The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,507 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 All Born Screaming
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,966 out of 5507
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5507
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5507
5507 music reviews
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    4everevolution
    Nearing his 40th birthday, he has delivered an album that's contemplative, insightful and filled with a beleaguered sense of the hard-scrabble nature of contemporary life.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Save Rock and Roll
    It's business as usual, with slightly appeal-broadening knobs on. Quiet bits, then loud bits, and words about alienation wrapped up in catchy choruses to unite thousands.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ten Silver Drops
    These are beautiful songs, as delicate as they are rocking and heavy.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bloom Forever
    It’s hard not to listen to Country Home and its lyrics “I will hold on to / The part of me that is in love with you” without feeling like you’ve read a diary entry you shouldn’t have. Elsewhere, however, the album is surprisingly sunny: these are songs for festival picnic blankets as well as for holding on to your loved ones.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Laru Beya
    The result is an album that veers between lilting, languid songs like the title track, and sudden bursts of energy and anger, as on Yurumei, a lament about the horrors of the slavery days in which fuzz guitar is mixed with Garifuna percussion, Latin riffs and sturdy vocal work from the Garifuna women's chorus. This promises to be one of the albums of the year.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Consolers Of The Lonely
    The Raconteurs establish a firm, emotionally charged identity of their own when White finally takes a back seat to Brendan Benson.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Front Parlour Ballads
    Recording at home suits him. Even with the over-dubs, this set has the vitality of a live performance, and he clearly feels relaxed enough to take chances with the sometimes elaborate songs, delivering both the expected guitar skills and some fluid, difficult vocals.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Silver Pony
    This gifted but sometimes frustrating performer has rarely inhabited her materials so naturally, or put together a tracklist that sounds so powerfully compatible.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hesitant Alien
    Way’s audible enthusiasm for this music results in a confident, swaggering set of songs packed with joie de vivre, banks of feedback and walls of guitars and saxophones.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lola
    This is a fresh, confident set.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Magnificent Fiend
    Now and then, alas, it is perhaps more Dave Matthews Band than Steve Miller Band, but when it all rings true, as on the glorious crescendo and singalong that closes Lord Have Mercy, it's an impeccably pitched, retro-rock joy.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tooth & Nail
    Billy Bragg has released his classiest-sounding album to date.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Best Day
    Whether its anger is aimed at an individual or an establishment, the energy on the Best Day sounds like the conspiracy before the rebellion, rather than the anarchy itself.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Red Kite
    Working with Edwyn Collins producers Carwyn Ellis and Seb Lewsley, these pastoral acoustic ballads are intimate and innocent.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bahdeni Nami
    His formula may not have been reinvented, but it has been refined, and now is the time to listen.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jewellery
    Combining hard experimentation with soft introspection, her scrappy, lo-fi production wrapped in warmth, Micachu's sparkling pop will leave Little Boots shaking in her shoes.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Expo 86
    Expo 86 is both smart and dense enough to warrant your attention.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fundamental
    Focusing on New Labour's trials has reconnected the Pet Shop Boys with something of their essence.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Father Creeper
    The result isn't a fluid hybrid or warm fusion, but something colder and more uncomfortable and ultimately more intriguing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Interstellar
    Interstellar is a pretty irresistible record.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Can't Stop
    But I Can't Stop has more to offer than a rush of nostalgia. The songwriting is largely superb, which keeps the album from sounding like a clever pastiche.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wall Of Arms
    With this record the Maccabees join the Horrors and Jack Peñate as supposedly "landfill indie" acts who've come back fighting with far superior second efforts.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Thyself
    Guitarist Noko and bassist John "Stan" White (replacing Barry Adamson, who had film commitments) help recapture the sonic blueprint laid down on the first three classic albums
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Four MF's Playin Tunes
    It's often observed that this fine saxophonist's studio recordings rarely catch his live-show fire.There's a relaxation about this one, however that comes very close.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Overnight
    A gently exquisite set.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hypercaffium Spazzinate
    An ability to switch seamlessly from bruising hardcore to sunbursts of pop melody always marked Descendents out from the SoCal crowd, and that’s still the case here.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Seven Psalms
    It’s an extremely powerful album – Cave and Ellis are superb writers, at the top of their game – even if you wonder how often you’ll listen to it, or indeed, what one quite vocal section of his fanbase will make of it.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ignore The Ignorant
    With Marr's chiming chords as a safety net, the uncompromising Cribs let their songs breathe, allowing for the intriguing introspection and languid vocals.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dark Bird Is Home
    Dark Bird is lovely as it is.
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