The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,501 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 If I don't make it, I love u
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,964 out of 5501
  2. Mixed: 2,460 out of 5501
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5501
5501 music reviews
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Something in the Water
    It’s a spirited attempt to keep American roots music--country blues, early jazz, ragtime and western swing--alive.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Myths and Heroes
    It’s not entirely memorable, but it’s confident and varied.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    MG
    MG is not dissimilar to Kuedo’s 2011 album Severant--without, perhaps, the direct link to modern dance culture, but with no less command of mood and atmospherics.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hypnophobia
    It’s pleasurable, but it’s hard not think that a little varying of the approach might pay dividends.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    California Nights
    In among the keening college stuff is the languid desert rock of the title track, which gently spirals into a stoned dream as the hot Californian sky burns out the boredom of suburban reality.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    MCIII
    Cronin’s previous album was something of a messy listen, and MCIII doesn’t offer the solution. But behind the debris, there are glimmers of shimmering greatness.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rituals
    There’s certainly beauty within these lush, lofty, cinematic creations; but ultimately Rituals is the sound of a lot of lamenting, much melodic looping and no surprises.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sprinter
    Producer Rob Ellis, who played on some of PJ Harvey’s early albums, helps hone Sprinter’s 90s alt-rock sound, but it’s a rather familiar one, and there’s not always enough melody to help these intimate stories take flight.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love Songs for Robots
    Fans of his previous work may find the kitchen-sink approach confusing, but the likes of Grace and the title track are pearls amid the fog.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sol Invictus
    Sol Invictus is not quite Faith No More at their eccentric peak, but Matador, Sunny Side Up and From the Dead see them get close. A welcome return from the band that refuse to be bland.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome Back to Milk
    The music is inventive and odd.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Desired Effect
    Its unusual lineup of collaborators--including the Dirty Projectors’ Angel Deradoorian, percussionist Joey Waronker and Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant--looks intriguing on paper, but their contributions are often barely audible; Danielle Haim’s appearance is a natural meeting of minds, however.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Who Me?
    There are clear-eyed moments of introspection and observation, as on I Was Well and This Is I, but overall the album suffers from a lack of ingenuity.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sub-Lingual Tablet
    What seems to be album No 31 certainly has its share of Fall-by-numbers, in which the bass grinds on, keyboards trace spindly patterns, and Smith grumbles in one of his incomprehensible and terrifying voices--Pledge and Black Door certainly fit that description. But there are surprises, too.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Young Chasers
    For 40 wide-eyed minutes, it’s if alt-R&B never happened.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
    It’s an album that’s too overblown and daft for the songs to have the desired emotional impact: it’s never really intimate enough for the feelings Welch expresses to connect. Instead, it wobbles precariously along the line that separates the enjoyably OTT from the faintly exhausting.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Before We Forgot How to Dream
    It’s not quite dazzling, but a fine showing for a young artist.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Starfire
    The tunes remain quirkily dramatic and the thematic scene-shifting spectacular, but a little thinning-out would have let Jaga Jazzist’s uniquely mercurial music breathe more.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Are You Satisfied?
    The riffs of songs such as Wow!!!7am or Hey or Do Something are strong enough, but the formula “riff, primitive bash of drums, bellowed chorus” wears thin pretty quickly.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Drones
    It’s the heaviest the band has sounded in some time, and exuberant enough for you to ignore Bellamy’s clunky lyrics. But Drones veers badly off target in its final third.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Universal Themes
    There are spoken segments, garage-rock and pretty acoustic passages, too, but his default setting is intimate and minimal.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Currency of Man
    Some of her older-style material jars--when playing the cabaret siren on Bad News, or the musical theatre dame on overblown jazz ballad If Ever I Recall Your Face--but for the most part, these heavy-lidded protest jams are a sophisticated twist on her continually evolving sound.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wild Nights
    It does have a breezy charm, most evident on Young Girls and the girl-group harmonies of If Only, even if it’s not quite as addictive as they might have hoped.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Déjà-Vu
    For every decent chorus, there is a moment where Moroder falls victim to his own vast influence.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Big Love
    A wizened nostalgia hangs above this blue-eyed soul--the songs are smooth and sentimental, like easy-listening epitaphs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Get to Heaven
    It’s often compelling, but you occasionally find yourself gripped by an overwhelming urge to turn it off.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Out Calls Only
    What Out Calls Only lacks, though, is melodies that adhere: for all the carefully constructed mood and attention to detail in the arrangements, there are are no hooks the listener can’t wriggle free of.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Coming Home
    Bridges has a fantastic voice, but you sense he’s also yet to truly find it.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Original High
    Turn it up before hitting the club, but look elsewhere for lyrical creativity.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful
    One longs for something more than mere prettiness, which over the course of a whole album becomes a bit glutinous.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pageant Material
    Though her songwriting partners--Nashville A-listers Luke Laird and Shane McAnally--are on board again, the acuity is lessened.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Payola
    They’re not exactly pushing things forward, but for anyone who wants to take a trip back to when MTV2’s Gonzo was a must-watch, Payola will pave the way.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bones
    There’s so much bone-crunching texture that it claws your ears like a gnarled kitten. Past the theatrical dins of songs like Flight and This Time, though, there are simple pleasures in the cinematic darkness of I Am the Others and the folksier Undone, which strikes a balance between complex rhythms and alluring acoustic guitar licks.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Sovereign Self
    There are some fine songs here, from the gloriously strange O, Where Is Saint George? to the epic I Is Someone Else, but the album’s excitedly noisy production would benefit from greater degree of variety.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slow Gum
    It all starts to falter a little when the songs start to bleed into each other’s comforting, sunshine-peaking-through-gossamer textures--a change of pace wouldn’t have gone amiss.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Communion
    Years & Years don’t seem to have an original idea in their collective heads, but that doesn’t neccessarily mean that Communion is unenjoyable.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magnifique
    Magnifique drags a bit, as can often be the case with instrumental tracks centred on repetitive patterns, but it demonstrates the band’s commitment to their oddball signature style.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Under Branch and Thorn and Tree
    Aside from the skewered, St Vincent-style intro track Killer, or Big Rock, which feigns a kind of burly, truck-driving swagger, most of the songs on this record are in the style of moping traditional country and Americana ballads.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sing Into My Mouth
    An album of covers which, however enjoyable, doesn’t always take songs by the likes of John and JJ Cale, Ronnie Laine, Bon Iver and Bonnie Raitt to places they haven’t been before.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Water for Your Soul
    The pro-weed track Sensimilla will prompt mass eye-rolling because of her decision to sing part of it in patois, and Harry’s Symphony likewise.... The latter song--an 80s reggae throwback that broodingly warns against being taken in by “bad boys”--is more than listenable, and other moments on this reggae/African-influenced album are fine, too.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Subjective Concepts
    It isn’t bad, but it rarely moves beyond pastiche.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Most Lamentable Tragedy
    The problems come when the band try to stretch themselves. The synth interludes and faux-hymns are one thing, but the two lengthy songs at the album’s centre are something else entirely: the former are over and done with quickly, the latter are interminable.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Universes
    Davis still sounds best when sticking to the instrumental mode of his thumping 2014 PARTY EP. Nonetheless, Universes is a warm, danceable introduction to an artist with plenty of sonic tricks up his sleeve.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blood
    A gorgeous voice, let down slightly by tame songwriting.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Marks to Prove It
    These are slow, loping, anxious anthems that bypass the drunkenness and muddle the brain like a hangover.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Positive Songs for Negative People
    For all its flaws, Positive Songs for Negative People feels like the work of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Yung Rich Nation
    It all sounds like a victory lap rather than a step forward, but perhaps that’s just as well.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Green Lanes
    There’s little evidence the duo had a mission to make the album of a lifetime. It’s more of a heavenly-sounding hobby.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    E-MO-TION
    She doesn’t do anything to stamp her identity on the songs: good as they are, you’re struck by the sense you could be listening to anyone. It’s one problem that all the expensive names in the credits can’t solve, a single glaring imperfection in an album of otherwise perfect pop.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Spirit Moves
    For all the potency of Slim’s feelings, however, the album’s downfall is that it is musically and lyrically as well-trodden as his battered, beating heart.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    1 Hopeful RD.
    The group are perhaps a little more trad than even the likes of Alabama Shakes and Blackberry Smoke, but fans of both will find much to enjoy here.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied
    The album stutters when influences are writ too large--Stevie Wonder on Dogtown and Razorlight on Desperate Boy--and it all runs out of steam towards the end. Still, as the anthemic, U2-like piano ballad Slow demonstrates quite ably, they’re in no mood to be written off.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats
    Aside from Snake, which brings to mind Paolo Nutini slumped at the back of a strip club, the album is full of the ghosts of songwriting greats like Otis Redding, Chuck Berry and Van Morrison, and sounds like it should establish Rateliff as the breakneck bar brawler of the new soul movement.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Making Of
    Frontman Dominic McGuinness’s reedy voice sounds weaker than this music deserves, but that doesn’t stop the rest of the band from thrusting their way through a swaggering set of songs about love, lust and getting the girl.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What Went Down
    The results will please dedicated fans, but may lack the melodic ingenuity to pull in others.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Turkey
    Krol is hardly a rock’n’roll virtuoso, but he knows how to make carefree music to make you bounce. Sometimes that’s enough.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What the World Needs Now
    It’s noticeably similar to 2012’s This Is PiL--and for a truly engaged evisceration of the establishment, you’d currently do better with Sleaford Mods.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paper Gods
    If Paper Gods isn’t quite as strong throughout as 2010’s back-to-basics All You Need Is Now, Kill Me With Silence and the title track have terrific choruses and Sunset Garage beautifully honours the band’s survival.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Highest Point in Cliff Town
    A provincial, balmy afternoon-ready record.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Invite the Light
    On Invite the Light, funk remains not only Dam-Funk’s backbone, but his beating heart, his brain, his codpiece.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Faith in the Future
    It’s the romance, warmth and gentle quirks of its orchestration--the drunken brass, the grizzled guitars and the nervous dusting of drums--that prevent the album getting overwhelmed by the intensity of its own neurotic narrative.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hollow Meadows
    It’s perhaps not as melodically sharp as his best work, but reacquainting yourself with that rich croon is always a pleasure.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freedom & Surrender
    Her fifth LP sees her back in that safe zone between smooth jazz and quiet-storm soul, with signings including Norah Jones sidekick Jesse Harris and country-rock kingpin JD Souther.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lost Time
    Dave and Phil both play guitar and sing, and are on driving, cheerfully gutsy form.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Male
    The charm and goofiness, along with her much underrated, disarmingly airy voice that endeared her to us all those years ago, is all present.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    That's the Spirit
    Oh No is more dance than nu-metal, replete with trance breakdown. If BMTH really do want to bring nu-metal back to life, this approach could be just the defibrillator they need.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    GO:OD AM
    It’s musically adventurous in a way that recalls Chance the Rapper’s Surf project, but takes fewer detours into psych and jazz.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Introducing Darlene Love
    Van Zandt’s productions are similarly bombastic, which ought to work fine with his Wall of Sound arrangements, but instead renders them garish with karaoke brightness. The approach works best with the two Springsteen numbers: his lyrics pulse with longing, and Love inhabits them beautifully.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Imani, Vol. 1
    All that unalloyed positivity doesn’t always make for compelling listening, while a series of mid-tempo, light-jazz beats feel too much like throwbacks to 90s backpacker hip-hop.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Caracal
    In their bid to become suave and seductive, they sacrifice the energy and rapturous pop hooks of their debut: apart from the heady live favourite Bang That, there are no surprises, no risks.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Half Free
    A fifth album that offers, well, more of the same.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cass County
    The most interesting aspect of this uneven album is Henley’s lyrics: he’s by turns peppery (“Space-age machinery / Stone-age emotions,” sniffs the honky-tonk swingalong No, Thank You) and unsentimental (“Time can be unkind / But I know every wrinkle and earned every line”)--and enjoyably so.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Curious Tale of Trials & Persons
    It’s a debut that leaves a feeling of an artist still working herself out.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Big Grams [EP]
    There are less cohesive moments--the Skrillex-driven closer Drum Machine doesn’t come off at all--but the best bits are as much of a joy to listen to as they sound as if they were to make.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unbreakable
    The chunky bass of Dammn Baby hits the dancefloor spot--but otherwise, Unbreakable’s highlights are low-key moments of reflection and nostalgia.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    St. Germain
    As with Tourist, it’s possible to feel these combinations are a little too smooth; it’s also possible to feel uneasy about a white European appropriating black musical styles. But Navarre is clearly a conscientious producer with an ear for detail, and in the case of the almost free-jazz Hanky Panky, the music here is rich indeed.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Confident
    Only a certain sheen that turns her vocals into a generic hybrid of Sia and Kelly Clarkson stops Confident from being one of the pop albums of 2015.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All We Need
    At times, Raury’s energy is more intriguing than his songwriting, and while the lack of cynicism in his lyrics is refreshing, you can’t help but question his decision to play the pop preacher.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Real Life
    Real Life is a compendium of 90s references, an avowed musical homage. This approach can sometimes feel a bit cold and diffident, and the monotone vocals also undercut the mood. But for all the talk of raves, drugs and A-road pubs, the recurrent theme is love, and monogamous love at that.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sun Leads Me On
    Half Moon Run would have a stronger identity if they let their grievances truly enter their music.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sounds Good Feels Good
    The alt-pop band (who share management with One Direction) sound programmed to ooze adolescence until the last drop of Lynx Africa runs dry. There are signs of maturity, however, inspired by the pristine punk of Fall Out Boy and Good Charlotte.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    For the Company
    The result is that For the Company doesn’t end up sounding like an album so much as 11 songs that--instead of being individually tailored to complement and balance each other--have been burnished to within an inch of their lives to maximise each one’s chances of cinematic or television placement.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pretend
    As is the case with so many musicians of her age, the 25-year-old rummages around in a grab-bag of influences to make this tightly performed, if not slightly over-polished, debut.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Angels & Ghosts
    Angels & Ghosts’ default position is the doom-laden, mid-paced ballad. Gahan sings with unsparing emotional commitment against Soulsavers’ canvas of gospel-tinged backing vocals, ghostly organ and big minor chords.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bleeds
    The best songs paint him as guardian of the apocalypse, pairing his world-weary soulfulness with murky, mutant beats. Hopefully for the next album he’ll hang up his top hat and focus on those instincts instead.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Courting the Squall
    How much you value such gently experimental foraging over Elbow’s typically rousing melodies might determine your enjoyment of this: it certainly leans towards the former.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Perfectamundo
    Gibbons is clearly having a blast, and the big-bearded rock beast’s yelled invitation to “Have a party! Let’s have a siesta!” is not easily turned down.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Alone in the Universe
    Alone in the Universe bobs along pleasantly, but you can’t help but notice the lack of any song as strong as Mr Blue Sky, Don’t Bring Me Down or Livin’ Thing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Long Lost Suitcase
    As an album it’s slightly uneven, but Jones clearly has plenty of gas left in the tank.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Animal Nature
    Escort’s sense of abandon never quite reaches the heights of their disco forebears, but closing track Dancer, recorded before an audience in Brooklyn, reveals them to be a formidable live prospect.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Manual
    Their second album is an assured, intriguing collection of songs that constantly changes direction, from delicate shimmering guitar work and brooding ballads to sturdy riffs and post-bossa rhythms.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sea of Brass
    The best songs are either relatively untouched or given a major overhaul; one can’t help wondering what might have happened had BSP been even braver, and simply asked the orchestra to play their music.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Get Weird
    Apart from a couple of ballads, and the odd moments of mediocrity (Secret Love Song, which features Jason Derulo, and Hair), business is largely buoyant.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Amy [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    It’s a collection for those that want to remember the film, not the artist.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Garden of Delete
    Lopatin is never quite able to stand still and enjoy some of the sounds he creates. This remains a project for only a very particular kind of pop picker.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Aquaria
    He certainly has the production skills to create unusual pop, but Asher’s vocals are often outmoded--the stoned rap style of Bran Van 3000 lurks within the juddering, alien basslines.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Made in the A.M.
    The four lads were never going to bow out with experimental jazz-fusion, and this fifth LP sees them sweep between imitation indie and synthpop on stadium-ready and sweetly vacuous form.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Purpose
    The musical direction owes much to co-producer Skrillex, whose unexpectedly subtle electronic palette complements Bieber’s affectedly breathy voice. The voice soon palls, but the songs are often interesting.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Free TC
    [The] cameo-packed tracks fail to live up to the billing, often feeling too long and lacking the punch of Dolla $ign’s previous output.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Know It All
    Too often here Cara is let down by bland arrangements and underbaked melodies, from the Swift-by-numbers of opener Seventeen to the banal balladry of Stars.
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