The Independent (UK)'s Scores

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For 597 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 57% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 65
Highest review score:
Director's Cut
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
The Awakening
Critic Score 20
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 246 out of 597
  2. Mixed: 338 out of 597
  3. Negative: 13 out of 597
597 music reviews
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    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 80
    Betty Wright: The Movie
    The album plays to her strengths, as befits a woman who has sustained a career as producer of, among others, Joss Stone's breakthrough sessions.
    • Metascore: 69
    • Critic Score 80
    Nothing [EP]
    Markedly different [from Dedication] in intent, a much lighter affair lacking the somewhat sombre, haunted mood of that valedictory record.
    • Metascore: 90
    • Critic Score 80
    Rio [Live]
    These 15 pieces sketch an entire world of music, coloured by the locale, and shifting between the smoothly lyrical and the propulsive rhythmic.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 80
    Last Day of Summer
    A typically diverse collection.
    • Metascore: 63
    • Critic Score 80
    Funny Looking Angels
    Featuring a blend of standards and originals spiced with judicious covers of sometimes obscure indie tracks, it manages to sustain a mood and attitude throughout without offering too many hostages to homogeneity.
    • Metascore: 88
    • Critic Score 80
    Complete
    The first line of the first song encapsulates the adolescent angst which blossomed over and over throughout the band's career, with varying degrees of wit, empathy, contempt and self-pity.
    • Metascore: 76
    • Critic Score 80
    The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [OST]
    It's the sense of space that grips one's attention, sometimes just flecks of sound, like snowflakes in darkness, create a sense of brooding unease.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Critic Score 80
    Voyageur
    The result is a work with greater resonance and presence, which might secure her mainstream success.
    • Metascore: 85
    • Critic Score 80
    Old Ideas
    if it is to be his last communiqué, at least the old smoothie's going down swinging.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Critic Score 80
    Be Strong
    With feelgood lyrics of fellowship allied to pulsing electro twitches, Sister Bliss-style piano vamps, sample fragments and sunrise synthscapes, there's a flavour of The Beloved to "Warm & Easy" and "Bear Hug."
    • Metascore: 69
    • Critic Score 80
    Which Side Are You On?
    Ani DiFranco's first album in three years finds the self-proclaimed Righteous Babe in feisty, thoughtful form.
    • Metascore: 81
    • Critic Score 80
    The Lion's Roar
    Blessed with clear, characterful voices, employed in beautifully modulated, bell-like harmonies, the Söderbergs find beauty in the bleakness of mortality and the cyclical nature of things.
    • Metascore: 77
    • Critic Score 80
    Travels in the Dustland
    The backdrops feature dark sheets of strings and organ, the occasional lonely trumpet, and lumpy, superstitious drums driving the menacing Western mythos to its doom: not a forgiving place, but an engrossing one.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Critic Score 80
    I Will Set You Free
    The arrangements on Barry Adamson's latest album seem more restrained than usual, his jazz-noir ambitions trimmed to a blues-funk palette of bass and drum grooves carrying Hammond organ or piano parts, with just the occasional solo horn part.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 80
    How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?
    Her best album in about a decade.
    • Metascore: 75
    • Critic Score 80
    Interstellar
    It's Rose's harmonies that make the album special: warm and breathy, they seem to sidle gently into position, rather than cut with razor precision.
    • Metascore: 77
    • Critic Score 80
    Sonik Kicks
    While not as immediately career-defining as Wake Up the Nation, there's no denying that with Sonik Kicks, Paul Weller is continuing the courageous, exploratory course established on 2008's 22 Dreams.
    • Metascore: 80
    • Critic Score 80
    Break It Yourself
    When it all comes together, with the sinuous, haunting grace of "Near Death Experience Experience" or the jaunty élan of "Danse Carribe", the results more than justify the sometimes obtuse methods.
    • Metascore: 67
    • Critic Score 80
    The Pines
    Phantom Limb have refined their sound further to more clearly occupy the kind of country-soul territory once inhabited by the likes of Dobie Gray and The Staple Singers.
    • Metascore: 77
    • Critic Score 80
    We All Raise Our Voices to the Air: Live Songs 04.11.08
    The band's mix of intelligence and drive, and their blend of guitar, accordion, organ and violin, echoes Arcade Fire. Certainly, Colin Meloy's songs have a comparable ambition.
    • Metascore: 69
    • Critic Score 80
    SSSS
    The most potent and inventive electronica album I've heard in ages, a masterclass in punchy bleepscaping right from the low-register throb that opens "Lowly".
    • Metascore: 72
    • Critic Score 80
    Port of Morrow
    By the second listen, it's somehow found its place in one's affections, despite its lack of obvious hooks.
    • Metascore: 77
    • Critic Score 80
    Faithful Man
    What's not in doubt is how faithfully he's stuck to the core deep-soul verities, with a delivery that vaults from spoken sermonising to raw, impassioned hurt in an instant.
    • Metascore: 81
    • Critic Score 80
    Sweet Heart Sweet Light
    Sweet Heart Sweet Light is infused with an uplifting lust for life.
    • Metascore: 64
    • Critic Score 80
    MDNA
    MDNA represents a determined, no-nonsense restatement of the Madonna brand.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Critic Score 80
    Rocket Juice & the Moon
    It all comes together more fruitfully on the ensuing "Hey, Shooter." [...] From there, it gets more fecund than ever.
    • Metascore: 67
    • Critic Score 80
    Our Version of Events
    This ability to tiptoe between opposing positions brings a pleasing depth and grain to some of her songs.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Critic Score 80
    Mountain Echo
    With her delivery tacking impressively between sweet and smoky, "On the Road" recalls what happened when the Kind of Blue influence hit the likes of Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin.
    • Metascore: 86
    • Critic Score 80
    Locked Down
    The result is a dark, steamy sound that comes crawling from the Louisiana swamp like a mean-tempered 'gator.
    • Metascore: 74
    • Critic Score 80
    Folila
    Taken together, the results demonstrate how adeptly Amadou & Mariam straddle both local and global, with a truly "world" music that deserves mainstream chart success rather than niche appreciation.
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