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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    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Soused
    Soused is surprisingly melodic, Sunn O))) provide a menacing but rich backdrop to Walker’s distinctive baritone.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    You're Dead!
    As each song merges into the next, as one style succeeds another, the sensation is that of being in a dream.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pink Palms
    This is simple, well-written indie-rock.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Carry on the Grudge
    Carry on the Grudge exposes the limits of what Treays can do. But there are other moments, and more of them, where it suggests that behind the affectations lurks something quite prosaic but quite potent: at his best, he’s a really good songwriter.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Weird and Wonderful
    Best of all, though, is the dynamism of the music: although songs flit around from riff to riff, as if Marmozets were bursting to fill each song with ideas, they are never too full, never just exercises in technique.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Give My Love to London
    Faithfull’s voice may be coarse, her tuning wayward, but the conviction with which she anticipates this “fresh breeze” is unmistakable.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Steve Reich: Radio Rewrite
    It does what it does immaculately and satisfyingly.... But Piano Counterpoint seems less successful; that’s nothing to do with Vicky Chow’s playing, but because this arrangement for solo piano (again with multiple pre-recorded partners) of Reich’s 1973 piece Six Pianos seems to lose so much of the muscular energy of the original.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Phantom Radio
    The subject matter (death, sin, the occasional hanging) is hardly any cheerier, but Torn Red Heart might be the most beautiful love song Lanegan has ever recorded.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rips
    Here are 12 succinct, speedy, riff-happy gems smothered in snarling backtalk and shameless, glorious guitar solos.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Otherness
    Bainbridge remains a slightly aloof presence throughout, but zesty vocal cameos from Kelela, Robyn, Tawiah and Ghanaian rapper M.anifest save Otherness from slipping into tasteful self-indulgence.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweet Talker
    Your enjoyment will hinge on how you feel about the strained earnestness of her delivery--it’s notable that the best moments come when she uncouples herself from it and just sings for the joy of it, as on the brilliant, fizzy pop banger Bang Bang, a deserved No 1 this summer.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Trick
    Kele the personality is often bigger than the music he makes, but it remains a joy to hear a man once notorious for giving grumpy interviews and kicking members of Art Brut sounding so liberated.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Way Out Weather
    The melodies seemed soaked in a timeless well of American music: the album feels both new and familiar at the same time, every song a clever layering of Gunn’s guitars--acoustic, electric, steel, and assorted effects pedals, but all separated clearly, so there’s no hint of sonic mush. Gunn’s voice is perfect, too.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Night is Young
    For the most part, The Night Is Young manages to be simultaneously familiar and strange, commercial but emotionally weighty, grown-up without being boring: a musical grey area that grows curiouser all the time.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A World Lit Only by Fire
    It’s a sustained and hypnotic march through minimalist, post-Sabbath landscapes, and crucifyingly heavy on every level.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Plowing Into the Field of Love
    In otherwise safe-as-houses 2014, it’s refreshing to find a young band channelling such influences into such a gloriously untamed row.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Heartleap
    She is capable of writing strong melodies, but the mood here rarely strays far from the pleasantly soporific.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Our Love
    This is rich, strange, endlessly fascinating music: a subtle, beautiful triumph.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lily-O
    Sam Amidon’s new set of “reimagined folk songs” is a compellingly quiet, intense affair that is remarkable both for the power of his understated, no-nonsense and often mournful vocals, and for the subtle arrangements that bring an urgency to his mostly traditional American songs and hymns.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's Modern Boxes
    Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is so deviously understated you wonder if it’s a sly cover for the seeding of Skynet.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    PlectrumElectrum
    3rdEyeGirl are an impressively tight funk-rock band, and their presence inspires Prince to some imposing soloing on the instrumental title track and at the conclusion of Anotherlove. The issue with PlectrumElectrum is the variable quality of the songwriting on offer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Art Official Age
    What follows are flashes of brilliance interspersed with stuff that just wouldn’t have made the cut 30 years ago.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hesitant Alien
    Way’s audible enthusiasm for this music results in a confident, swaggering set of songs packed with joie de vivre, banks of feedback and walls of guitars and saxophones.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sukierae
    Listening to all 72 minutes in one sitting requires commitment in itself, but the reward is a beguiling collection with unique emotional heft.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A New Testament
    Even when Owens isn’t operating at his peak, his work remains oddly intriguing--there’s a passion and honesty here, an uncompromising desire to follow his own vision.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Time to Die
    Nothing can detract from the monumental density and weight of these hostile and misanthropic psych-jams.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Growing Up in Public
    Now he seems happy to occupy that space and fulfil a role as a slightly edgy pop bloke.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cheek to Cheek
    It’s Gaga who will benefit most from this album, which has the pair finding joyous common ground as they swing through 11 standards.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Enter
    The music and lyrics might be a bit overheated for those who favour feints and ambiguities, but the mix of funky keys-and-guitar vamps, ripping free-sax howls, avant-pop vocals (Simon Ohlsson is a pretty good Bowie clone), and Bley-like harmony-clouds in which reeds and low brass soar and burrowis often awesomely powerful.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Popular Problems
    Nothing here feels laboured: he can deliver songs as beautifully wrought as Samson in New Orleans--a depiction of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina--with a gorgeous understatement that only magnifies its impact.
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