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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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The River In Reverse
    This album is best heard through audio equipment tweaked to suppress the excesses of Elvis Costello's strained bleat.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Breed
    Adventurous but never abstruse, New Breed sounds effortless, as though transforming yourself from a manufactured pop star into a unique artist is the easiest thing in the world.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Laugh Track
    Laugh Track, the National’s surprise 10th album, is billed as the second half of Frankenstein, with all but one song written at the same time. But the link feels surface-level: Laugh Track does away with the airy atmosphere and hand-wringing solipsism of Frankenstein, instead adopting a more grownup take on the existential conundrums of earlier National records.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Wild West
    Producers Curt Schneider and Bill Reynolds from Band of Horses have allowed a space and subtlety that add integrity to Lissie’s lyrics.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Punk
    A joyful revolution.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Old Magick
    There’s more world-weariness on other songs such as Sea of Words (“You didn’t make time for love”) and Sonny (“We’ve got a long way to go”), but it’s worn lightly, thanks to Old Magick’s acoustic warmth.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I'll Be Lightning
    Finn writes irresistible songs that hum with riotous melodic invention.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The People In Your Neighbourhood
    It's Led Bib's best album so far.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wild Winter
    Smoke Fairies resist the chintz of traditional festive sonics, instead using spectral guitars and sprawling desert-rock soundscapes.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    From This Place
    Metheny subsequently dubbed in classical orchestral parts by himself and other classy arrangers. ... They will be superfluous for some, but they do provide this fine album with the bigger soundscape, richer textures and probably wider appeal Metheny was after, cooling the improv heat hardly at all.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Marlon Williams
    The overall effect is something akin to what the Byrds were doing in 1967: it’s not that the album sounds like Younger Than Yesterday or The Notorious Byrd Brothers, more the sense of someone trying to synthesise contrasting musics into a single coherent identity.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grey Area
    At once soft and hard, fiery and vulnerable, Grey Area finds Little Simz thriving in her multi-facetedness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rainford
    This remarkable return to form has Lee Perry making sense, relatively speaking.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Absolution
    Like Coldplay on A Rush of Blood to the Head, Muse sound like a band who are at the top of their game. Their confidence carries you through the album's excesses.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Time Travel
    The 12 brief songs (five of them under two minutes long) reveal a talent that's on the verge of becoming something special.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Neptune
    Her bravest, most original work to date.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Field of Reeds
    For all Barnett's seriousness of purpose, he works with emotion, demonstrated above all in his own voice: never quite in tune, it is poignantly human in its imperfection.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Adrian Younge Presents: Twelve Reasons to Die II
    The Ghostnaissance continues.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Melt Yourself Down
    North African rhythms are an inspiration, and vocalist Gaya's bellowings in French, Creole and personal gibberish also give the band much of its helldriving character.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Boxing Mirror
    Sober chamber strings dignify a magpie mix of classic rock and conjunto styles; these 11 songs embrace life in all its joy, sorrow and anger.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oracular Spectacular
    All this energy somehow comes together as one, making the whole package so radio-friendly it's practically kissing your aerial.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Peace or Love
    Bøe and Øye’s paired, timbrally similar voices remain a key part of the charm.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rainbow Revisited
    It is a remarkably exposing record that showcases Ntuli’s mastery of her instruments. Opener Sunrise (In California) sets the tone, shifting through Robert Glasper-style chord progressions, while its counterpart Sunset (In California) taps into the plaintive phrasing crafted by the father of South African piano jazz, Abdullah Ibrahim.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Manners
    Perhaps not as striking as it might have seemed 18 months ago, but still a debut album of distinction.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    So It Goes
    Unrelenting and abrasive it may be, but So It Goes turns a new page in New York hip-hop.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fossils
    The production work by the celebrated Tucker Martine is sometimes too lush, but there are some fine songs here.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Midnight Sun
    There is also an innocence to these songs, a spirituality that, in a year of bold musical statements and political upheaval, provides a soothing tonic; an escapist episode of spectacular beauty.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kingdom Come
    At 37, he's still at the top of his game.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good Advice
    Basia Bulat relocates from Montreal to Louisville for her fourth album, enlisting My Morning Jacket’s Jim James for production and toning down her trademark autoharp in favour of dazzling, technicolour pop.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lahai
    Intriguing and affecting.
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