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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    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    War Stories
    While the results aren't entirely successful, "Twilight," especially, by Massive Attack's 3D, proves that Lavelle can reimagine 'soul' like no one else.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Neptune
    Their original surging punkery has been preserved in the shape of a few basic indie-moshpit numbers like Into the Fold, but, elsewhere, the addition of trumpets and violins take things to a more interesting level.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Chasing Yesterday
    Chasing Yesterday really isn’t a bad album as such: it’s alright, it has its moments, it’ll do.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dark Young Hearts
    It's a more than interesting introduction.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ready to Die
    Ready to Die becomes really good when he stops trying.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love for Sale
    Beyond sympathy and sentiment, Love for Sale disarms cynicism simply by being infectiously good fun.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Away
    A fragmented, frustrated mindset has contributed to a sprawling, inconsistent album with brief flourishes of verdant beauty.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Songs of Surrender
    Neither a disaster on the level of their iTunes launch, nor a triumph to match Zoo TV, Songs of Surrender sits somewhere in the middle of that sliding scale of success.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends
    Beneath the sludge and churning distortions, however, is a characteristically generous squaring-up to life's horror and humanity that is worth excavating.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sea of Brass
    The best songs are either relatively untouched or given a major overhaul; one can’t help wondering what might have happened had BSP been even braver, and simply asked the orchestra to play their music.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    W:/2016ALBUM/
    This might be far from a perfect album, but it’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Motion
    The big pop hooks and breakdowns are here, but there is little sense of Harris’s personality.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Enemy Chorus
    It's an engaging enough amalgam of influences, but it would be a lot easier to love the Earlies' head music if it were more obviously coming from the heart.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    At the Crossroads
    [James Carter is] at his earthiest and most accessible with this classic Hammond organ trio lineup.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sonic Nurse
    Lacks the standout tracks of its predecessors.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Savoy Motel
    File under: promising, but far from the finished article.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    First Light
    If there’s a criticism, it’s just that too little distinguishes one song from another.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Send Away The Tigers
    The winces subside with each listen, and the gung-ho vitality of the music - full of nods to the Stooges, Guns N'Roses and the Ramones - helps grant the band a little absolution.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rakka
    There are some moments of relatively steady rhythm on Rampa and Raataja, but it is techno of the most bludgeoning kind and, given the surrounding chaos, you can never settle into it. Just as the climate crisis can feel alienating in its scale and gravity, it is easy to recoil from this fire alarm of a record.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    DNA
    When off-kilter beats collide with impeccable harmonies and pleasingly daft lyrics, it sounds like pop as it should be, and their gamble in borrowing De La Soul's Ring Ring Ring refrain for How Ya Doin comes good. The ballads, however, plod along with heavy-handed emotion.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Have Fun with God
    As a standalone album, Have Fun With God doesn't totally compel--but as a companion to its source material, it's fascinating.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ripe 4 Luv
    It focuses on a jangly indie-pop sound that recalls C86 and Big Star (especially the echo-laden power-pop of Crawling Back to You). What elevates Ripe 4 Luv beyond mere pastiche is Young Guv’s desire to branch out.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Crying Light
    The album's big problem is not a lack of quality; it's the feeling that you've been here before, or you've been somewhere so like here as to make little difference.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Heart Speaks in Whispers
    Do You Ever Think of Me, with its shifting chords and sweet falsetto peaks, treads a little too closely to Curtis Mayfield’s The Makings of You for comfort, and other tracks tend to drift so smoothly they can pass you by. But on Caramel, her soulful vocals are given space to bloom over a billowing pop backdrop.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Embryonic
    For all its flaws and failings, for all that you may never feel like listening to it again, it's hard not to be perversely glad Embryonic exists.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Orchestrion
    It's very melodic (though not very melodically surprising), and technically mind-boggling. But harnessing all this awesome machine power to make just another Pat Metheny Group album without the group seems a bit of a missed ­opportunity.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slow Gum
    It all starts to falter a little when the songs start to bleed into each other’s comforting, sunshine-peaking-through-gossamer textures--a change of pace wouldn’t have gone amiss.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Absolute Truth
    It’s an album engulfed by bittersweet nostalgia.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Negro Swan
    Ultimately, that’s the main problem here; just when you settle into Negro Swan’s groove, it changes tack, leaving you feeling weirdly unmoored from it and, worse, emotionally disconnected.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Great Divide
    Something of a cross between Biffy Clyro and Bon Jovi, the Twins are not concerned by a barrow-load of cliches as they aim for the man in the back row.
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