The Guardian's Scores

Select another publication »
For 5,513 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 Post Human: NeX Gen
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,972 out of 5513
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5513
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5513
5513 music reviews
view
per page
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Into Colour
    The question seems churlish: these are memorable songs, recorded with exquisite taste.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Born to Play Guitar
    He may be surrounded by famous friends, but Guy dominates every song.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wild Winter
    Smoke Fairies resist the chintz of traditional festive sonics, instead using spectral guitars and sprawling desert-rock soundscapes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Spirit Reflection
    Impressively, Hernandez and her collaborators (including oddball producer Dexter Story) manage to groove hard despite using the most minimal, low-volume percussion, all brushed snares, tinkling cowbells and artfully fluttering hi-hats.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My East Is Your West [Live]
    Where Mayer and Harriott engaged in a jerky, slightly awkward sound-clash, Korwar’s fusion is seamless.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lucifer
    The result is the best album Peaking Lights have yet recorded.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Olympia
    What's most striking is how great this sounds--clean, considered, with every detail in its place and a clear sense of its own identity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Hawk Is Howling
    The lyric-free songs are awe-inspiring, yet accessible.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fool's Gold
    Where Vampire Weekend sound like indie musicians who have embraced African music, Fool's Gold's leader Lewis Pesacov grew up listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as well as US pop, and his band's uplifting sound vibrates with love and kinship with the continent's music.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Music Complete
    Music Complete still feels like the freshest thing they’ve done in ages.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Still Woman Enough
    There’s only one new Lynn original, the title track, co-written with her daughter; Coal Miner’s Daughter makes yet another appearance, this time as a recitation of the lyrics set to music – but her voice sounds frankly astonishing.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Manners
    Perhaps not as striking as it might have seemed 18 months ago, but still a debut album of distinction.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A River Ain't Too Much To Love
    Regular Smog-watchers will have become accustomed to a degree of bleakness and black humour, but this time Bill Callahan... taps into a compelling vein of folk history and rural solitude.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Body Talk Pt 1
    Those bookends [songs on this album] are clues to both her defiant independence of spirit and her versatility within the pop idiom, and show precisely why she should be treasured.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Peace or Love
    Bøe and Øye’s paired, timbrally similar voices remain a key part of the charm.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Good, The Bad & The Queen
    You're left both marvelling at the album itself, and considering what a unique figure Albarn cuts. If you doubt it, try to imagine the result if any of Britpop's other major players had assembled a supergroup and made an anti-war concept album. Now take your fist out of your mouth.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance
    This album retains the group’s old sense of humour.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Favourite Faded Fantasy
    He claims not to care whether his comeback is a commercial success, but one suspects it will be regardless. It deserves to be.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Before The Poison
    Faithfull's most stylistically cohesive album for some time.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ores & Minerals
    Marvellous, and highly recommended.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Maximum Balloon
    It may lack the emotional depth of some of his previous work, but as instant gratification goes, it's pretty perfect.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We'll Never Turn Back
    Staples is magnificent.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cubafonía
    An entertaining, impressively varied return.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Loon
    Tapes 'n Tapes might have to dismantle their influences soon. But right now, they're building something beautiful.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rock and Roll Animals
    Beneath the sarcastic wit lies warmth and some of his most beautiful songs since Showgirl, which glisten with Bowie-ish 12-string guitars and endearing semi-autobiographical asides.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Here
    Despite an undertow of glum earnestness, Keys has never sounded so committed.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Mythologies to Follow
    More often than not, though, Mø lets her eclectic influences percolate at their own pace, and the slinky guitar lines of Maiden are a perfect example of how hypnotic she can be.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Volume 1
    High points include Lytle’s impossibly lovely Failing at Feeling, which conjures John Lennon’s #9 Dream; Restart, whose glam-rock crunch is reached via Tame Impala’s Elephant; the arch stylings of Kapranos on Hey Banana; and Real Love, a gorgeous cascade of harmonies and trumpets.
Page: