The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,499 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 If I don't make it, I love u
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,962 out of 5499
  2. Mixed: 2,460 out of 5499
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5499
5499 music reviews
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    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Be Good
    The singing is immaculate all the way through, and there's plenty of blowing space from some dynamic improvisers, notably saxophonists Yosuke Sato and Tivon Pennicott.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blómi
    The songwriting here is often very good, even timelessly classic.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Women in Music, Pt. III
    They translate desolation into richly searching music, putting familiar sounds through their distinctive filter: fluttering G-funk (3am), homages to Walk on the Wild Side (Summer Girl) and Joni Mitchell at her most seething (Man from the Magazine, an acoustic riposte to a leering journalist), and Led Zep bounce (Up From a Dream).
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Same Trailer Different Park
    She sings with an affectless detachment reminiscent of, say, Aimee Mann, and uses it to cut sharply through the lies people tell themselves.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We're New Again: A Reimagining by Makaya McCraven
    By sampling and placing his work within the radical future of Chicago’s jazz scene, McCraven honours Scott-Heron’s memory anew.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Sound Of The Smiths
    This is no treasure trove, but it works well as a definitive overview.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    folklore
    This strange summer of arrested development is steadily ending. Folklore will endure long beyond it: as fragmented as Swift is across her eighth album – and much as you hope it doesn’t mark the end of her pop ambitions – her emotional acuity has never been more assured.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    LongGone
    It’s the gospel-charged 12-minute live take, Rejoice, that stuns: a collective jam opened on a beckoning bass hook and driven to a rampant finale with the band locked into an almost choral unified voice, it really tells you why, after all these years, this group can still sell out the world’s concert halls in a blink.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chutes Too Narrow
    [Chutes] finds Albuquerque's finest further mining their own private bittersweet seam, kicking off with the pop turbulence of Kissing the Lipless and absurdly joyous Mine's Not a High Horse, before reaching another career peak with the dizzying exuberance of So Says I.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    To Be Kind
    To Be Kind is uncompromising to the point of overindulgence.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Memorial
    As with their previous albums, Memorial demands total immersion, but Russian Circles' sonic world is a welcoming one. Right now, few bands conjure such vital and nourishing food for the imagination.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Song for Our Daughter
    It’s a highly polished piece of work, big on rich string arrangements and intricate harmony vocals.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Future Nostalgia
    Her one-off impulse to Make A Statement is the only predictable 2020 pop move on an otherwise outlandishly great second album.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964
    It's an informal set, full of coughs and corrections and chatty asides; the sense of intimacy this fosters between the eager young singer and the modern listener might be this collection's greatest appeal.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    30
    You couldn’t blame Adele for declining to even tinker with a formula that clearly ain’t broke. But she does, and it makes for 30’s highlights.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Caligula
    Hayter is classically trained, and there is emotional as well as technical brilliance to the way she expands her vocal palette here.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Conquering
    Here Employed to Serve prove past masters – Conquering is a gut-churning thrill ride of an album, mercilessly designed for maximal sonic motion sickness.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Loud City Song
    Barbara Lewis's soul classic Hello Stranger gets a chillout makeover, which doesn't quite work; but any faults are obliterated by the album's closer, City Appearing.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bad as Me
    As ever, he's doing things his own way, with songs catchy enough to suggest everyone should accompany him for the ride.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Moon Shaped Pool
    It’s not an album that feels lost in experimentation. The abundance of sonic intrigue is matched by the quantity of beautiful tunes.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Masseduction
    Sonically, the record gradually unfurls into something similarly captivating though, as Clark ditches the guitar rock for pop that is rich, nuanced and constantly surprising
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Accelerando
    The world's full of fine jazz piano trios, but Iyer's is way up the A-list.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Saint Cloud
    What songs these are, genuinely good enough to be compared with peak Dylan: like him, Crutchfield is adept at nestling into the almost comforting niche of heartache and hopping out again with a grin.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dear Science,
    Career-defining stuff.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
    Sometimes I Might Be Introvert may or may not provide a commercial boost for its maker, but this rich, fascinating album cements Little Simz’s significance regardless.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Return To Cookie Mountain
    Return to Cookie Mountain is largely a delight - an experimental album with a pop heart that avoids self-indulgence.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Film Music [Box Set]
    The music is impossibly wistful and full of pastiche (chanson, big band, Piazzolla), but something about it gets under the skin.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Call Me If You Get Lost
    The result is a dense, kaleidoscopic album that might take a lot of time to fully unpick, but clearly isn’t going to diminish in quality if you do so.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit
    Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit is fun, intelligent and sets up Barnett as a voice who can tread between both high and low culture and treat them the same.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Run the Jewels 3
    The formula is probably becoming familiar, but its time is now.
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