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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    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Not Them, You
    Eminently worth a listen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chaos And Creation In The Backyard
    For all the nods to the past, not a note of Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard comes close to Beatle standards: it's an intriguing diversion rather than a major addition to the canon. What it has is a sense of purpose, lovely tunes in abundance, and charm.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Takk...
    Sigur Ros's sudden accessibility doesn't tarnish their mystique, but deepens and colours it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tender Buttons
    [Broadcast] have managed to find a halfway house between this always engaging but fussed-at sound and the resonant, muscular psychedelia of their spectacular live shows.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Siberia
    Siberia finds Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant reclaiming their original spirit.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Leaders Of The Free World
    Retains Elbow's best qualities - embittered romanticism and pretty, twisty melodies - while infusing them with hooks galore.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prairie Wind
    In the autumn of his career, this is one of Shaky's best.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Extraordinary Machine
    In a genre hardly noted for springing surprises on its listeners, Extraordinary Machine sounds like a real achievement: however torturous the gestation, it seems worthwhile.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Witching Hour
    This is their most humane work, with abrasive atmospherics akin to those of My Bloody Valentine.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cinder
    Chan Marshall adds an autumnal tint to Great Waves, but it's far from the high point. The frantic, abrasive Flutter, or heart-melting closer In Fall don't need vocals: their wild poetry is beyond words.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Feels
    Swapping campfire cosiness for expansive joy, they sound so accomplished the Flaming Lips comparisons fall by the wayside.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heat
    It's all beautifully insidious.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lookaftering
    [A] collection of stunningly simple songs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rehearsing My Choir
    An astonishing concept-album full of humour, tenderness and life-affirming spirit.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intensive Care
    It ends up that most unusual of things, a stadium rock album with a personality of its own.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Confessions On A Dance Floor
    It may be a return to core values, but there's still a bravery about Confessions on a Dancefloor. It revels in the delights of wilfully plastic dance pop in an era when lesser dance-pop artists - from Rachel Stevens to Price's protege Juliet - are having a desperately thin time of it.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hypnotize
    The fact that this angry, avant-garde record, like its predecessor, will probably top the US charts is simply remarkable.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back
    Even the best jokes don't bear repeated listening. A great song, however, is worth hearing over and over again. One Way Ticket... has both, but there's more of the latter than the former.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oral Fixation Vol. 2
    Oral Fixation is the sound of an utterly unique voice in a uniform world.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Greatest
    You'll need to listen closely to understand and appreciate, but Marshall is worth it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Brave And The Bold
    There are enough moments of complex, nuanced, lingering beauty here to keep drawing you back.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Cadillac
    There's no over-personalising and, God Is in the Roses aside, no easy sentimentality.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sound Mirrors
    [An] assured, wildly varied, endlessly enjoyable album that finds Coldcut in a position even more unlikely than the podium at the Brits: dance producers at the top of their game, 19 years into their career.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Congotronics
    This could be one of the unexpected successes of the year. Play it very loud.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sewed Soles
    Reconstituted garage rock was thought to be losing appeal, but in the genre the Greenhornes make a strong claim to be your new favourite band.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Inside In Inside Out
    An impressive collection of polished pop that leans towards the 1980s English ska tradition while holding tight to the indie holy grail of an easy sing-along chorus against jangly guitars.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On An Island
    Tempos are slow; the mood is relaxed; all the sounds are spacious and beautifully recorded.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mr. Beast
    It's all a lesson in taking the rough with the smooth, from the best teachers around.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
    The singing gives you goosebumps.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Little Willies
    As low-key as it is engaging.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pay The Devil
    He sounds enlivened, even happy, nestling among the steel guitar and bottomless suffering.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Travels At Illegal Speeds
    Unpromising and unassuming at first glance, its highlights burrow under your skin and stay there.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    'Sno Angel Like You
    The soulful harmonies complement Gelb's dry one-liners and restless guitar surprisingly well.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    When The Going Gets Dark
    A soaring power surge of an album... moody and loud, but focused and inspirational.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In A Space Outta Sound
    In a Space Outta Sound eschews froth - and a whole lot more - in favour of a minimalist approach that is a return to the form of his 1990s output.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Colour
    The album snuggles up between the band's fellow Swedes the Cardigans and the Mamas and the Papas, but never settles.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At War With The Mystics
    At War With the Mystics falls short of being a masterpiece, but the more you listen to it, the more it adds up.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Vision Valley
    Possibly the best 31 garage-rock minutes you'll hear this year.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You In Reverse
    It all sounds lovely.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Garden Ruin
    These are the kind of songs that gnaw their way into your consciousness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Animal Years
    His voice - think Springsteen without the gruffness, or maybe a meat-eating James Taylor - is more intimate than ever.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chosen Lords
    James may not have broken new ground here - much of Analord is redolent of his earlier work - but this should satisfy his followers until he decides to become Aphex again.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Richard Butler
    An unexpected triumph.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bitter Tea
    Despite the mismatches of mood and style, wistfulness accumulates throughout this album's 72 minutes; there's an intriguing inwardness at the heart of this most cultish of bands.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
    Unlike many of his recent recordings, this is an addictively exuberant album.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Loon
    Tapes 'n Tapes might have to dismantle their influences soon. But right now, they're building something beautiful.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Boxing Mirror
    Sober chamber strings dignify a magpie mix of classic rock and conjunto styles; these 11 songs embrace life in all its joy, sorrow and anger.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    St. Elsewhere
    Theoretically the album should sound like a mess - and occasionally it does, not least on the twitchy and irritating Transformer. But for the most part, the mass of disparate sounds are perfectly bound together by some astonishing songwriting and Green's haunting, sorrowful voice.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Living With War
    The challenge of writing songs designed to lodge immediately in people's heads seems to have forced Young to come up with strong melodies, something else noticeably absent in his oeuvre of late.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Just Like The Fambly Cat
    A sad record, then, but an inspiring one too, offering the hope that the end of Grandaddy means a fresh start for Lytle.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eyes Open
    Snow Patrol are poised to eclipse Coldplay as pop's greatest anthem-makers.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Broken Boy Soldiers
    What the Raconteurs offer is the middle-ground between White's muscular, distorted blues and Benson's Who-goes-bubblegum approach. The end result seems unlikely to change the face of music as we know it, but it's often breathtakingly executed.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    II
    It all meanders a little, but getting lost in these songs proves to be an unexpected adventure.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Hundred Miles Off
    Despite all the palpable influences, the Walkmen have made this album their own.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gulag Orkestar
    It's the ageless warmth and humanity that makes the clashing elements work.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scale
    His most accessible album to date.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The River In Reverse
    This album is best heard through audio equipment tweaked to suppress the excesses of Elvis Costello's strained bleat.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Garden
    [A] playful, warm and inspired set.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Last Days Of Wonder
    Songs of weirdness and wonder, set in a half wild, half urban, entirely mysterious place where trees that grow in small squares of dirt hide man-eating boars.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Warning
    [A] fantastic collection of nu-dance.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Riot City Blues
    It's all done with such snarling, adrenalised gusto that it proves irresistible.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Serena-Maneesh
    Just don't dip into the album fleetingly - it's music that's hard to appreciate in snippets, but more than satisfactory when devoured as a whole.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Begin To Hope
    Spektor's first major-label release sets her up as a serious rival for [Tori] Amos's queen-of-whimsy title.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Loose
    Loose is slick, smart and surprising - the first great pop album of the year.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fundamental
    Focusing on New Labour's trials has reconnected the Pet Shop Boys with something of their essence.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    American V: A Hundred Highways
    V... is actually less tearjerking and portentous than IV.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cansei De Ser Sexy
    They sound like an unlikely, brilliantly wrong fusion of Tom Tom Club, dance culture and the Fall.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Holes & Revelations
    It shouldn't work, but Bellamy's mania is so convincingly realised that even the most avowed Muse refusenik may have to finally concede defeat.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Avalanche: Outtakes & Extras From The Illinois Album
    Stevens is a pensively nostalgic folk chorister like the Paul Simon of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme: he is just as prone to swerving into an epiphanic Bach-lite chorale, but as yet short of memorable tunes on his own account. He's close enough to be fascinating, though.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Return To Cookie Mountain
    Return to Cookie Mountain is largely a delight - an experimental album with a pop heart that avoids self-indulgence.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Victory For The Comic Muse
    [A] triumphant comeback.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We Are The Pipettes
    It's heavy on Motown basslines, dramatic strings and love affairs that thrive and die on the dance floor. But the victim culture of the girl group classics is replaced by a punk-edged, polka-dot feminism.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Highway Companion
    If [Petty]'s third solo album proves to be his last, he has delivered one of rock's most eloquent goodbyes.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Personality (One Was A Spider, One Was A Bird)
    The album's most striking feature is its ability to avoid the musically obvious while still delivering golden pop melodies.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Avatar
    If you're after an alternative summer soundtrack, this is it.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Idlewild
    Ambitious but flawed, at turns stunning, maddening and confusing, Idlewild is a curate's egg - but the good parts are implausibly delicious.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Razorlight
    [It] touches on everything great about classic, epic rock from the past 30 years.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Post-War
    His most striking album yet.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Modern Times
    It's hard to hear Modern Times' music over the inevitable standing ovation and the thuds of middle-aged critics swooning in awe. When you do, you find something not unlike its predecessor, Love and Theft.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Honey From The Tombs
    Pop fans will think it's a country album, country purists will deem it pop and contributions from friends in both Stars and Broken Social Scene adds a conflicting rock slant. What's not in doubt is that Millan makes it work.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Silent Shout
    It's anybody's guess what a fan of the Gonzalez and Royksopp tracks will make of this beautiful, haunted record, but its dark ingenuity is the kind that keeps electronic music alive.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tower Of Love
    By comparison, Noir's closest current peers, Super Furry Animals, seem like fusty older brothers.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Greedy Baby
    The interplay of sound and vision is abstract though often absorbing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Game Theory
    This taut, turbulent piece of work is the Roots' best yet.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    B'Day
    Apart from a few pop-R&B space-fillers, there's not much to dislike about B'Day.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pieces Of The People We Love
    Their second album ramps up the party beats, but at the core of delirious songs such as First Gear is a nerve-jangling twitchiness that reassures you the Rapture are still awkward guys at heart.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
    For all their playfulness, the group's melancholy weighs down their music with an emotional gravitas that is rare among anorak bands.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Great Western
    An Everything Must Go-ish vein of melodrama runs through the music, which stands up to being sung along to in the shower... but Bradfield also deserves plaudits for his lyrics.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Yellow House
    The lo-fi has gone large-scale, each song slowly unfurling to reveal dense, dreamy rhythms, choirs of silky voices and opulent melodies rich in atmospherics.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Yr Blood Sucked Out
    This is how an imaginary Paul McCartney-Heather Mills album might have sounded.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ta-Dah
    For all its highlights, however, Ta-Dah is haunted by the thought that the Scissors Sisters can't keep this up much longer.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain
    A lush, hazy romp around the outskirts of alt.country that shimmers with wonky pop genius.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sam's Town
    The album doesn't lend Flowers the gravitas he apparently yearns for, but it does prove that few are better at irrepressible pop hooks and fist-pumping choruses.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    DFA Remixes: Chapter 2
    Their refits are sympathetic yet counterintuitive. Who else could make a disco dancer out of Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor (Hand That Feeds) or turn Pharrell Williams' whiny ass-fetishism into yearning cosmic funk (She Wants to Move)?
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Crane Wife
    It is all as self-consciously stagey as a Wes Anderson movie - too arch and florid to really engage the heart, but bold and wondrous entertainment none the less.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    5:55
    What stops 5:55 being a well-meaning pastiche, what makes the album touching rather ghoulish, is the sheer quality of the songwriting.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Trials Of Van Occupanther
    This could well end up one of 2006's best.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Tragic Treasury: Songs From A Series Of Unfortunate Events
    The Tragic Treasury may be Merritt's most consistent album since 2000's remarkable 69 Love Songs - it's packed with fantastic melodies and mordant lyrical wit.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hello Everything
    For the most part, this is Squarepusher on full beam and Hello Everything is a thing of unbridled joy.
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