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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    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Educated Guess
    The New York protest singer has returned to folky pontificating, in which her inherent decency is overshadowed by the dullness of the enterprise.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Democrazy
    It is occasionally brilliant and frequently irritating beyond belief.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Atlas
    They can surely do far, far better.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Diary Of Alicia Keys
    There are a handful of great moments, where risks are taken and ground is broken, but too often it opts for the familiar and the bland.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Take A Look In The Mirror
    A brutal barrage of staccato beats, club-footed riffs and panzer-division stomps.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Once In A Lifetime
    Not that they didn't crank out a generous dollop of highlights - I Zimbra, Life During Wartime, Heaven, And She Was et al - but stuff from the debut album now sounds irritatingly thin and scratchy, while material from their last couple of albums, True Stories and Naked, is the sound of a band reaching the end of its tether.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Let It Be... Naked
    Technically, they've done a fine job, though there's no overcoming the fact that the material falls far short of the group's best.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Black Album
    For all the dark wordplay, the album is an aural equivalent of that old American favourite, the schmaltzy biopic.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Try This
    Like a lot of pop at the moment, it just sounds like a wan imitation of Pink's second album.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Preacher's Son
    It fizzles out with embarrassing speed.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Skull Ring
    The real problem, however, is that the Stooges' tracks cast the rest of the album in an unflattering light.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Room On Fire
    A roaring opener, a trio of great potential singles and a remarkable slow number successfully divert attention from the fact that half of Room on Fire is uninspired filler.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Echoes
    Echoes works only when it grasps punk-funk's spirit, rather than its sound.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    12 Memories
    This pretty diffidence, coupled with the fact the loss of producer Nigel Godrich and his sexifying sheen, makes Travis's fourth album feel small and woebegone.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Comfort Woman
    You end up wishing Ndegeocello would grab someone and go get a room.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Amorino
    Her breathy vocals are unsettling, her glacial detachment lazy and too often irritating.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Life For Rent
    Its best moments suggest that Armstrong is unfairly maligned.... At worst, it's twee and bland, aural wallpaper that only someone who didn't really like music could care about. Either way, it isn't going to change anyone's mind about Dido.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stumble Into Grace
    Subtle exercises in pushing genre boundaries, these (mostly self-penned) songs deal in profundity without resort to cliche, and they deserve better than to have the life polished out of them.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gallowsbird's Bark
    A spiky hybrid of stuff grabbed from various decades.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Results May Vary
    Durst's problems are ever-present - and does anybody still care?
    • 83 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Identity Crisis
    That she has called this album Identity Crisis shows a grasp of insight sadly lacking on any of its self-penned songs.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Take Them On, On Your Own
    Their no-surrender stance is admirable, but Black Rebel haven't a hope of leading the people's revolution because they are so self-consciously reverential, with each narcotic outburst owing its existence to the Pistols and the Jesus and Mary Chain.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Chain Gang Of Love
    Two-thirds of the way through, the general banality becomes immensely wearisome: even though some songs barely reach the 90-second mark, there still seems to be an awful lot of them.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Greendale
    Instances of clarity and grace alternate with wodges of unfathomable nonsense that a good editor would have blue-pencilled from the first draft.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hail To The Thief
    Hail to the Thief's big drawback has less to do with its similarity to its predecessor than the sense that Radiohead's famed gloominess is becoming self-parodic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fire
    At its best, Fire proves they could easily escape the novelty tag. At its worst, it seems as if they don't particularly want to.
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