The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,507 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 All Born Screaming
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,966 out of 5507
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5507
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5507
5507 music reviews
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Trouble
    For the most part... enthusiasm and influences are not matched by the songwriting.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Falling Off the Sky
    Mostly the songs chug along exuberantly, jangly melodies and bouncy choruses marrying the energy of youth with the finesse of age. It's not radical, and quality varies, but their sharper moments are glorious.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One Man Army
    It's worth a listen.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Overexposed
    The hooklines and characteristic high-shine production are there, but don't quite replicate 2011 single Moves Like Jagger's blue-sky charm.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Living Things
    Living Things feels more like consolidation than advancement, perhaps in an attempt to pacify fans alienated by the new direction, while keeping new converts interested, too.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oshin
    The trouble with listening to these songs en masse is that each one blurs into the next, making the whole unmemorable.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rispah
    The Invisible are to be found exploring more interesting areas--working up a noise they can justifiably call their own.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mostly No
    Mostly No's sound is a pretty familiar one – the Jesus and Mary Chain loom large in particular – which does burst into bloom here and there... but there's also a sense of pedals unstamped-on and wigs unflipped that makes you wonder if it could all have gone further.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Is Your Love Big Enough?
    The most appealing thing about Lianne La Havas' debut album is how imperfect it is. She is a work-in-progress, with lots of room to grow.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Handwritten
    Their fourth album never steps out of the shadows of their heroes, and may not take them where they want to be.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Holograms
    More successful [songs] are the pounding Transform and ABC City, a picture of inner-city desolation rendered cheerful by a child's-play keyboard riff and bright, buzzing guitars.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Good Morning to the Night
    At its best, shimmering and Balearic, the process makes dreamy summertime listening, but when it misfires, it may as well be sent straight to your local winebar.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hypnotic Nights
    It's a 90s powerpop album – Weezer without the self-analysis – in all but name. But, like even the best Weezer records, it can get a bit samey as the next bludgeoning riff hoves into view. And like the worst Weezer records, it sounds as if the lyrics were tossed off in five minutes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Another Country
    The light touch and subtle shading of this session, recorded in Florence, are also down to a French/Italian/Nigerian lineup featuring two percussionists (Mino Cinelu and Lekan Babalola), accordion and bass.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Was a Cat from a Book
    [The album] rolls by like a river, all finger-picked guitars and delicate arrangements, and atop it all Yorkston's tremulous voice, quavering through lyrics that are poetic in intent but often just too dense to parse.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Curva Da Cintura
    The result is an intriguing if uneven set in which Antunes' sturdy, quietly intense vocals and straightforward melodies are set against far more complex backing provided by intertwining kora and guitar.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fragrant World
    The first half of Fragrant World plods around self-indulgently, and No Bones veers all over the place... But the halfway point marks a clear shift in quality, as if they finally rediscovered their pop sensibility.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Centipede Hz
    Centipede Hz sets them up well for the future, without always managing to satisfy in the present.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Four
    They hit a peak with Team A, a street brawl of limber bass and volatile guitar, but plunge a low every time the pace slackens.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Antibalas
    The sturdy vocal work of Lagos-born Amayo invites constant comparison with Fela, and Antibalas still need to do even more to create their own distinctive style.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anastasis
    This album could be hypnotic--if only it plodded less and soared more.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Chapter V
    Chapter V is admirably cohesive, thanks to Songz sticking mostly with one producer, Troy Taylor, throughout.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Come of Age
    Come of Age isn't a bad album, but nor is it the swaggering bid for world domination it's made out to be: it's too confused and incoherent. But if it isn't going to propel them skywards, there's enough decent songs on it to keep the Vaccines ticking over in their current position.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Guzo
    This album could do with even more solo work from its star.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Know What Love Isn't
    On this third album nothing quite matches the second track, Erica America, for subtlety, its delicately anguished lyric set to a lush, Richard Carpenter-style melody.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Orfeo
    It's an album that impresses rather than excites.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Bet on Sky
    I Bet on Sky offers no variations on the grand theme, but pleasures in the detail.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Elysium
    Their 11th album is a peculiar listen. Half of it harks back to 1990's reflective masterpiece, Behaviour, with songs about ageing (Invisible) and escape (Breathing Space) exerting poignant pulls... The other half, however, feels bitter and flippant.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Carpenter
    The Carpenter isn't a total dud, because the Avetts are so skilled with a melody, but the plain-speaking has turned to clunkiness.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    O' Be Joyful
    There's nothing here that we haven't heard many times before, but for many that will be the heart of their appeal.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Battle Born
    You struggle to find the energy till the third or fourth listen, when Heart of a Girl and From Here on Out reveal themselves to be the sweetest, most sincere explorations of a kind of US rock that will always raise hairs on the necks of those who like this sort of thing.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Spirit Indestructible
    There's a fair bit of "positivity" gloop, such as Believers (Arab Spring), but not enough to ruin a decent album.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Breakthrough
    As a whole, Breakthrough can be powerful and hypnotic, but does feels a little familiar by now.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color
    It's mellifluous and clear in its delivery, but this points up Ali's limitations at the same time; the inflexibility of his style and the limits of his vocabulary.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Uno!
    The spiky threesome have made a very decent fist of sounding like their twentysomething selves.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Babel
    Essentially it's a honing of their 2009 debut, Sigh No More, but with more of the ferocity you encounter in their live show.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Piramida
    [Efterklang] glisten on the restless, bass-led groove of The Ghost and rack up the tension on a nourish Black Summer. Their eclectic style, however, demands space to breathe, and shorter songs, like The Living Layer and Dreams Today, which starts as a sprint but ends up puffed out, are left wanting.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tomahawk Technique
    Tracks as sugar-coated and high-pitched as Won't Stop and Dream Girl are capable of producing gastric fireworks. And that's without mentioning the secondary cliches, the choral "eh ohs", the plaintive choruses, and, naturally, the Auto-Tune.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cast the Same Old Shadow
    The atmosphere is eerie rather than unsettling.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oh No I Love You
    [Oh No I Love You presents] an appealing synthesis, particularly on Tobacco Fields, in which every instrument, and Burgess's unusually delicate voice, shiver between melancholy and joy.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Push and Shove
    As a comeback, this is nice work.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Until the Quiet Comes
    FlyLo's albums tend to be slight, and this is no exception: these tracks feel less like fully fleshed-out compositions than lightly drawn sketches started, but not always finished, from a spontaneous jam session.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Tel Aviv Session
    Ideal for late-night listening or meditation.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Halcyon
    The main flaw of Halcyon is that it occasionally feels a bit too much.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ultraista
    The album sounds weirdly uniform, the over-similarity perhaps the result of avoiding choruses in favour of repetitive mantras.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Twins
    Twins does what it does brilliantly – but Segall makes it sound so effortless, you keep getting snagged on its limitations.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beacon
    Trimble's contention that Beacon "takes us one step closer to the band we've dreamed of becoming" suggests a work in progress.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jake Bugg
    There's an attractive openness to the album, with no sense of contrivance: he's singing about what he knows. Once he knows a little more, you get the sense he might manage something truly memorable.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sundark and Riverlight
    It's hard to shake the feeling, though, that it's all a bit self-indulgent. These rewrites, though confident, are as much a curiosity as anything else, more an exercise in shape and form than an improvement.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    2
    An album that never quite delivers, largely because it's so unvarying in tone... Yet it manages to sound refreshing.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Monster
    Like ZZ Top and Rush before them, Kiss seem to have finally rediscovered (after their stodgy 2010 comeback album, Sonic Boom) what made them so great in the first place.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Glassheart
    Granted, much of the record is still given over to quaking ballads like Fingerprint--an area where Adele now has the advantage--but several tracks demand attention.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Allah-Las
    It's all very respectful--the attention to period detail sees them drop in a none-more-65 bossa nova instrumental--and all very pleasant. But there's no single killer song, no moment where they add anything to their borrowings to make you sit up and take notice.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Long Slow Dance
    There's airy, hilltop drama in the synths and piano that nestle behind the guitars, too, and on standout songs such as Presence of Mind and rollicking closer Yes Or No, enough songwriting smarts to make a somewhat unlikely stylistic journey well worth the trip.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cee Lo's Magic Moment
    Magic Moment nearly works, but not quite: further proof, should you need it, that making a Christmas record is tougher than you might think.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    R.E.D.
    R.E.D. won't reassure those who accuse him of drifting away from R&B to make a quick pop buck.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Free Reign
    There are lulls elsewhere, but the highlights are a treat.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Take Me Home
    The material is of variable quality.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lux
    It's so seamlessly soothing that it's a struggle to distinguish one segment from the next.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unapologetic
    For all its musical value, listening to Unapologetic is a pretty depressing experience.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Evolution of Man
    All in all, it's not much fun, but to depart so dramatically from his previous sound is a brave move.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dead & Born & Grown
    Whether the sisters' gossamer voices are woven together or flutter alone, what you hear is a bloodless, polite prettiness.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Girl on Fire
    As a reinvention, the album doesn't go far enough, and there are some underwhelming tunes, but the best song here--Girl on Fire--wonderfully blends Keys old and new.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fangnawa Experience
    There are times where the Afrobeat dominates, but it's always driven on by delicate and insistant percussion.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Silver & Gold [Boxset]
    So much, in other words, that wading through it feels as much of a chore as a joy.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Evolution
    It's full of taut, sophisticated pop that nods to Justin Timberlake circa 2002, Timbaland circa 1999 and even some of Nicki Minaj's more experimental beats.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The No Testament
    An unfocused set, maybe, but well worth checking out.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Contrast
    Most of the tracks here, with their wide-eyed appreciation of "beautiful girlies" would fit on a Bieber album. But you get the feeling he's striving for more.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tre!
    It's got some pretty good songs--but they never get better than pretty good.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    How Do You Plead?
    It's a finely crafted tribute to the classic country duos such as Johnny Cash and June Carter or George Jones and Tammy Wynette.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unorthodox Jukebox
    His second album is the same conventional mish-mash as his 6m-selling debut.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors
    While Killer Mike, Jai Paul and Big KRIT all earn their places, Kelly Rowland, Kid Cudi and Bosco are unnecessary decoration, and contribute to the overall sensation that this is a good album in need of a brutal trim.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    From the Top of Willamette Mountain
    [There's] an earnestness that often comes across as maudlin.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Holidaydream: Sounds of the Holidays, Vol. 1
    It doesn't seem to have taken much of a creative shift for them to sound ridiculously Christmassy, because the Spree do that naturally anyway.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Merry Christmas, Baby
    The album does its job--the 67-year-old's husky rasp sounds as Christmassy as a log fire and, when the lush instrumentation creates a warm glow, you can almost smell the chestnuts roasting.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Life Is People
    It's not without a few syrupy moments, and it would be a push to recommend it over the old records, but there are some fine songs here.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    DNA
    When off-kilter beats collide with impeccable harmonies and pleasingly daft lyrics, it sounds like pop as it should be, and their gamble in borrowing De La Soul's Ring Ring Ring refrain for How Ya Doin comes good. The ballads, however, plod along with heavy-handed emotion.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Finally Rich
    Portentous, monochrome synths, staccato beats and torpid tempos provide a backdrop of cheap grandeur; Keef doesn't so much ride the beat as pace suspiciously alongside it (sometimes, it's more like plodding).
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lady from Shanghai
    This is no pop album, and the more freeform passages can be difficult to get a grip on. But go with the high concept and there's plenty to appreciate in Thomas's doggedly peculiar methods.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Arc
    Inevitably, Arc lacks coherence; it's the sound of a band working out who they want to be.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Buddy and Jim
    An eclectic, freewheeling set remarkable not just for its inter-twining guitars but for its vocals, too.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wash the Sins Not Only the Face
    When it occasionally feels as if it's on its way to becoming too wispy and wafty, they always pull it back with a deft hand, and this is a record that creeps into the mind.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Flower Lane
    The divide in styles is the problem: two is enough to prevent a clear personality shining through, but not enough to give it a sense of adventure.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hummingbird
    It's pretty, yet rarely challenging.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Adam Ant Is the BlueBlack Hussar In Marrying The Gunner's Daughter
    The 17 tracks offer a rickety but entertaining mix of the best elements of his imperial period.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Opposites
    Opposites may not be the career-defining masterpiece it's intended as, but it's certainly not the pompous disaster it could have been: it has failings, but not the ones you might expect.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Collections
    Delphic's determination to bring together so many possible new directions proves the album's undoing, and it peters out towards the end.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Conduit
    An occasional penchant for dewy-eyed emoting aside, Conduit sounds like the work of a band with bags of energy and a surfeit of creative gas in the tank.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Moving Picture
    The patter doesn't always feel original nor particularly self-aware.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Running Still
    The romance of it all doesn't play quite so well in Britain, but this album is still a palatable addition to the adult-contemporary genre.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Amok
    A striking, if flawed, first step. However offputting the band's genesis may seem, it's hard not to be intrigued as to where they might go next.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Marriage of True Minds
    A bizarre, baffling, occasionally infuriating but sometimes brilliant listening experience culminates in a crazed electronic pounding of ESP, Buzzcocks' 1978 classic about telepathic communication.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Beginning No End
    If this is unquestionably a pop album, James has a gorgeous voice and jazz sensibilities.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Evolution Theory
    It's all full-tilt anthemic intensity, whether they're tearing through drum'n'bass (Sunlight), grime (Burn, which has MCs Footsie and D Double E competing to extol the wonders of weed) or Skrillexish metalstep (Show Me a Sign).
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    180
    There are certainly moments when the writing sparks: the New Orderish riff of Chicken Dippers crashes into an addictive chorus; Step Up for the Cool Cats maroons a fragmented ballad over see-sawing organ and explosions of frenetic drumming. But they are outweighed by moments where things seems to gutter in a mass of half-formed ideas.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Girl Who Got Away
    While her new dance direction leads to a fairly tame trip-hop/chill-out zone, it's a great improvement on her usual blandness.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Graffiti on the Train
    The band's sound has changed, too--it's less triumphal and more cinematic, although the Krautrock groove of Catacomb sounds genuinely angry.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cerulean Salt
    There's not much playfulness here or, surprisingly, vulnerability: Crutchfield finds too much strength in sadness for that.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Deserters
    Now and then she mistakes bland tastefulness for classy restraint; otherwise, subtlety is The Deserters' chief charm.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Talé
    It works when he doesn't get too clever.
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