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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    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tremors
    Sohn's crisp, emotional electronica is certainly moving at times, but over a whole album, his fist-clenching intensity weighs a little too heavily.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Silence Is Easy
    The reliance on stately balladry can be yawnsome. But this is attractive listening, and it's hard not to be moved by its tenderness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Half Free
    A fifth album that offers, well, more of the same.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tomahawk Technique
    Tracks as sugar-coated and high-pitched as Won't Stop and Dream Girl are capable of producing gastric fireworks. And that's without mentioning the secondary cliches, the choral "eh ohs", the plaintive choruses, and, naturally, the Auto-Tune.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Courting the Squall
    How much you value such gently experimental foraging over Elbow’s typically rousing melodies might determine your enjoyment of this: it certainly leans towards the former.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hello Happiness
    The irresistible funk of lead single Like Sugar cleverly creates pockets of space for Khan’s rip-roaring vocal interjections to fade in and out, as if she’s having so much fun dancing she forgot to step up to the mic. The album sags, however, when the production starts to encroach on the star.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Songs from the Movie
    It works best when Vince Mendoza's arrangements don't disrupt her carefully observed storytelling.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Get Fucked
    The Chats are treading a fine line between stupid and clever, but there’s no meanness of spirit here.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mascara Streakz
    Amid some formulaic tracks, Your Life Is Mine is a welcome and superb curveball, Grogan’s darker tale of “an ocean of tears, the fury of the years” delivered over Cocteau Twins-type shimmering guitars.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Älskar
    If Älskar can occasionally feel identikit, there’s a refreshing honesty in its compromise between raw confessionals and acknowledging the pressure to “make it through the bullshit flying at me, write something catchy and turn it into money”.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    IV
    It all probably sounds immense and all-engulfing live, but it feels a little anticlimactic at home.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Hundred Million Suns
    However the finished album sees the band reverting to base instincts with the chug-paced, heart-tweaking, stadium-size choruses of 'Take Back the City' and 'Lifeboats.' Unit-shifting, radio-clogging business taken care of, they allow themselves freer rein with the urgent, almost hardcore-fast and uncomfortably confessional 'Disaster Button.'
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Until The Earth Begins To Part
    There are moribund string melodies here that would be at home in a BBC costume drama, and when they address global warming, their politicised folk-rock calls the distinctly unfashionable likes of the Levellers to mind.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Sounds of Crenshaw, Vol. 1
    [Terrace Martin's] latest project uses some heavyweight jazz talents but takes us into more mainstream R&B territory, with decent neosoul numbers including Intentions (featuring Chachi) and You and Me (featuring Rose Gold) mixed with rather bland and soporific fuzak.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Meaning of Life
    There’s lots of filler, too, such as Go High--based around a Michelle Obama speech--and the body-positive pop of Whole Lotta Woman, which sticks a little too closely to the Meghan Trainor mould. Despite this, the strong, 90s diva-ish mood suits Clarkson’s belting vocal style, as she ushers in a more soulful phase with class.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Foundling
    Foundling sounds as if Gray is alone with his guitar in the wee hours, whispering into a handy microphone. But if we've heard it all before, it doesn't mean Foundling isn't high-quality adult-pop.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    From the Top of Willamette Mountain
    [There's] an earnestness that often comes across as maudlin.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Arc
    Inevitably, Arc lacks coherence; it's the sound of a band working out who they want to be.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Violence
    Apocalyptic ballads No Sound But the Wind and Belong still sound like wading through ​molten Tarmac, and some experimentation doesn’t land, but for the most part, Violence is a thoroughly unexpected ​career peak.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nouns
    But for all Randall's hairdryer noise and molten texture, they seem to lack killer hooks.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Happy People
    It’s an album that hints at greatness--such as World Pleasure, a seductive, serpentine thrill--but ultimately seems confused by its looming self-conciousness.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Entanglements
    Throw Pennington's arch, quivering voice on top and what you have is a theatrical overload, too calculated and exhausting to really impress.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Birthdays
    [Dear's] followup offers more of the same, but with studio polish.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blood Pressures
    Their fourth album [...] finds them turbo-charging their sound, the familiar primeval bluesy rock combined with bigger grooves and almost Burundi-type drumming.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Towards Language
    The sonic atmosphere he creates with sample-manipulators Jan Bang and Erik Honoré can be faintly terrifying--the three of them should be given a horror movie soundtrack immediately--but also occasionally beautiful.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Adventures in Your Own Backyard
    It's pretty stuff, with breathtaking production which doesn't quite conceal a shortage of strong songs. The spine-tingling anthem Quiet Crowd is the exception, Watson's butterfly vocal darting around lines about "lovers and liars" and wrongs in dangerous places.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Songs From a Zulu Farm
    Young South Africans may cringe, but Ladysmith know their audience.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Choreography
    At times it feels just a little too on the nose, more a lovingly recreated period piece than something adventurous and new.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    House of Jacks
    More displays of his guitar skills would have been welcome, but this is an assured and entertaining set.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mangy Love
    There’s a lot here that’s really terrific, where the oddness of the lyrics and the mood of the music match perfectly and disconcertingly, as on In a Chinese Alley. But the missteps, when they come, are jarringly horrible.
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