The Independent (UK)'s Scores

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For 2,194 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Hit Me Hard and Soft
Lowest review score: 0 Donda
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,177 out of 2194
  2. Mixed: 988 out of 2194
  3. Negative: 29 out of 2194
2194 music reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stories Don't End
    After a while the regretful, melancholy tone wearies one's sympathies.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crazy Clown Time
    It's not a bad album as much, but to anyone familiar with Lynch's other work, it's entirely predictable in sound and style.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Map of the Soul: Persona
    They’ve formed their own blueprint in which the messages they purvey and the grandiose shows they stage are our main point of interest, but the music, production-wise, falls a little by the wayside when it comes to breaking new ground.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It Won't Always Be like This
    Hewson’s songwriting is definitely up to snuff, although occasionally lapses into cliches.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Invisible Way
    This throws most of one's attention on the vocals, always the most engagingly evanescent aspect of their sound.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The 1975
    With their lyrical focus on teen sex, money and the misplaced glamour of crime, at times it's like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, for boys.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harry Styles
    Styles has opened himself up, as best he can, to his audience, and by gathering a solid team around him to help achieve that he’s created an immersive, well-produced collection of songs that isn’t trying to prove anything in particular to anyone.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sings Favorites
    As might be expected, the favourites chosen by Mark Kozelek for his covers album are predominantly those reflecting cloudy, sometimes ambivalent emotional responses.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ready to Die
    Throughout, he's supported by Stooges guitar riffing of brutal directness and simplicity, occasionally fattened by the horns that lend an apt touch of soul sleaze to the latter track.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Silhouettes and Statues: A Gothic Revolution 1978-1986 [Box Set]
    Oddly, there’s nothing here from Echo & The Bunnymen, despite the inclusion of borderline cases like The Damned, The Mission and Adam And The Ants, and a host of lesser bands creating the musical equivalent of smeared mascara. But there’s a broad range of tangential directions sheltering under the otherwise welcoming umbrella of Silhouettes & Statues.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Luminous
    It’s not bad, as such, but like Primal Scream it promises more than it delivers.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Krzysztof Penderecki: Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima; Polymorphia; Jonny Greenwood: Popcorn Superhet Receiver; 48 Responses to Polymorphia
    The melancholy mood pervades throughout, into the itchy, insect flurries of Penderecki's Polymorphia, for 48 strings, and Greenwood's 48 Responses To Polymorphia.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sleep Well Beast
    Sleep Well Beast, like all The National’s albums, occupies troubled territory. These are songs about the fleeting impermanence of joy, compared to the lingering bruise of despair, and how hard it is to live in this unfairly weighted emotional space. It’s a struggle embodied in Matt Berninger’s enervated, murmurous baritone.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Last Days of Meaning
    As usual with Sawhney, it's typically eclectic, and surprisingly effective.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Praxis Makes Perfect
    Sadly, the decision to tell Feltrinelli's story in the same period technopop music as Stainless Style sabotages its impact.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Road From Memphis
    He's no fool: the result is an even more potent clutch of instrumentals, punctuated with the occasional vocal from Sharon Jones and some surprising male singers, including The National's Matt Berninger and Lou Reed.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beautiful Trauma
    Secure behind the protective pop wall erected by producers such as Max Martin and the ubiquitous Greg Kurstin, there’s little room for originality here. Which may be for the best, given the mid-album limpness imposed by the gratingly wistful, cello-draped childhood yearning of “Barbies”, which oozes insincerity. Pink’s on safer ground riding the pumping pop-funk of “Secrets” and the title-track.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hollow Bones
    The blues and soul power are real, even as racial lines are leered and sneered at, the sort of ballsiness that could make rock breathe freely again.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anthems for Doomed Youth
    If the solutions offered are sometimes better than expected, they’re also, frequently, tentative and tired.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gold Dust
    In some cases, as in "Cloud on My Tongue", the orchestrations serve as little more than swaddling blankets. But the more thoughtful rearrangements can be transformative.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    English Graffiti
    Whenever thoughts here turn to love, the results are not pretty.... But when antipathy rules, things go with a fizzy enthusiasm that’s quite infectious.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Artificial Sweeteners
    Being F&M, they can’t help adding funky, syncopated twitches to break up the four-square march occasionally.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Standards
    There’s a confidence and flexibility to his disparate themes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Is 4 Lovers
    There’s still a nagging sense that the band are resting on their laurels. The record is still good – DFA are too talented for it to be otherwise – but it’s a little deflating for a band whose history is built on boundary-pushing.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Big Day
    The Big Day is like a lot of weddings: too long and occasionally a little dull – with one or two unforgettable moments.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fibs
    FIBS highlights Meredith as a much-needed creative force. Her shape-shifting genre-defiance constantly surprises and intrigues, but it’s good to get back down to Earth afterwards.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gang Signs & Prayer
    The usual bouts of brusque dissing rub shoulders with love songs, fond tributes to his mom, and a fulsome, swaying devotional hymn “Blinded By Your Grace Pt. 2”. But it’s the engaging sense of vulnerability and self-deprecation that brings depth and charm to Gang Signs & Prayer.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Every Man Should Know
    Connick displays his versatility with the bossa nova sway of “I Love Her”, the New Orleans R&B of “S'pposed To Be” and “You've Got It”, and the sentimental country stylings of “Greatest Love Story”.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In the Blue Light
    In the Blue Light is not the sound of a man reinventing himself, nor is it a final meditation on decades gone. But in shining a light on a handful of overlooked gems, Simon has succeeded brilliantly.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Smash the System
    The songs are littered with piquant period references--Eric Bristow, Bruce Lee, Roman Polanski, spaghetti hoops--often in absurd situations, such as the mash-up of teutonic terrorism and mad-scientist sci-fi that is “Ulrike Meinhof’s Brain Is Missing”. But Haines’s genuine affection shines through fond tributes like the chugging glam boogie “Marc Bolan Blues” and acid-folk exploration “The Incredible String Band.”
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