The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,509 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 You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,968 out of 5509
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5509
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5509
5509 music reviews
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Secret Wars
    Secret Wars is a sobering demonstration of what repetition can do in the wrong hands, as the Brooklyn trio funnel the most endurance-testing excesses of Suicide, Can, Sonic Youth and stoner rock into a joyless, oppressive piece of work.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Blood Mountain
    Syrupy, multi-tracked vocals akin to Supertramp in a particularly foul mood have replaced the primal roar of old, while their tectonic hugeness has been supplanted by the wearisome over-indulgence of musos at play.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Tigers Have Spoken
    It never sounds like much more than a bar band playing songs for friends.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Take Care
    Former child actor Aubrey Graham's much-vaunted sensitivity and introspection is more hollow than ever on his second album.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Feels Like Home
    Feels Like Home is so inoffensive you have trouble remembering whether you put it on.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Electric Arguments
    Their website trumpets the "pure musical possibilities" of Electric Arguments, but this is heavily laboured hackwork.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Myths Of The Near Future
    The songs descend the same chords repeatedly and ponderously, as if the band were falling down the same flight of stairs over and over again.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Blueberry Boat
    A crashing disappointment.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    That Lucky Old Sun
    Every single note feels forced, in hock to a sound and a set of attitudes that date from a time before many of us were born.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Dumb Blood
    For every Lemonade you’re likely to get 10 sixth-form common-room jam bands wailing about “TONY B-LIAR”. Dumb Blood, the debut album from London outfit Vant, unquestionably falls into the latter camp.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Which Bitch?
    Some half-decent anthems and a sweet little love song are shifted further towards the bin by Kyle Falconer's singing, which sounds as though he has forgotten to put his teeth in. By the end of it, you may need a long bath.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    When It Falls
    Perhaps spurred by the ease with which the Boring Solo has been grafted on to their chosen template, When It Falls finds Zero 7 expanding their horizons and going on to be boring in other areas.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Between Darkness & Wonder
    The beats are intricate but ineffectual, the songwriting is thin and every song is enveloped in a suffocating orchestral shroud.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Massacre
    With nothing musically fresh, attention is focused on [50] himself. Bad idea.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Rock'n'Roll
    Throughout Rock N Roll, Adams is too busy winking, smirking and showing off to convey anything approaching an emotion.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Bedlam In Goliath
    The "songs" (a relative concept on planet Mars Volta) sound as though they are competing to unleash as many prog-rock cliches as possible: portentous guitar riffs and twiddly bits are interspersed with all manner of atonal wind instruments and sonic pomposities.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin
    Gershwin and Wilson are among the 20th century's greatest writers of popular music; no one wishing to learn more about either should start here.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    R.Y.C.
    This is one of the most profoundly, wondrously mediocre albums of our time, which is to say that it’s not even entertainingly bad.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Under My Skin
    The music is so anodyne that you don't pay much attention to Lavigne's lyrics. This proves to be a small mercy: examination of the CD booklet reveals that prolonged exposure to her words could leave a previously healthy adult rocking backwards and forwards in a foetal ball.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Expectations
    It’s baffling trying to work out why her vocals are often lagged in Auto-Tune: she sounds like she’s drowning on Self Control and malfunctioning on the horrid Mine. The songwriting--about bad girls and good boys in miserable, moneyed relationships--is precisely as deep as you’d expect.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    20/20
    What 20/20 does best is portentousness and the empty brag - essentially male traits that make listening rather like being hectored by the pub bore.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Wildflower
    It's all too dull to make anyone care but Crow.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Satan's Circus
    Disembodied bleeps and European synth drifts opt for bleak, alien magnetism but just end up sounding utterly depressing.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Fly Rasta
    The only risk Marley takes is on You're My Yoko, where he attempts to woo a lucky lady by likening her to the avant-garde artist, while casting himself as John Lennon. Julian Lennon would have been nearer the mark.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Suit
    Hackneyed songs grind drearily.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    In Space
    Half the 12 tracks are risible throwaway genre and covers. The other half are, at best, extremely mellifluous Big Star tribute band songs.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    First Kiss
    I don’t know if those [other Kid rock] records feature as many torturous lyrical cliches as this one (whisky, Jesus, Johnny Cash and beers with the old man all feature, and that’s just the track titles), or are sung with such constipated insincerity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Out Of Nothing
    While their first album had a stirring anthem or two, their songwriting here is both flimsy and overblown, like an empty carrier bag temporarily inflated by a gust of wind.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Long Road Out Of Eden
    Disc one sounds like the band's Desperado years left out in the rain--damp, shrunken and fetid, with songs such as Guilty of the Crime and Fast Company giving out as much spark as a dying novelty lighter.
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