The Guardian's Scores

  • Music
For 2,628 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 67
Highest review score:
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
Critic Score 10
Score distribution:
2,628 music reviews
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 80
    Over 13 tracks, not one a filler, they mix everything from punk to electro, house and disco, and end up like a delirious collision of the Specials and Basement Jaxx.
    • Metascore: 63
    • Critic Score 80
    Ultimately, The Silent Hours is muscular, conservative rock music.
    • Metascore: 83
    • Critic Score 80
    Rather than tinkering with tradition, he expands upon it with computer-generated hums and bleeps, tambourines and glockenspiel, warming the stark acoustic sound.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 80
    Amazing how this old-fangled stuff can still sound so good.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 80
    Chances are it'll grow on ya.
    • Metascore: 77
    • Critic Score 80
    Finds Phillips surrounded by an authoritative squad of folk and country musicians who lend a quiet conviction to his songs.
    • Metascore: 60
    • Critic Score 80
    On the one hand, it's a little hokey: if One Plus One Equals One tried any harder to charm you, it would turn up on your doorstep with a bottle of Fleurie and offer you a footrub. On the other, the songs are Gough's strongest in years.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Critic Score 80
    In looking beyond pure innovation, Gomez have poured some heart into their blues.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 80
    An exceedingly welcome return to form.
    • Metascore: 53
    • Critic Score 80
    The obligatory boring ballads aside, the results are astonishing.
    • Metascore: 66
    • Critic Score 80
    Unlike previous Britney albums, In the Zone has no filler and no shoddy cover versions, just 57 varieties of blue-chip hit-factory pop.
    • Metascore: 80
    • Critic Score 80
    They serve up a lethal dose of sandbagging powerchords, drums that sound like collapsing skyscrapers, and buckets of punk attitude.
    • Metascore: 68
    • Critic Score 80
    With every play the album becomes, like love itself, impossible to fight off.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Critic Score 80
    While The Smell of Our Own sounded joyful even when wiping pee out of its eyes, there is a note of anger throughout Mississauga Goddam.
    • Metascore: 80
    • Critic Score 80
    She may not be R&B's biggest star, but Kelis remains its most compelling character.
    • Metascore: 82
    • Critic Score 80
    Behind the surface sweetness of Emma Pollock's voice, the chiming guitars, the mellifluous folky lilt of the melodies and direct but deft production, these songs are as complex, adult and frequently as bleak as any the Delgados have ever written.
    • Metascore: 66
    • Critic Score 80
    Though the songs are still Lou Reed-shaped and John Cale-fashioned, this follow-up to the Grammy-nominated Walking With Thee sees the scouse experimentalists embracing a jagged kind of pop.
    • Metascore: 84
    • Critic Score 80
    Where Kurosky's fiercely sardonic lyrics were once couched in soaring trumpet lines and glorious powerpop hooks, now they bristle against grumbling electronics, sliding discordant chords and drunken, hazy horns.
    • Metascore: 85
    • Critic Score 80
    Incomprehensible but irresistible.
    • Metascore: 78
    • Critic Score 80
    It's quite something - all the more given that he's now a one-man operation - and merits attention as much for its ludicrousness as anything.
    • Metascore: 82
    • Critic Score 80
    Exudes the kind of focus and cohesiveness most bands only achieve after years of playing together.
    • Metascore: 80
    • Critic Score 80
    An enticing dip into melancholy.
    • Metascore: 68
    • Critic Score 80
    There's more wit, atmosphere and incontestable (if elegantly understated) star power in this sleek, chic, foxy record than in the rest of the month's albums combined.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 80
    Wagner's knack for inviting us into his personal life then quickly vacating remains strange and lovely.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 80
    At a compact 38 minutes, Permission to Land is over before it gets irritating, leaving you with an impression of overwrought headache-rock fronted by a gale-force falsetto.
    • Metascore: 86
    • Critic Score 80
    A gleefully non-conformist delight.
    • Metascore: 70
    • Critic Score 80
    A collection of perfectly polished songs, beneath whose placid surfaces lurk all manner of questions, doubts and insights.
    • Metascore: 70
    • Critic Score 80
    Easily the best of her extensive catalogue of covers albums.
    • Metascore: 70
    • Critic Score 80
    Vocally weaving and ducking, they drag up memories of Voice of the Beehive, or a Siamese version of Susannah Hoffs from the Bangles. What stops them becoming an annoying pop hydra is their unadorned directness and sharp pop hooks.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Critic Score 80
    He sets tales of sexual double dealing and domestic violence to a sound somewhere between the two albums he made in 1986: the Americana of King Of America meeting the over-amplified rawness of Blood and Chocolate.