The Independent (UK)'s Scores

  • Music
Select another publication »
For 2,192 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 Radical Optimism
Lowest review score: 0 Donda
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,175 out of 2192
  2. Mixed: 988 out of 2192
  3. Negative: 29 out of 2192
2192 music reviews
view
per page
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
    A surprising meditation on fatherhood, family and friendship. Kendrick Lamar’s work has always been introspective, but Mr Morale and the Big Steppers – with guest spots from artists including Florence Welch, Beth Gibbons, Summer Walker and Sampha – has a delicacy and tenderness to it that is unprecedented for the father of two from Compton, California. Because of this, Mr Morale and The Big Steppers is most redolent of Lamar’s second album good kid, m.A.A.d city.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Hamilton Mixtape
    Wherever you look, there’s a fierce artistic sensibility at work.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Assume Form
    The good news is that the perma-brilliant James Blake has flooded his fourth album--Assume Form--with euphoric sepia soul and loved-up doo-wop. His trademark intelligence, honesty and pin-drop production remain intact.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Wildflower
    The wonderful Wildflower is cause for celebration, its Zappa/Beasties-style collage of voices, samples, beats, sounds, and especially laughter offering a joyous affirmation of life.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lucifer on the Sofa
    It’s an album fuelled by southern heat, with plenty of grit to boot. Their best yet.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
    The subtle melodies on The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We can take their time to gleam through the murk. So give it time and space at night, when you’re alone, to allow its wild darkness to shine.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Ascension
    I was rendered wonderfully weightless by a journey that delivered whole galaxies of nuance in a universal context. Trust me: the force is strong in this one.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Saint Cloud
    This is the most country she has ever sounded. The most lavish, too, despite the album having been stripped back to only its most necessary parts.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    LP1
    FKA Twigs emerges the high priestess of R&B's latest corruption, and the world will kneel at the altar.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    {Awayland}
    With results both as pleasurable, as inventive and as absorbing as these, there seems no danger that the impact of {Awayland} will be merely momentary.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    We Are Not Your Kind
    The sheer ambition on We Are Not Your Kind is just as staggering. ... This may be one of the band’s most personal records, but the rage they capture is universally felt.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Voyage
    It’s a terrific, family-friendly smorgasbord of a record that delivers all the classic ABBA flavours.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This Is Where I Live
    It’s all delivered with welcoming warmth and humility, over impeccably buttoned-down soul-funk grooves.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rumours [35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    It remains one of pop's most impervious generational touchstones.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Director's Cut
    There's a consistency and homogeneity about the 11 tracks (seven from The Red Shoes, four from The Sensual World) which echoes her work on Aerial, and which lends the project a character entirely its own.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    RE-ANIMATOR
    Re-Animator packs global anxiety and paranoia into exquisitely crafted songs. A superb album.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Lost Tapes
    Despite restlessly exploring hitherto untrodden musical terrain, there are precious few wasted seconds in these three hours.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    22, A Million
    Everything about the album is fragmented, and dizzying in the vein of Samuel Beckett’s Not I or T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land. Even the lyric sheet is a glorious mess.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Trouble in Paradise
    At only nine tracks long, but with every one of them worthy of single status, it displays, as pop albums go, both rare economy and staggering consistency.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Landing On A Hundred
    Lone soul genius Cody ChesnuTT's in dazzling form on Landing on a Hundred, which must be the most impressive crowd-funded album ever.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Pushin' Against a Stone
    It's music that slips between the generic niches favoured by broadcasters; but isn't that exactly where the most interesting music comes from?
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Colours
    [The] debut album sparkles with invention and throbs with emotion.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down
    It's a relief to report that Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down is his best effort by far since Chavez Ravine.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Inspiration Information/Wings of Love
    Inspiration Information [is] repackaged with an extra disc of pieces recorded since then, which show his abilities undiminished by age.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    COWBOY CARTER
    Across 27 tracks, almost all with compellingly muscular melodies, she whips and neigh-neighs through every conceivable form of classic and modern country, roping in elements of opera, rock and hip-hop at her commanding, virtuosic whim. .... Cowboy Carter keeps on dealing aces.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Constant Bop
    For the most part, this is an album that restores faith in the sheer joy of music.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Golden Sings That Have Been Sung
    As with many great albums, successive hearings reveal more clearly the elliptical tunes at the heart of these eight quietly intense pieces, climaxing with the eight-minute “Age Old Tale”, a masterly band performance.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Behind the Counter with Max Richter
    Max Richter’s only motive here is beauty, drawn from all corners of his musical interests, which are many and varied. The result is a journey that takes one from Renaissance choral polyphony to the inventive precocity of teen duo Let’s Eat Grandma, via Bach and Handel, minimalism, post-rock and electronica, with nary a misstep in sound, selection or sequence. ... A rare treat.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Once I Was an Eagle
    Once I Was an Eagle is a work that demands to be taken as a whole, another reminder of the peculiar power of the album form, despite frequent premature declarations of its redundancy.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    My 21st Century Blues
    A very brave, strong record. Hats off, Raye. These blues are smoking hot.
Page: