inside them.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Form & Control
    While 'The Written Word' and the title track are bonanzas for fans of arm-waving disco-house, the "control" element of the title is present all the way through, and the songs never quite transcend the feeling they're a bit too school for cool.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    If You Want Loyalty Buy a Dog
    It's a set that sounds both effortless and adventurous, with McDonald's gutsy vocals and bluesy guitar work matched against drums, harmonica, keyboards, bass and impressively subtle, edgy dub effects that transform even well-known material.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Making Mirrors
    A maverick worth watching.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blues Funeral
    [It] contains no great shocks: for the most part, this is bluesy, lugubrious, modernish rock, elevated by Lanegan's remarkable gravel-pit of a voice.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kinshasa Succursale
    It's an entertainingly varied set – thanks to the Congolese musicians rather than Baloji himself.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    E Volo Love
    Charming, then, but lightweight.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)
    It's a niche listen. But [...] it can be a charming one, too.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paralytic Stalks
    You get the feeling Barnes is trying to bash you into the same twisted mindspace he himself inhabits, mixing up spiralling flute lines, cosmic rock and deranged show tunes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Animal Joy
    It's aggressive, impressive, but never makes an emotional connection.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweet Sour
    It's all entirely listenable, if not what you might expect.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freedom of Speech
    A pleasantly surprising, if patchy, return.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Russian Wilds
    They ape the cons as well as the pros of 70s rock: longer-than-necessary songs, a weakness for cliche and, inevitably, unabashed retroism.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Put Your Back N 2 It
    For all the beauty in these woozy, damaged choral songs, the sense that he's still just about sticking to a formula frustrates any greater ambition.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Give You the Ghost
    Their best arrives mid-album, with the seductive, chiming single Lay Your Cards Out, temporarily collapsing the album's darker tensions in to an aching, cathartic slow jam.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Voice of Ages
    This new set has a fashionable cast list, but is more patchy.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Megaphonic Thrift
    The Megaphonic Thrift first came to attention with an EP; it's possible that concentrated form might be their best mode of display.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unlock Your Mind
    You won't find complicated, destination-disguising improvisations here, but a jazz spirit inspires the group, and their raw power is pretty faithfully caught on disc.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hell in a Handbasket
    Everything's as big, ludicrous and bombastic as ever, but with a vulnerability that is strangely touching.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nzca/Lines
    It's a pleasingly understated album, never too busy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Leaving Eden
    Carolina Chocolate Drops are a gloriously energetic and adventurous live band, but this set mysteriously fails to demonstrate their range.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All of Me
    It feels as if Estelle isn't sure what she's about.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Point of Go
    Point of Go's strong points are such that the album is worth hearing, and the next album worth waiting for.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love at the Bottom of the Sea
    The exact same things that made 69 Love Songs such a tour de force--smart namechecks, hyperactive genre-surfing, a DIY feel to the production (he's back on the synths)--are the very same things that can start to grate here.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One Second of Love
    She tries out warped folk ("Unearthly Delights") and dubstep ("No I Don't"), a versatility that hasn't quite settled into a cogent direction.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shallow Bed
    The talk of Bible belts, railroads and medicine men rings just a bit hollow when you know they come not from some remote Appalachian cabin but a shared house in Stratford, east London.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Pines
    It's always pleasant but never quite manages to step beyond that.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    SSSS
    The analogue synths and electronic squelches could have boomed out of a darkened club at any time in the last two decades, but repeated listens reveal expertise with a sense of fun.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Port of Morrow
    If it's not an album to turn the listener into a screaming proselyte, there's still enough magic to make it worthwhile.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Happy to You
    It does exemplifies the enjoyable glossiness that experienced backroom types can bring to the over-subscribed electropop genre.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Prisoner
    [Lead singer, Hayley Mary] keeps things interesting even during the many moments when sheer emo intensity makes the record heavy going.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Other People's Problems
    Their debut album sounds pretty much exactly what you'd expect given their provenance: samples are cut and chopped, the bass judders with the insistence of dub, the vocals are drawled, electronically treated and incomprehensible, and the faint fug of weed paranoia hangs over it all.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tosta Mista
    At their best – on ESP, the title track, or Jubb – Hooded Fang are the kind of pleasantly brattish garage poppers we've heard a thousand times before, and will hear a thousand times again.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    World, You Need a Change of Mind
    It's classy and airy, although so stylishly produced (with French house guru Cassius) that it can feel like a soundtrack to an imaginary Ideal Home exhibition of laboratory-like perfection.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nothing's Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now
    It's never an essential one, however: that air of self-deprecating resignation seeps into the music, which shuffles along unassumingly, occasionally enlivened by a rock'n'roll rhythm or a shimmer of soulful horns, without betraying much character of its own.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    MDNA
    MDNA turns out to be just another Madonna album. It's already had the biggest single-day pre-order in iTunes history: business as usual for the most remarkable business enterprise in pop.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Deeper in the Well
    There's little to startle or disturb, but it's a classy, laid-back set.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Our Version of Events
    You can't help wishing she'd put her talents to more original use, not least because when she does, as on My Kind of Love, the results are spectacular
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Portico Quartet
    It sounds less like a jazz album than anything the group has recorded, but in stepping away from a method they never seemed comfortable with, Portico have found a contemporary sound to thrill their fans and attract new listeners.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Boys & Girls
    Boys & Girls feels slightly polite and artfully constructed, as if the rest of the band are too respectful of their influences to truly let rip.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tell Tales
    The music – traditional piano and guitars, or a cappella, almost barbershop arrangements – doesn't always match the vim and character of [the songs'] words and voices.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hot House
    Corea and Burton are devotees of the shapely, symmetrical and song-rooted – so this album is flawlessly graceful, even if some episodes (the intricate piano ostinato under Eleanor Rigby) border on the distractingly clever.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dross Glop
    Their original tracks are mostly given a more electronic, dancefloor hue, within which styles rollercoast from from hip-hop to garage to African music, and moods from airy to sinister.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nothing to Do
    The album swings back and forth between modes for half an hour, with decent hooks and sprightly rock-outs along the way (notably Who Are You, the title track), but even in the eternally throwaway field of garage-pop, these thrills are fleeting indeed.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love Is a Four Letter Word
    The surprise is that it's pretty palatable.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Little Broken Hearts
    Little Broken Hearts finds an effective way to grab the listener by the lapels: with kid gloves.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did on Our Summer Vacation)
    A few tracks offer something fresh.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Electronic Earth
    Labrinth avoids the most obvious pitfall--he can actually sing--but writing words seems to flummox him.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What Kind of World
    What Kind of World won't cause the goodwill to dry up, but it never reaches the heights of 2002's Lapalco, still Benson's high-water mark.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Master of My Make-Believe
    There's a subdued, mid-paced feel to it, too, and this sense of somehow sad restraint holds it back from greatness.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Electra Heart
    She's somewhere beneath some half-hearted songs, a confused concept and someone else's image.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Adventures in Your Own Backyard
    It's pretty stuff, with breathtaking production which doesn't quite conceal a shortage of strong songs. The spine-tingling anthem Quiet Crowd is the exception, Watson's butterfly vocal darting around lines about "lovers and liars" and wrongs in dangerous places.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blown Away
    However predictable the package, there's fun to be had in these tales of bad dads, cheating husbands and cold, cold hearts, and Underwood delivers them with sweet purposefulness.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In the Belly of the Brazen Bull
    It's all a little too faithful to its template [90's lo-fi slacker rock] to be truly arresting.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Memory
    Well-observed references [to different traditions, including the Detroit techno scene] may outnumber any attempts at innovation by some margin, but that doesn't detract from the pleasure of a defining sound lovingly revisited.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bloom
    It's beautiful, spectral, dreamy, but never makes your pulse quicken.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    OFF!
    Even with a brisk run-through of 16 tracks in just over 15 minutes, what should sound like a sprint comes across as a leisurely jog.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Joyful Noise
    A Joyful Noise is a brave stab at something new.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Trespassing
    If few of the songs are classics, his octave-leaping voice is often a showstopper.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Caravana Sereia Bloom
    It's a cheerful album, but lacks the freshness and invention of her earlier work, and often sounds as if she's aiming too hard for the commercial global market.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Presents...Here Come the Bombs
    His debut solo album is packed with [hooks you can hang a coat on.]
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Predict a Graceful Expulsion
    Holland and Winter Solstice are particularly fine. But [the album] is also very much fixed in one place, and at one pace, and doesn't quite reach the consistent transcendence it aspires to
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Spirit in the Room
    It's never as rollicking as 2010's Praise and Blame, though a version of Tom Waits' Bad As Me will sound agreeably demented to anyone who's never heard the original.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magic Hour
    A remodel was probably overdue, but the best moment here is another signature stomper: Baby Come Home, a late-night insecurity confessional boasting their catchiest tune since I Don't Feel Like Dancing.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Apocalyptic Love
    Pretty good but never outstanding.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Valtari
    All too easily, the songs sink into the background – which is a shame, because there is also great beauty here.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What We Saw from the Cheap Seats
    In fine voice and piano, Spektor skips down the yellow-brick road, offering new diversions at every turn. Fun – but the whimsy can be exhausting.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Boys Don't Cry
    At times, they are smothered in tastefulness, all emotion neutralised.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends
    Beneath the sludge and churning distortions, however, is a characteristically generous squaring-up to life's horror and humanity that is worth excavating.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    That's Why God Made the Radio
    Just as you're about to dismiss the album entirely, something extraordinary happens. The final three tracks – From There to Back Again, Pacific Coast Highway and Summer's Gone – form a kind of suite that is easily the best thing Brian Wilson has put his name to in the last 30 years.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blood Speaks
    Their second album kicks off with an insistent bass throb and angular drumming....Elsewhere, though, the duo allow their earnestness too much sway, making for deadening solemnity.
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