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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    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ultra Truth
    It’s an intense listen, demanding in the sense that you struggle to imagine putting it on in the background. Better to stick your headphones on and give Ultra Truth your undivided attention, something it amply rewards.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Oceans Apart
    The air of two songwriters on rare form, confidently challenging each other to greater heights, is inescapable.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Veckatimest
    The musical emphasis subtly shifts, from track to track and within tracks to create something that feels rather greater than the sum of its parts.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    I'm All Ears
    I’m All Ears is about abandoning fear and leaping boldly towards desire. It is remarkable.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skinty Fia
    In a polarised era, there’s something cheering about Fontaines DC’s bold refusal to join in, to deal instead in shades of grey and equivocation. There’s also something bold about their disinclination to rely on the most immediate aspect of their sound.
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Devotion
    It's honest, heartfelt and warm.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Amadjar
    Never resorting to cliche, they continue to be just as inspired by the universal themes of love, politics and nature as they always have been. Their musical delivery is just as heartfelt and forceful for it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Real New Fall L.P. (Formerly Country On The Click)
    Incomprehensible but irresistible.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bubblegum
    It is hardly user-friendly, but Bubblegum is too good an album to languish in the margins. There is something thrilling in its unpredictable lurches between darkness and light, noise and melody. In every sense, Bubblegum is a staggering record.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Journal For Plague Lovers
    Forgoing the arena-rock of recent years for something close to the barbed punk of their "Holy Bible" era--though less disjointed this time, and studded with hooks you could hang a feather boa from--they've made a complex but very listenable record.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude
    Pusha T takes a tour through the violence of the past 18 months, from Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore to the shocking phone videos that document death in damning detail but rarely lead to convictions. With Darkest Before Dawn, Pusha T has created his own hip-hop Trojan horse.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
    For all their playfulness, the group's melancholy weighs down their music with an emotional gravitas that is rare among anorak bands.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stumpwork
    Dry Cleaning’s second album isn’t a radical departure from last year’s outstanding New Long Leg. Florence Shaw still has the laconic, deadpan delivery of someone idly chatting over a garden fence. However, everything is slightly more refined, melodious and focused.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Airing Of Grievances
    These are songs to learn and sing as loudly, messily and drunkenly as possible.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
    The first disc of this double CD jangles nerves with pop songs which dissect personal issues through wider problems facing America, but the stunning second finds meaning to it all in a series of supernaturally beautiful ballads.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Obituary
    Latest recruits Kenny Andrews (lead guitar) and Terry Butler (bass) have brought renewed focus to both songwriting and sound.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Celebration Day [Live]
    Celebration Day captures a more streamlined band--men in their 60s determined to prove they can still cut it. Over 16 songs and two hours, they do just that.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bob Vylan Presents the Price of Life
    If you’re willing to meet Bob Vylan on their rough-and-ready terms, The Price of Life offers a decent return on investment.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Boys And Girls In America
    The Hold Steady couldn't sound less fashionable if they set up a branch of C&A, but their bar-room rock - all power chords and fist-pumping choruses - is a perfect, if counter intuitive accompaniment to Finn's downbeat tales.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Elaenia
    Elaenia flits, swoops and soars beautifully, impossible to pin down, let alone cage.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Water Made Us
    This is an album from an artist who refuses to sugarcoat human experience. That Woods is able to set her unflinching insight to hook-filled, restlessly genre-blending tunes makes her a talent not to be sniffed at.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hell-On
    Hell-On, Case’s seventh album, addresses [when a newspaper invaded her privacy] at the hands of selfish writers and cruel men--and finds Case asserting the facts of her life with daring candour and wit.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Pure Comedy
    There’s something hugely impressive about coming up with an album that somehow manages to be both incredibly discomfiting and easy to listen to.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Two Hands
    Big Thief’s power is in how they understand duality, both in the macro (with their two albums), and in the micro details. This record is best heard alongside its twin, but it’s equally powerful alone.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Uneasy
    The title track (from Iyer’s part in Karole Armitage’s 2011 ballet UnEasy) turns quiet, low-end murmurs into Oh’s tranquil, unhurried bass solo and then fiery exchanges with the drums. The hip, distantly boppish Configurations develops some of the most exciting collective improv on a set rammed with it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ys
    It may well be the most off-putting album released this year. After playing it, there seems every chance it is the also the most astonishing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Big Inner
    For all the 40-year-old reference points, Big Inner never feels like a pastiche; it's audibly more than the sum of its influences, in the same manner as Lambchop's Nixon.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ode
    It bears a lot of replaying.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Coral Island
    This is a truly lovely album, sweet without being saccharine, and a perfect accompaniment to the spring sunshine.
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