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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    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Angels & Queens, Pt. 1
    It’s intense listening. The seven songs here last barely 30 minutes, but a powerful, concentrated half hour dose is all you need. Certainly – it’s all you need to stake a strong claim to the title of album of the year.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Designer
    For anyone braced for a further explosion of oddness, the strangest thing about Designer might be how disarmingly pretty it is. The staginess of Harding’s vocals has been slightly toned down, although she is still wont to sing with a curious enunciation, as if she’s invented her own accent. The tunes are sweetly charming.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Complete BBC Sessions [Remastered]
    With Robert Plant at his wailing, libidinous best and Jimmy Page wreaking all manner of noise and havoc with his guitar, the various live and session takes of material from their stellar first four albums document a steamrollering trajectory from ferocious hard rock to pastoral beauty and back.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rejoicing In The Hands
    It sounds both brand new and old as the hills.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    From A Basement On The Hill
    You are drawn to the conclusion that these songs would be remarkable regardless of the circumstances in which they were written.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    From Kinshasa
    As with a lot of From Kinshasa, listening to it feels like arriving in a bustling, unfamiliar city, a very long way from home: a gripping mix of excitement, apprehension and sensory overload.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    In Rainbows
    The most heartening thing about In Rainbows, besides the fact that it may represent the strongest collection of songs Radiohead have assembled for a decade, is that it ventures into new emotional territories.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Woods
    Though the guitars sometimes get a little too intoxicated on their new freedom, this is a makeover that finally does the band's melodies proud.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Invisible Cinema
    It's not a mere sampling of the contemporary piano scene, it's a real independent vision--Parks is a fast-rising star.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lonerism
    It feels digital, alien, the sound of modern machines going wrong. All this is underpinned by genuinely great songwriting
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Monoliths & Dimensions
    The most compelling--and important--avant garde record since "Love's Secret Domain" by Coil.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jaime
    Artists often take on solo projects to get things out of their system before regrouping, but those things are rarely as beautiful as they are here.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bandana
    The supporting cast also includes Anderson .Paak, Pusha T and Killer Mike, all of whom give impressive turns. But Gibbs is the star and, behind the boards, Madlib guides him like a skilled director. The result is an album of unvarnished realities transmuting into cinematic excellence.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Graceless Age
    I don't expect to hear a better album this year.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Orquídeas
    So it’s dreamy and fuzzy but sharp, witty and danceable with it; varied but coherent, consistently enjoyable. It’s an album on which Kali Uchis sounds not just like an artist who is now doing exactly what she wants, but one who also knows exactly what she’s doing.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Joy As an Act of Resistance
    Idles won’t be for everybody: this isn’t good-time, aspirational, radio-friendly pop. But for anyone in need of music that articulates their concerns or helps them to work through their troubles--or anyone who simply appreciates blistering, intelligent punk--they might just be Britain’s most necessary band.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dawn FM
    2020s pop music so brilliantly crafted that it causes you to realise how much other 2020s pop music is makeweight.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Abattoir Blues / The Lyre Of Orpheus
    An entirely unique return to form.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am A Bird Now
    Majestic while confronting his mortal fears on the gospel-hued Hope There's Someone, childlike and life-affirming on For Today I Am a Boy, he is never less than a class act.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Loved You at Your Darkest
    While there seems to be a macabre sense of humour at work in the decision to start the album with a children’s choir. Otherwise, this is trademark, huge, at times semi-operatic, industrially heavy black metal.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Arular
    Shrapnel-sharp dance music that demands to be heard.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Negative Capability
    A collection of songs that sink deeply into the subjects of death and old age with poignancy but never self-pity.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    You're Dead!
    As each song merges into the next, as one style succeeds another, the sensation is that of being in a dream.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Homegrown
    There’s a temptation with Young to concentrate on the big statement songs, but the joy of Homegrown is its lightness of touch.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest
    Its hour run time notwithstanding, few albums are this expansive. The acoustic arrangements and brushed drums expand its sense of the infinite, and Callahan disarms with humour and subtly shattering insight.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross feels like a particularly powerful entry in her discography: surrounded by music that’s beautiful but relatively straightforward, that voice seems more extraordinary still.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Everything Harmony
    The songwriting never dips below classic.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lahai
    Intriguing and affecting.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    i/o
    It’s dense and rewarding and has more interesting things to say than the earnest but pat song titles – Live and Let Live, Love Can Heal – suggest.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Have You in My Wilderness
    The result is a genuinely exceptional and entrancing album, opaque but effective, filled with beautiful, skewed songs, unconventional without ever feeling precious or affected.
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