The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,511 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 Lives Outgrown
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,970 out of 5511
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5511
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5511
5511 music reviews
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    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Conflict
    In Conflict hits a perfect art/pop balance.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Flesh & Machine
    At times sublime, at others sinister, the music captures the feel of an untamed landscape where natural beauty lurks within, and menace approaches.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Souled Out
    She may purr like a revamped Ashanti, but she sounds tough as nails when it matters.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sylvie
    An album that turns out to be one of 2014’s most idiosyncratic, low-key delights.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lament
    Lament’s strength lies in the music rather than the amount of historical study that’s gone into it, which is just as well: no one ever decided to listen to an album because it was meticulously researched.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bloodstone & Diamonds
    Striking an exquisite balance between brute force, insistent melody and bold experimentation, this is the finest mainstream metal album of 2014 by a huge margin.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Depression [Legacy Edition]
    Amid ballads such as Whiskey Bottle, there’s Graveyard Shift, which shifts between Pixiesesque loud and quiet parts; here it’s only Tweedy’s Illinois twang that marks them out from their grunge peers. The demos are, as you might expect, sketchy stuff, but therein lies the appeal of digging into the early work of any rock pioneer.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Velvet Underground [45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition]
    It’s revelatory to hear this most intense of bands playing with such ease and fluency, and utterly compelling.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Power
    Some might feel the arched eyebrows undermine the sincerity, but either way, this is a recording with its fair share of memorable music.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Music and Words
    Turner prize-nominee Shrigley’s misanthropic worldview-- murderous cavemen, sadistic houseguests and monkeys eating their offspring are among the topics covered--is present and correct, although not everything here benefits from the surreal linguistic twists of his solo work. When he does catch you off guard, it’s splendid stuff.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Hound at the Hem
    A Hound at the Hem is unapologetically shambolic, but there are moments of high drama.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Monuments to an Elegy
    If the songs don’t all match the Pumpkins’ early glories, Corgan is still carrying what he once called “the infinite sadness”, investing uplifting sounds with an undercurrent of melancholy.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Doolittle 25
    At its best, Doolittle was almost impossibly thrilling, packed with evidence of why alt-rock shifted in the Pixies’ wake.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black Star Elephant
    The unwavering positivism of this cultural mash-up is compelling; if only they’d resisted the urge to include “motivational” interludes spoken in the style of a tribal elder, which nudges the album into the cheese zone.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Going Back Home
    It's meat-and-potatoes British R&B, but done with such love and joie de vivre, we can almost forgive them for failing to call their album Roger Wilko.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Creation
    The result is a top-drawer effort that establishes them as major players.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chubbed Up +
    This isn’t music that seems as if it’s got much room for manoeuvre or development. For the moment, though, they seem genuinely vital in a way few other bands are.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I'm in Your Mind Fuzz
    They’re at their most exciting when they drone, but not in the mid-paced, two-chord way of so much modern psychedelia.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sound of a Woman
    It’s Top of the Pops in 1992. It’s not at all bad.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Better Tomorrow
    RZA’s chosen musical style here appears to be “mid-paced jam band” which hardly helps in enlivening rappers who give off a distinct vibe of puffy middle age. The better tracks – Necklace, Miracle, 40th Street Black--are produced by others.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rock or Bust
    Too many songs lack any manipulation of the formula: there’s too much meat-and-potatoes riff-and-chorus, not enough little extras.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The London Sessions
    The opening song here, Therapy, is a self-conscious nod towards Amy Winehouse’s Rehab. Elsewhere, things feel more natural.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sirens
    Sometimes it’s a little empty--Take It All gives little back--but when they hit that melancholy ache just right, it’s electric.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A History of Insolence
    Naomi Bedford’s intriguing background in folk and rock, and political activism come together on this varied set of songs about “freedom, dissent and strife”, which show off her compelling, no-nonsense vocals and ambitious range.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Nothing Important
    More than most noise albums, or deliberately confrontational music, this is a record that unsettles and subverts.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lost on the River
    Lost on the River recalls the spontaneity and sheer love of music-making of the original, but it’s not hamstrung by reverence or caution.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    DSU
    Taking a couple of tracks to ease into itself, the Philadelphian’s sound gradually teeters out of its comfort zone (Promise’s synthy Seinfeld funk is an awkward delight).
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Film of Life
    At 74, Tony Allen has released his 10th album, a cool, contemporary set dominated, of course, by relaxed, subtle and insistent percussion.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Broke With Expensive Taste
    While Broke With Expensive Taste’s overarching direction is a thrill, its execution doesn’t always match up.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Neon Future, Vol. 1
    To criticise this album on its own terms, you would say that many of those styles are feeling a bit dated.
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