The Guardian's Scores

  • Music
For 2,634 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 67
Highest review score:
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
Critic Score 10
Score distribution:
2,634 music reviews
    • Metascore: 86
    • Critic Score 100
    Without a Net is free to bursting point, but it's a triumph.
    • Metascore: 76
    • Critic Score 100
    This album shows Wilson to be one of modern rock's most cunning and soulful protagonists.
    • Metascore: 83
    • Critic Score 100
    A genuinely remarkable album: self-obsessed but completely compelling, profoundly discomforting but beautiful, lost in its own fathomless personal misery, but warm, funny and wise. It shouldn't work, but it does.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Critic Score 100
    Stornoway make unconvincing space rockers--but that's the only caveat about a triumphantly expansive album.
    • Metascore: 87
    • Critic Score 100
    It succeeds because of the sheer quality of her singing and the thoughtful, varied songs from the light and then furious Kouma to Mélancholie, a highly personal reflection on sadness and solitude.
    • Metascore: 84
    • Critic Score 100
    It's the subtlety, and the self-awareness, that make this album exquisite.
    • Metascore: 88
    • Critic Score 100
    I don't expect to hear a better album this year.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 90
    i
    Merritt's lugubrious baritone has never sounded stronger, nor have his songs.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 90
    Strikes a near-perfect balance between the various facets of the band's history.
    • Metascore: 86
    • Critic Score 90
    These are tunes that twinkle and thunder like exploding stars, and show that there are still infinite possibilities in two guitars, bass and drums.
    • Metascore: 89
    • Critic Score 90
    His most direct, energised and modernist work in years.
    • Metascore: 87
    • Critic Score 90
    Beyond his trademark agitated yelp and panic-attack rhythms are all manner of surprising and compelling sonic twists.
    • Metascore: 78
    • Critic Score 90
    There is plenty that is remarkable about Real Gone.
    • Metascore: 97
    • Critic Score 90
    The result is genuine alt-country at a time when the term has come to signify little more than middling acoustic rock.
    • Metascore: 87
    • Critic Score 90
    A record of remarkable delicacy.
    • Metascore: 78
    • Critic Score 90
    Another broadsheet rock critic waxing rhapsodic may be the last thing Wainwright needs, but here goes: Want Two is a stunning album.
    • Metascore: 80
    • Critic Score 90
    Manages to dabble with tension and still emerge with something life-affirming.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 90
    Frequently magnificent, Blue Eyed in the Red Room offers up more with every listen.
    • Metascore: 78
    • Critic Score 90
    That Employment is derivative is both undeniable and irrelevant. It is so confident, so smart, so full of life, that a more enjoyable 45 minutes is hard to imagine.
    • Metascore: 76
    • Critic Score 90
    It's a triumphant lesson in sweeping gracefully towards the mainstream with your imagination and mystery intact.
    • Metascore: 83
    • Critic Score 90
    Magnificent, all told.
    • Metascore: 83
    • Critic Score 90
    The trend for disappointing follow-ups bucked with enviable panache, You Could Have It So Much Better leaves you eager, rather than concerned, about Franz Ferdinand's next album.
    • Metascore: 93
    • Critic Score 90
    And whereas the dark era that began with a military coup in 1964 is now relegated to Brazil's history, the music it inspired sounds fresher and more provocative than ever.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 90
    Some of his most impressive songs in years.
    • Metascore: 82
    • Critic Score 90
    Rather Ripped may not have the cultural impact of 1989's Daydream Nation, but it contains some of the best music of their career.
    • Metascore: 81
    • Critic Score 90
    A profound melancholy suffuses the elegant and often sublime Damaged.
    • Metascore: 87
    • Critic Score 90
    It's hard to think of another album that rocks in such an epic manner without sounding completely ridiculous.
    • Metascore: 81
    • Critic Score 90
    A 21st-century soul classic.
    • Metascore: 76
    • Critic Score 90
    The spellbinding mix of shimmering folk and shimmying disco on Out of the Woods eclipses her past work.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 90
    This is an album to savour when autumn leaves are falling--and through the rest of the year, too.