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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    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghettoville
    Although the dystopian vibe does brighten towards the climax, when Cunningham adds soulful vocal samples to his palette of ambient, industrial, techno, avant-electronica, glitch, minimalism and pretty much any other genre he feels like taking apart.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us
    This is a beautiful, beautiful record.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heart On
    This album knows how to party; it rocks like a beast.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Danger in the Club
    Danger in the Club’s flaws and charms alike are summed up in the way Matador rollercoasts from sprawling mess to tuneful brilliance as the band throw everything in their locker at a heroic charge towards death or glory.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Circuital
    Their sixth album finds them back on track. Circuital combines their experience with a rediscovered youthful zest, a theme Jim James visits in the lyrics.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One Plus One Is One
    On the one hand, it's a little hokey: if One Plus One Equals One tried any harder to charm you, it would turn up on your doorstep with a bottle of Fleurie and offer you a footrub. On the other, the songs are Gough's strongest in years.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Winchester Cathedral
    Though the songs are still Lou Reed-shaped and John Cale-fashioned, this follow-up to the Grammy-nominated Walking With Thee sees the scouse experimentalists embracing a jagged kind of pop.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Seer
    The Seer won't be for everybody, but deserves to win new converts.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Mancy of Sound
    As often happens with Coleman's music, initial misgivings that it's smart but going nowhere are gradually supplanted by the sense of traversing an unfamiliar but welcoming landscape.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Crane Wife
    It is all as self-consciously stagey as a Wes Anderson movie - too arch and florid to really engage the heart, but bold and wondrous entertainment none the less.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Maths + English
    It's Dizzee Rascal's pop album: catchy and danceable.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood
    It's an album that combines the 70-year-old's experience with the glee of a small child.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Santogold
    White purveys prickly electro-pop that is disarmingly infectious, if you can get past her yap of a voice.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Down There
    Loaded with typically murky, watery beats and trademark wordless backing vocals, it's an off-kilter, densely hypnotic listen.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Piece Of What You Need
    Thompson has emerged from his parents shadows to deliver one of this year's best.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hippo Lite
    It is a fairly bizarre album, but an absorbing and clever one that gets stranger as it goes on.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dark Energy
    As Burial is to dubstep, Jlin is an artist who belongs to her genre, but has an eye on where it could go next.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gaslighter
    Rather than the sound of three middle-aged musicians straining to recapture their relevance, Gaslighter is pertinent on its own terms, more proof that the under-told stories of women make the perfect raw material for punchy, compelling and bracingly contemporary pop.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Backspacer
    This is a record made by mature men with perspective: full of reflection and eclecticism, finding space for both U2 guitar motifs and Buzzcocks solos.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Disc-Overy
    Despite its flaws, the good bits of the album sound like the work of a major talent, who might get better when he realises that he doesn't need to follow trends, that he's at his best when he's being himself, and his producers are making music to match.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stay Gold
    Three albums in, and their voices still chime like a Swedish Everly Brothers.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gentle Spirit
    Beautiful and bewitching.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Pocket of Wind Resistance
    This record is an epic, emotional endeavour, and a stunning one, too.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Writer's Block
    A delight, from start to finish.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pedestrian Verse
    The result is a collection of stirring, instant anthems to get fists pumping the air and swaying crowds singing along.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Happier than Ever
    The melodies and vocals are uniformly great; writing about the pressure of fame in a way that elicits a response other than a yawn is an extremely tough trick to pull off, and Happier Than Ever does it with aplomb.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Independence Day
    It’s not one of UK rap’s periodic game-changing albums, but then, it’s clearly not meant to be: as retrenchments go, it does its job perfectly.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sweet Heart Sweet Light
    There's a life-affirming sense of vigour, the sound of an artist who knows what he does best and is going to keep on doing it: grandiose, powerful rock'n'roll songs that contain uplifting gospel choirs and the sense that life can indeed be saved, or at least soothed, through music.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Acoustic
    Fans had to wait eight years for Mogoya, while Sangaré expanded her business empire; but this unplugged sequel is better still.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prize
    Moving far beyond the cotton-soft folk of her previous records, with Prize, Plain chooses to lean into her eccentricities – and the risk pays off.
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