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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    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lady & Gentlemen
    It's Mr. Haggard who leads her toward her best performances.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    SuperHeavy
    An almost total lack of good songs constitutes the album's basic problem. Once that's understood, the record becomes sort of entertaining: gaudy, vacuous, densely mannered.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Own the Night
    It owns its shamelessness. That cocksure stance helps to make it one of the most convincing albums of the year, a huge leap forward for a group that threatened to become famous without leaving a true mark.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dedicated: A Salute to the 5 Royales
    The songs rise or fall with their singers--thumbs up for Bettye LaVette, Dan Penn, B. B. King and Shemekia Copeland--and the performances are stalwart enough. But they can't come close to the rip-snorting gusto of the "5" Royales nearly half a century ago.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dreams Come True
    The disparate parts align into a moody, liminal funk, orchestrating songs that obsess over a relationship irrevocably slipping away.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Seeds We Sow
    His lyrics philosophize about love, loss and passing time. But his guitar geekery is the album's governing force, and it's usually for the better.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wild Flag
    The meeting point for the songwriting is in structures that are pushier than Helium's and less knotty than Sleater-Kinney's - in other words, closer to the garage and to Patti Smith's kind of punk.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Goldwing
    The songs are stubbornly engaging, filled with characters who drink and regret it, and struggle to understand their own decisions. Tucked amid the pastiche are good laments like "Taking It Easy Too Long," a rueful self-evaluation, and "Love the Way You Walk Away," a brokenhearted shrug.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Here for a Good Time
    At this point he's most genuine when being reasonable, wistful, reassuring or grateful.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lenses Alien
    A leaner album that manages to feel rattling and unruly, even if it's less of a surprise.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tha Carter IV
    Because Lil Wayne has been so sharp, so dexterous in the past, it's tempting (and ultimately necessary) to overanalyze him. But even on this album's weak tracks, and there are several, he remains a commanding presence, deploying just enough of his insistent croak to tether the song together.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hell On Heels
    The songs have the feeling of rejuvenative writing, small experiments in genre and style for artists versed in country's classic modes but who rarely get to fiddle around with them.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I'm with You
    Mr. Klinghoffer leaves only a few faint marks, most notably on the contemplative "Brendan's Death Song," which ends with two moving minutes of chaos with Mr. Kiedis wailing and the drummer Chad Smith bashing away. More of this would be welcome on this overly polite album: this band once thrived on such abandon.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    From Africa With Fury: Rise
    As the Afrobeat funk cross-hatches its syncopations and sets brasses against saxophones, the production captures the antiphonal clarity without sacrificing brawn.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Program 91
    Program 91, the band's first album on Smalltown Supersound, is light as air, with lyrics about young love and frustration, and guitar tones so transparent they sound almost African.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What Matters Most
    Some of her high notes may have slipped away, but the body of her instrument has ripened. The overall tone is fairly subdued.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Johnny Boy Would Love This: A Tribute to John Martyn
    Like most tribute albums, Johnny Boy Would Love This is mixed, with a few misfires, like Snow Patrol's overblown "May You Never." But Mr. Martyn's pensive, moody spirit comes through, and the tribute should send listeners back to his own 1973 masterpiece, "Solid Air."
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jeff Bridges
    In general there's the dusky, reverberant sound of the album, which turns Mr. Bridges into a cog in the T Bone Burnett Americana machine.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ferrari Boyz
    The songs get the gravity and mystery they've earned.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Marble Son
    Guitars and keyboards take varying paths through each song, gathering for dynamic swells that grow overwhelming, and overlapping in ways that only appear to be serendipitous. There's nothing neo- about this band's psychedelia.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stranger Me
    Spookiness suits her.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Watch the Throne
    Instead of a monolithic mandate delivered from on high, Watch the Throne delivers something more splintered and haphazard, a legitimate engagement with what it means to be new, in the now. It's a small record by big men with nothing to lose but bigness itself.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Owl Splinters
    I've put it on many times, but this is a record that takes a while for the memory to map, so smoky are its landmarks.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Mosaic Project
    The caliber of these artists speaks for itself; there's no sense of compromise here, or of an agenda limiting the options. And Ms. Carrington, who produced the album, brings accessibility and continuity to the listening experience.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sky Full of Holes
    Fountains of Wayne's music has its heart in the 1970's of the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, Stealers Wheel and Nick Lowe, full of strummed acoustic and electric guitars, repeated octaves on the piano and wordless vocal-harmony choruses.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cerebral Ballzy
    He sounds like a chaos orchestrator--the sound of his voice alone can get people moving in the wrong direction--and he's the best part of this adrenalized fecklessness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Red Hot + Rio 2
    Every collaboration sounds downright elated, and the cross-cultural derangement of tropicalia easily shines through these 21st-century revamps.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mega Rama
    There are plenty of good songs on Mega Rama (Uninhabitable Mansions), the debut album by Radical Dads, and one great one.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    LP1
    Her voice is a loose cannon; LP1 figures out how to aim it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Here I Am
    It's a chewy and moody R&B album on which Ms. Rowland sounds assured and vital. Or, at minimum, is made to sound that way.
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