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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    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Out of Touch, In the Wild
    Their songs are odysseys in hooks that never linger anywhere too long, and although a certain blandness sets in later on, the trade of edge for accessibility is fair.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gore
    A complex and ultimately rewarding listen.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    If I Was
    This one is softer in its address, more introspective, yet the sound is so much bolder, the music taking thrilling leaps in character and complexity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Different Days
    The Charlatans’ 13th album is grounded on the band’s own indestructible chemistry, Tim Burgess’s exquisitely happy-sad vocals and their ability to juggle melancholy and joy into exhilarating pop songs.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bitte Orca
    Via the fluttering sketches of David Longstreth's early solo releases and 2007's remarkable Black Flag quasi-tribute album, Rise Above, they arrive at this confounding, beautiful record.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wintres Woma
    His voice is looser, shrugging, unsteady, not always gelling with his instrument, although its nonchalance gives Grief Is Not Coming a serrated edge; elsewhere, it can sound oddly indifferent. Nevertheless, this is a very promising beginning, boldly shifting the seasons.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    After the Rain
    After the Rain certainly has flaws, but Leftwich has created a fragile, precious, oddly comforting thing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Source
    Allen’s Parisian band explore each theme in detail, with some garrulous, impressive solos from the likes of saxophonist Rémi Sciuto and trumpeter Nicolas Giraud.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lese Majesty
    As it is, not every experiment on Lese Majesty works, but when they do, the results are spectacular. And even when they don't, the lovely sense that you're listening to an album genuinely unlike any other is pretty overwhelming.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Not Your Kind of Music
    His musical voice is not unique, but his way with a hook--and a cocked snook--is terrific, and for such an exhaustive set, the "too much of a good thing" effect takes a remarkably long while to kick in.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sexwitch
    Even the most conventional song, and the sole western one, Skip Spence’s acid breakdown anthem War in Peace, sounds transformed, otherworldly and compelling.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hidden City
    As ever in Cultworld, ch-ch-ch-changes find them at their best.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It
    You’re left with an album that fancies itself as a challenging work of art, but turns out to be a collection of fantastic pop songs full of interesting, smart lyrics, but also peppered with self-conscious lunges for a gravitas it doesn’t really need.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Belle and Sebastian Write About Love
    It takes just under four minutes for Belle and Sebastian's eighth album to demand a place among the best of their career.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mindset
    Considering so little happens, you find yourself inexplicably drawn in.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Low Country Blues
    No great surprises, maybe, but it's good to find he can still deliver.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carter Girl
    Carlene has revived their songs before, but never with this intensity and emotion.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dents And Shells
    This is one of those hushed, moody, late-night records - though with much more going on than mere melancholia.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eucalyptus
    His latest album still resembles Animal Collective, but in a way that feels invigorating rather than tired.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Journey to the Mountain of Forever
    The duo’s tracks winningly mix dark, classic Coltrane raptures, infectious hook-rooted rockers and Sonny Rollins-like calypsos (Fete By the River). The larger group sets up thrilling rhythm textures merged from Parker’s seamless soprano lines and a chatter of snare drums and tablas.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Still
    The set starts with a slow, sturdy ballad of hope and change, She Never Could Resist a Winding Road, then settles into stories of pained love and sexual frustration that will, I suspect, sound even better live. The best is left for last.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Perpetual Motion People
    Perpetual Motion People is the restless sound of a genuine one-off in a generic world.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mystère
    It’s recognisably the work of an indie band, but not one constrained by preconceived notions of what indie must be, and it’s well worth your time.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Trance
    There's some fine playing on this set, as on the exuberant 15-minute work-out Djanfa Moja, but the bass lines on Nightwalk or the bluesy Waide Nayde make the band sound unexpectedly predictable, despite Camara's remarkable solos; two of the best tracks are taken from the bass-free Trance Sessions
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    B'lieve I'm Goin' Down
    His sixth album is perhaps a smaller-scale, slower burn than 2013’s Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze: the likes of That’s Life, Tho and Stand Inside take a few listens to reveal their unobvious melodic logic, but when they do, they hit hard.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wolfroy Goes To Town
    With Oldham's melancholy vocal occasionally cast against the sweetly anguished Angel Olsen, the songs ponder God and humanity with religiously quiet intensity
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    *Happiness Not Included
    Soft Cell return with an album that makes the very best of their vantage point as synth-pop elders with an eye on the future. *Happiness Not Included cleverly compares the 80s promises of a future straight out of science-fiction (“rocket ships and monorails, electricity that never fails”) with how things have actually turned out.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    RTJ2
    While the duo deliver hard-nosed disses at a rate of knots. Early, meanwhile, matches distorted synth with an old-school storytelling piece about pursuit and arrest by the police. It’s an unrelenting style, which may sound like overkill to some, but there’s no disputing its power and sophisticated composition.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good Arrows
    Dark as the rest of the album's subject matter, it wafts by like a delightful breeze. That's partly because the music is delicate and gentle, but it's mostly because Tunng can write the kind of melodies that get under your skin. They are still there long after the gloom has dispersed, making Good Arrows a dark pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Gloaming
    Steeped in traditional Celtic influences but bravely contemporary, the Gloaming are a five-man Irish-American supergroup who have created a distinctive style of their own.... Exquisite.
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