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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everyone Else Is a Stranger
    The first half of Everyone Else begins as you’d expect – heady, fast-building, glamorous – but in the latter half, Lindstrøm pulls away from crowd-pleasing into thornier territory.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unreal
    A six-tracker feels a bit slight, but he sounds on the verge of finding his own style.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What We Saw from the Cheap Seats
    In fine voice and piano, Spektor skips down the yellow-brick road, offering new diversions at every turn. Fun – but the whimsy can be exhausting.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wrapped in Red
    Clarkson takes the view that Christmas is as much about wistfulness and unfulfilled wishes as it is unbridled joy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Angel's Pulse [Mixtape]
    There’s something to be said for such auteur bullishness in a world of eager-to-please, but the results are a little frustrating: the stuff of which cult figures are made, and the skip button was designed for.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Libra Scale
    Despite Ne-Yo being absolutely serious about this--apparently, he spent three months alone developing the backstory--it doesn't feel markedly different from his first three albums. His strength remains his fluid melody-writing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bobbie Gentry's the Delta Sweete Revisited
    Interesting, often fun, but never essential.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Where Does This Door Go
    Packed with cleverly crafted production, Where Does This Door Go may be a sonic adventure, but it's not quite slick enough to challenge the current crop of R&B luminaries.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This Is Not The World
    What begins as an exhilarating return to form turns into a desperate plea to be loved.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Till the Tomb
    Scratch the surface, though, and some crushingly average songs lie beneath. Lots of interesting sounds, sure, but these collide rather than connect.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    None of Us Are Getting out of This Life Alive
    There are moments where None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive feels more like a showcase for younger talent than a Streets comeback.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Threadbare
    It's full of strong supporting performances, but lacks the defining moment to pull it together.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    St. Germain
    As with Tourist, it’s possible to feel these combinations are a little too smooth; it’s also possible to feel uneasy about a white European appropriating black musical styles. But Navarre is clearly a conscientious producer with an ear for detail, and in the case of the almost free-jazz Hanky Panky, the music here is rich indeed.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Life. Love. Flesh. Blood
    Despite the tonal left turn, she’s still driving in the middle of the road, with always-predictable shifts in cadence and chord.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Allah-Las
    It's all very respectful--the attention to period detail sees them drop in a none-more-65 bossa nova instrumental--and all very pleasant. But there's no single killer song, no moment where they add anything to their borrowings to make you sit up and take notice.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One Day All of This Won't Matter Any More
    Warm and nourishing, but bereft of an artistic statement, In Waves feels like a musical stop gap--a temporary vacation rather than a home.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Man Alive!
    Marshall remains an unequivocally talented, trailblazing artist but this album’s bagginess and unremitting gloom mean it often struggles to hold the attention and unfortunately lacks much discernible appeal at all.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats
    Aside from Snake, which brings to mind Paolo Nutini slumped at the back of a strip club, the album is full of the ghosts of songwriting greats like Otis Redding, Chuck Berry and Van Morrison, and sounds like it should establish Rateliff as the breakneck bar brawler of the new soul movement.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Brute
    Her more grime-like productions bite with milk teeth, and melodies forget the errands they were sent on. Do her anaemic laments symbolise a generation being drained of its political lifeblood? Perhaps, but they aren’t enjoyable to listen to.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Million and One
    It’s one that never sounds as if it wants you to relax, but neither does it ratchet up the tension enough. It falls betwixt and between.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Resistance Is Futile
    These songs, in which the rough-edged art-punk core of the Manics’ earliest days needles through mature, accomplished lushness, are heavy with a sense of the passing of all things and an uncertainty about their place in the world.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome Back to Milk
    The music is inventive and odd.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Heartworms
    Heartworms is an album of tinkering and pootling, the sound of a man reminiscing on life, referencing his favourite records--less rock star, more bloke living out his hobby from the comfort of a suburban garage.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Folie A Deux
    Patrick Stump is an impassioned frontman, and shows what he can do on the ambitious, multi-segment WAMS, but there's only so much creativity he can wring out of this conventional rock.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beautiful Lies
    It’s certainly an adult-oriented, mainstream affair, pairing her with producers who have also worked with Adele and Florence and the Machine.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Information
    However annoying it sounds, give The Information a chance. By the time Horrible Fanfare rolls around, 15 numbers in, you'll be too dazed to resist.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oxnard
    This meeting of joy and aggression is what defines Oxnard, and the effect is not always pleasant--it makes .Paak’s trademark grooves difficult to luxuriate in--but it is still a compelling mode, and one that rehomes his old-school tastes firmly in the present.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Instinct
    More fury and less moderation and this would have been outstanding; as it is, it's just very good.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blood, Looms, And Blooms
    The listener emerges unsettled and intrigued.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lightning Bolt
    A few ponderous moments aside, this is a sturdy return to great form.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Prophet Speaks
    There is absolutely nothing wrong with The Prophet Speaks, but Morrison has not made an album destined to be pored over for clues. If he is offering any enlightenment, the message is simply: don’t forget the old masters.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shulamith
    If only Leaneagh's vocals weren't so mutated with effects that render some of her more poignant lyrics indistinguishable, Shulamith's impact might be all the greater. Nevertheless, it's a beautifully melancholic record.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook
    She transforms The Word, from Rubber Soul, into a strutting funk-gospel exhortation, and Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here into a conversation with ghosts from her past, but the passion she evinces grows wearying when it is for singing rather than the songs.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Disco Volador
    The density of the production occasionally subsumes their appealing vocal melodies and fails to mask a lack of emotional punch that lyrical anxieties about the planet’s future can’t provide.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Hazards Of Love
    There are certainly enough good things about the album to let its more infuriating conceits pass.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fall
    Jones's cashmere voice sounds more polite than ever, creating an overriding impression of a nice girl keeping dirty company.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Back To Me
    Haunting and carefully crafted as it is, the disc cries out for a few more variations of tone and pace.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All Or Nothing
    Opening track Girls and Boys and the furious Turnaround are enough to make anyone over the age of 24 shake their head at the unnecessary racket. There are more muted moments, too, most of them musing upon the other recent event in Lunn's life.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Birthdays
    [Dear's] followup offers more of the same, but with studio polish.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This Gift
    Every song pulses with passion, drama and energy. The trouble is, not every song proves as intoxicating as that first one.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    High Road
    Kesha is reconnecting with her former self. High Road is unmistakably the work of the same glitter-pop artist who tore up the charts in 2009, but with a new sense of underlying self-awareness.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Bigger Bang
    There's plenty of spirit here but, sadly, the songwriting runs out of puff long before the performances do, lending a hammy tone to the album's weaker moments.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Liam Gallagher John Squire
    The music is similarly unbothered by what anyone who isn’t already onboard thinks, resting almost entirely on a push-and-pull between the sound of Gallagher and Squire’s former bands.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Holidaydream: Sounds of the Holidays, Vol. 1
    It doesn't seem to have taken much of a creative shift for them to sound ridiculously Christmassy, because the Spree do that naturally anyway.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Asa Breed
    Dear's prostrate baritone works well when combined with his spare synthetic production.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magic Chairs
    It's emotional music, full of subtle ­tension and lurking drama.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fearless
    Mixed feelings are very much par for the course listening to Fearless, a record that does something bland and uninventive but does it incredibly well.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    HONESTLY, NEVERMIND
    Honestly, Nevermind therefore offers a weird combination of the unexpected and business as usual. ... There is something really admirable about Drake’s desire to reach beyond the music his audience expects, and to do it well. You just wish he would apply the same restlessness to his persona.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I And Love And You
    The finest moment may be when Laundry Room unexpectedly abandons the blueprint after three and half minutes and explodes into a thrilling bluegrass coda. At that moment, I and Love and You sounds like a band suddenly doing what they want to, rather than what they think they should.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Apple And The Tooth
    Despite the added value of the remixes and the quality of the original tracks, The Apple and the Tooth remains a complementary piece - albeit one that's a compliment to Bibio's craft, too.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Watch This Liquid Pour Itself
    Stretches of forgettable melody writing kill the mood somewhat, particularly towards the end, but the best songs – Insert Generic Name, Guttural Sounds – truly put the dream in dream-pop: rapturous, vivid compositions that drift down Wilkins’ very particular neurological pathways.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The State Between Us
    With too many dirge-like instrumentals, the album is overlong, under-focused and, like the Brexit process, hard work.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    An Object
    They don't half make liberation and self-dependency sound miserable.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Colour of the Trap
    Each retro touch is accompanied by the big choruses and key changes of a man who knows his way around a pop song, even if he's not out to break new ground just yet.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Devotion
    To conjure this otherworldly sound is impressive, but the lack of variation in tempo and atmosphere makes sustaining interest for a full 45 minutes difficult.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dancing with the Devil... The Art of Starting Over
    It’s an album that is simultaneously shocking, laudable and a little underwhelming.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    8 Diagrams
    You're left with an album that's as chaotic and uneven as the circumstances surrounding its release, It's alternately great, unsatisfying and marked by the sense that not everyone in the Wu Tang Clan is pulling in the same direction.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Triad
    While this first solo album in six years is elevating, and intricate in its elegance and rhythmic propulsions, it remains uncluttered by the chaos of true, visceral emotion.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Changing Of The Seasons
    She's restrained to a fault, where a bit of oomph would do more good.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paradise Valley
    The tender vocals contributed to Wildfire by surprise guest Frank Ocean are easily the most striking 85 seconds on the record. But the biggest talking point here will be Paper Doll. Apparently aimed at another ex, Taylor Swift, it's a washed-out ballad that takes the concept of "too much information" to a new level
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Television
    It's a brave, unexpected set that veers between the brilliant and the occasionally dreadful.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Great Divide
    Something of a cross between Biffy Clyro and Bon Jovi, the Twins are not concerned by a barrow-load of cliches as they aim for the man in the back row.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Happy to You
    It does exemplifies the enjoyable glossiness that experienced backroom types can bring to the over-subscribed electropop genre.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Race for Space
    While rightfully allowing the brilliantly executed collection of archival footage of human voices to flourish, its subtlety makes it more conceptual art piece than experimental rocket ride.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Knives Don't Have Your Back
    Emily Haines' breathy voice lacks range and sometimes character.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Liberation Transmission
    If they're going to ascend to big-name status, this third release, their most punkily accessible yet, will be the one that does it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Neuroplasticity
    Spx could do with some melodies as memorable as the music-making behind them.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everyday Life
    The straightforwardly Coldplay-esque moments sound more straightforward and Coldplay-esque than ever. ... But the dabblings in gospel (Broken) and bluesy doo-wop (Cry Cry Cry) seem like the result of a long and fruitful search to pinpoint the genres in which Coldplay are least suited to dabbling.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blue Roses
    Those with a low tolerance for navel-gazing are advised to steer clear, but there's plenty to cherish here.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Curve of the Earth
    There are flashes of brilliance.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love Letters
    It is perhaps testament to his [Joe Mount's] unwitting dedication to being coy and British that Love Letters is the quartet's most indie and foppish-sounding album yet.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shawn Mendes
    His attempt to detoxify pop masculinity is admirable, but you’re left yearning for a bit of rough and tumble.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Lumineers
    The slicing cello of Dead Sea and knife-glint guitar of Slow It Down hint at what this good-natured trio could be if they allowed themselves to be bold; instead these songs succumb to saccharine in a wish to charm.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Damogen Furies
    Damogen Furies is a commendable attempt to showcase his improvisational dexterity and capture the spontaneity of his live shows.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    4
    The highpoints offer hints of what it might have been: it's hard not to feel that what it might have been sounds better than what it is.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Velocifero
    So, while highlights such as Ghosts' glam-rock gallop or Tomorrow's saturnine dream-pop make gripping use of frowny minor chords, slab-like synths and frostbitten vocals, the relentless severity becomes a tad oppressive.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Russian Wilds
    They ape the cons as well as the pros of 70s rock: longer-than-necessary songs, a weakness for cliche and, inevitably, unabashed retroism.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hey Ma
    No matter that he employs every possible cliche (and none more so than in the violin-choked Upside, in which he patronises immigrant labourers): once the guitars get rolling and Booth scrapes the sky with his tenor, you find yourself weirdly hooked.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everybody Looking
    As usual, he’s at his best when things get a little weird.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Born In The Echoes
    The dance duo extend the decade-long dilution of their canon with their new record, which is as technically accomplished as ever, but creatively exhausted.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ullages
    Monotony is a problem on Ullages--you long for Eagulls to move beyond the confines of their soundscape and extend their emotional range.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Other People's Lives
    An album that delights as much as it disappoints, leaving the listener not celebrating the rebirth of one of England's greatest songwriters, but slightly confused.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Aesthethica
    Entertaining on its own visceral terms, but not wholly convincing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Born Again In The USA
    It's certainly a mixed bag but one that fans of all-American rock won't be disappointed with.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    She Wolf
    Unique--and not bad, either.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hitch
    Tthe Joy Formidable are at their best when they switch off their default setting.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Colvin & Earle
    There are some fine songs here, from the bluesy, harmonica-backed You’re Right, I’m Wrong to the stirring folk-gospel Tell Me Moses and the gently pained country weepie You’re Still Gone.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    FIDLAR
    Once or twice they really hit the spot--No Waves could hardly be catchier, and Black Out Stout could have the Black Lips looking over their shoulder--but more often they don't.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Joyland
    Trust's songs are often strong, though, and work best when Alfons manipulates his vocals towards higher pitches, allowing his melodies to shine and the music to stand out from the synth-pop crowd.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Avalanche
    Avalanche proves a middling followup to that first collection of airy, experimental R&B.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    American Utopia
    Byrne is too instinctive a songwriter to ever totally miss the mark, and his melodic gifts certainly haven’t left him--but this album often tends towards a ghastly dystopia of kitsch.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Another Fine Day
    Golden Smog never entirely equal the sum of their parts.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    '64 - '95
    While a lot of '64-'95 works, much of it appears to arrive sporting ironic quote marks.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Way
    As with the rest of My Way, highlights and lowlights alike, you listen to it struggling to think of anyone else who would do this. And perhaps that's the secret of the most mysterious continuing success story in rock.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Folk Songs
    The result is a set that will impress fans of his laidback, often deadpan style.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Portico Quartet
    It sounds less like a jazz album than anything the group has recorded, but in stepping away from a method they never seemed comfortable with, Portico have found a contemporary sound to thrill their fans and attract new listeners.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    If You Leave
    These songs are atmospheric, but feel calculatedly so, especially set against the overwrought poetry of Tonra's lyrics.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In Love
    It dishes up a glossy amalgam of the indie styles of 1991.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dear River
    It's all very pleasant, but the quality of her storytelling gets lost.
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