The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,075 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Live in Europe 1967: Best of the Bootleg, Vol. 1
Lowest review score: 0 Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,597 out of 2075
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2075
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2075
2075 music reviews
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    GO:OD AM
    One of the most musically appealing hip-hop LPs of the year. It’s lush and crisp, and also diverse.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    La Di Da Di
    Battles thinks hard and kicks harder.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thunderbitch
    It’s old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll that is never studied or antiquarian; Thunderbitch still feels the zap.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Me
    Smartly and shrewdly, Empress Of provides the neatness of pop minus the reassurance.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Repentless
    Repentless is comfortable, full of certainty, good enough.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Paper Gods
    Largely, though, Duran Duran chooses its collaborators wisely here, opting for some from that golden age, like Mr. [Nile] Rodgers, or those who’ve internalized that era’s balance of sleaze and good cheer, like Mark Ronson.... So long as Mr. Le Bon is oozing atop brisk arrangements like this, the specifics of the words don’t much matter. Everyone here has the posture down cold.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Freedom & Surrender
    Its sound runs slicker and punchier than Ms. Wright’s previous standard.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beauty Behind the Madness
    The music has moved from the shadowy haze of trip-hop to an emphatic, monumental clarity--high-end pop craftsmanship. The production still conjures huge spaces, but now they are brightly illuminated, with each sound in crisp focus.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Depression Cherry
    You’ve heard these sounds before, and you’ve felt these feelings before. The added value here, if you want it, is the organization and rigor of the blankness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    High
    The standard narrative is that a band’s second record reflects experience, wisdom or moderation, and High has a bit of that in a larger and more managed sound.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    #AndSeeThatsTheThing [EP]
    On this EP, the duets are more balanced, be it “Hey There” or the rising hit “Back Up,” a back-and-forth with Big Sean.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Midnight
    On Midnight, everything’s come undone, often for the better. In a few places, it recalls “Tango in the Night,” Fleetwood Mac’s lustrous last (noteworthy) gasp from 1987. Ms. Potter doesn’t quite have the tragedy Stevie Nicks so effortlessly channels, but she nonetheless finds moody pockets for her voice while the band hones a chilly take on brisk rock.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jessie Jones
    It all sounds quickly made, yet clear and confident.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Compton
    Musically, it’s ornate and grand-scaled, and somehow also deft.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At Least for Now
    An album very much about the act of becoming, with a tightrope balance of dramatic artifice and diaristic detail.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Most Lamentable Tragedy
    The high, both in the story line and in the course of the album, is temporary. But it’s one of several vertiginous peaks on a pretty vertiginous record.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cascade
    The standard comment about Mr. Basinski’s work is that its evocation of decay grips your emotions and reduces you to jelly, though I don’t get that so much from Cascade.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Blade
    In 2013, she released the elegantly scarred “Like a Rose,” a striking album that showed her to be a sly, progressive songwriter and a nimble, tradition-minded singer. At its best, The Blade, her follow-up, continues that arc.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Currents
    Currents is a tour de force for the songwriter and his gizmos. But it’s also decidedly hermetic, nearly airless.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Something More Than Free
    The best of them glow with bittersweet empathy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Communion
    Accepting the accomplishments on this album of diet club music perhaps requires a suspension of distaste for bandwagoners and carpetbaggers. But in this album’s most thrilling moments, whether the music is effective because it’s familiar or familiar because it’s effective almost ceases to be a concern.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ego Death
    There’s convincing thump at work here, but not so much as to overwhelm the lustrous keyboards, the nuzzling bass, the way several of the songs unfurl like blooming roses.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wildheart
    He doesn’t always try to play the good guy or the heartthrob, either. The music, meanwhile, places sinuous tunes, pushy guitars and lush vocals against uneasy backdrops--seductive, but never without second thoughts.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Feels Like
    Bully has in Ms. Bognanno a special weapon. She’s a bracing songwriter, full of quick jabs and mundane details that end up being full of import. As a singer, she’s evocative, especially when her vocals are double tracked.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Don't Weigh Down the Light
    A true post-folk record, dyed in the acoustic sound of the English and Californian folk movements of the late 1960s and early ’70s, but not particularly scholarly or eccentric.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love Life
    Reinvention isn’t exciting unless there’s something existing to reinvent. A record like this--with grown-up passions and accountable moods, stirring key modulations, gauzy slow jams and hyper-mainstream ballads--maintains the tradition.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fool
    Ms. Weaver’s lead vocals sound natural and personal, while Mr. Blanco and Mr. Angelakos build heroic crescendos for her.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Original High
    While there are a few missteps--Mr. Lambert doesn’t have the R&B sultriness required for “Underground,” and “Rumors” bizarrely cribs the jaunty synth pattern from Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop”--there are almost no extravagances. After years of spectacle, Mr. Lambert may have been saved by modesty.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bad Plus Joshua Redman
    As a chemistry experiment, the album is a knockout.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything Is 4
    Everything Is 4 is his second strong album in a row.... Here, Mr. Derulo is a shameless collaborator, a gleeful regurgitator of styles, and one of the most surprisingly savvy decision makers in pop.
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