The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,504 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: 2,965 out of 5504
  2. Mixed: 2,462 out of 5504
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5504
5504 music reviews
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fear Fun
    Fear Fun leaves his previous work in the dust.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Holy Fire
    Like Total Life Forever, Holy Fire rather tails off in its second half.... Those complaints, though, are insignificant when set against the whole: an album by a British guitar band who want to win a huge audience without writing chantalongs for the drinkers' crowd, or lowest-emotional-common-denominator piano ballads.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Weather Diaries
    The result is an album that strides confidently between garage rock (Lateral Alice), ambient (Integration Tape) and even prog (lead single Charm Assault). It’s all tidily done, and there’s barely a misstep.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On a Mission
    Clearly it requires something more than vocal talent and looks to escape the fate of the featured vocalist, and whatever it is, 21-year-old Kathleen Bryan appears to have it.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
    It ends with Out of My Mind Just in Time, a 10-minute closer that starts as a fairly boring ballad but gradually unravels into the tripped-out weirdness on which New Amerykah Part One was founded. You could argue that's New Amerykah Part Two in a nutshell: as with Badu herself, all is gratifyingly not as it first appeared.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Deciphering the Message
    Some, this writer included, will miss the fascinating long-form stories of resourceful improvisers on these barely two-minutes-plus tracks. But McCraven is balancing jazz’s precious tradition and its present and future here, and that’s a priceless contribution.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Libertines
    A step on from Up the Bracket, this album is a winningly idiosyncratic explosion of dizzy pop and punk fury that could yet be honed to perfection.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aromanticism
    On a concept album about lovelessness, he creates a cavernous feeling of loneliness using soundscapes similar to those Nigel Godrich explores. There’s a warmth too.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Garden Ruin
    These are the kind of songs that gnaw their way into your consciousness.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sea Of Mirrors
    It all adds up to quite a voyage: the Merseysiders’ most fully realised set of songs since their debut.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Couples
    From the sassy squeal of Here Comes the Serious Bit to the tension-cranking film noir of Round the Hairpin, Jackson's vocals are nuanced, and the band's punk past goes hand-in-hand with their pop future.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On Your Own Love Again
    Perhaps working quietly away from bustle has helped the 27-year old craft folksy songs that--tape hiss and all--are magically out of time. They sit neatly alongside Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Nico’s Chelsea Girl and Angel Olsen: ethereally beautiful with a dark undercurrent.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Trios: Ocean
    Ocean is at times a quiet, almost private interchange, but a rich one.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    She Is Coming [EP]
    On the whole, her adoption of these different registers is more carefree than in the past. Rather than seeking a new identity to disappear into, this Cyrus is playful, tongue-in-cheek, and, most importantly, making some of the best pop songs she has made in years.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    case/lang/veirs
    Wonderful 14-tracker. Their pure, alternating voices compliment each other perfectly, and when they come together in harmony, the results are glorious.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Genuine Negro Jig
    The strength of their playing and singing showed that they meant business. If anything, this set is even better and is certainly more varied.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Go Tell Fire To The Mountain
    Some tracks are like collages of sound and voice. It rollercoasts from haunting to sad to simply exhilarating, and never loses a thrilling feeling that it could all go anywhere at any moment.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows
    For all its exhausted, preoccupied darkness, The Nearer the Fountain is a genuinely beautiful album.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In The Zone
    Unlike previous Britney albums, In the Zone has no filler and no shoddy cover versions, just 57 varieties of blue-chip hit-factory pop.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All Mirrors
    It is rewarding: the sound of Angel Olsen skilfully mapping out an unanticipated new territory for herself, further out on the left-field. Nothing on All Mirrors ends up quite where you expect, including the artist who made it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Visions of a Life
    Visions of a Life sees the band refine the exuberant jumble of dream-pop and grunge that characterised their debut My Love is Cool, while also finding new areas of exploration, from Drive soundtrack synthpop (Don’t Delete the Kisses) to snarling punk (Yuk Foo) and everything in between.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Secret Migration
    There's great beauty here, but, as with The Secret Migration's horrid sleeve, the sense that things have been pared down slightly too far suggests Mercury Rev still suffer from an inability to tell indulgence and exploration apart.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Man-Made
    If the sparse approach to sound and instrumentation is thoroughly 21st century... the vocals are squarely in the Byrds/Beach Boys tradition, at times almost outshining their role models.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Front Parlour Ballads
    Recording at home suits him. Even with the over-dubs, this set has the vitality of a live performance, and he clearly feels relaxed enough to take chances with the sometimes elaborate songs, delivering both the expected guitar skills and some fluid, difficult vocals.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Living With War
    The challenge of writing songs designed to lodge immediately in people's heads seems to have forced Young to come up with strong melodies, something else noticeably absent in his oeuvre of late.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Assume Form
    Assume Form feels like Blake opening out, adding fresh, noticeably brighter colours to his palette. Whether or not a smidge more commerciality turns this album into the kind of hit he was predicted to have at the start of the decade, it is immensely pleasing to witness an artist who seemed to be at a dead end now moving forward.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dreamers Are Waiting
    It doesn’t just retain the intimacy that made them so cherished, but makes it their signature sound. They exist on their own island now: a place to take refuge from the rest of the world, when it all becomes too enormous and terrifying to bear thinking about.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    KOD
    KOD’s sound exists in a curious, appealing area somewhere between beatifically stoned and slightly unsettling.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tarot Sport
    Fuck Buttons have less in common with the overly cerebral noise boffins they're compared to and more with the likes of Ennio Morricone: sonic explorers mapping out the landscape's emotional terrain, albeit one that exists in some far-off galaxy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Tarnished Gold
    Tarnished Gold is of a piece with their first two albums, but never a pale imitation.
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