For 2,073 reviews, this publication has graded:
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55% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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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: | Live in Europe 1967: Best of the Bootleg, Vol. 1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest review score: | Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,595 out of 2073
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Mixed: 443 out of 2073
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Negative: 35 out of 2073
2073
music
reviews
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- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
As the title suggests, it's a covers album, fond and focused.- The New York Times
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You’re hearing an overall group, overall sound, an hourlong unity. It’s a great nightclub set--about a quarter of it taken from his record “A River Ain’t Too Much to Love,” with a few older Smog songs (“Bathysphere,” “Our Anniversary”)--by a bar band that happens to have Bill Callahan in it.- The New York Times
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The combination of seismic guitars and high vocals looks to My Morning Jacket, Kings of Leon and Crazy Horse--sometimes all too obviously. But Alberta Cross sets aside those American bands’ redemptive undercurrents of blues and gospel; instead, it plunges into the very English despair of bands like Pink Floyd.- The New York Times
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This is a dull album, revealing how over the space of three records, Mr. Albarn and Mr. Hewlett have moved from wacky conceptualists to self-satisfied dilettantes.- The New York Times
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There's ample melody in the music, and the lyrics hold anguish and malaise. But Broken Bells' production numbs the songs. What could have been cries from the heart are turned into in-jokes.- The New York Times
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They share the beat, tapping it on the bodhran, and slip in counterpoint from fiddle or Celtic harp. But they don’t try to make their collaborators sound Irish. Like the San Patricios, but with a happier outcome, they put Mexico first.- The New York Times
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Sometimes lush, sometimes turbulent, the arrangements make Mr. Chu’s melodies more luminous while they open up mysterious spaces behind lyrics that ponder continuity and collapse. It’s a splendid transformation.- The New York Times
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Get Off on the Pain is the year’s best country album so far, almost as brilliantly anguished as Mr. Allan’s 2003 masterpiece, “See if I Care.”- The New York Times
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Too many songs on The Pursuit paint their singer as an un-self-conscious lout, too sure of his hand (“We Run Things”) or his taste (“Mixtape”) or his centrality in the world (“Wheels”).- The New York Times
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Somber, arty and quintessentially British: that's Hidden the second album by These New Puritans.- The New York Times
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It’s still not easy to figure out exactly what Mr. Rogue has in mind with choruses like “They’ll lay their boot heel down for a solitary gun.” But the tunes, and the delight of singing them, are anything but unclear.- The New York Times
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Words tend to be swallowed in the mix, but what floats through hints at memories and self-searching: a carnival of introspection.- The New York Times
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Not all of American VI has such nerve, which was more common on the earliest releases in the series.- The New York Times
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This album, which he produced with the drummer Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, shudders with the tension of opposing ideals: folksiness and futurism, clarity and ambiguity.- The New York Times
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There’s good reason for both the length of the album and its occasional lavish moments. Ms. Newsom has discovered how to open up her music: to let it whisper and swell, to be swept into the purely musical pleasures of an ingenious arrangement or to let simplicity and silence speak for her.- The New York Times
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That sound has been changing, clearing up by degrees without sacrificing the band's greasy mysticism--"Blessed Black Wings" from 2004, engineered by Steve Albini, was a breakthrough--but here the band is really getting presentable.- The New York Times
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An album of modest scope but deep conviction, it registers more as a next step than a final gesture.- The New York Times
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For all the torments and uncertainties Mr. Mumford sings about on this album, there's the momentum of a hoedown to carry him through.- The New York Times
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The songs here — Baroque, sometimes arch pop, touching on classic country, Bowie and Queen — begin with sharp-tongued bitterness and, slowly, with detours, work their way through to what for Mr. Hynes seems like an uncomfortable, foreign feeling: bliss.- The New York Times
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After solo projects for both brothers, the regrouped Field Music remains concise but newly prolific on its third album, “Field Music (Measure)” (Memphis Industries), which is packed with 19 songs and a closing instrumental (actually two, including a hidden track).- The New York Times
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Made with Jake One, a producer of classic-soul proclivity and G-Unit pedigree, it’s a sumptuous vessel with room for redundancy.- The New York Times
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“Heligoland” comes across as an anthology rather than an album. It’s a dour collection of concepts and strategies — some successful — as Massive Attack ponders what to do after trip-hop.- The New York Times
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“Talking to You, Talking to Me” grants each Watson Twin more of a showcase, without abandoning their trademark vocal harmonies. Produced by Russell Pollard and J. Soda, members of the Los Angeles band Everest, it also puts a tougher spin on heartbreak, with a bit more grit and a lot more groove.- The New York Times
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Black Noise is slightly busier than Pantha du Prince’s sublime “This Bliss” (Dial) from 2007, a pensive, slender and tough album that remains his high-water mark.- The New York Times
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Galactic’s cyber-savvy New Orleans funk remembers the past but stays hardheaded about the future.- The New York Times
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Accordingly, Jaheim is not at his best on ballads or on up-tempo numbers (a pair of which, “Another Round” and “Her,” weigh down the middle of this album), but he is on songs that combine the two.- The New York Times
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But there’s a strong presence to the album, with its meticulous atmosphere and granite consistency of tone. The chiming guitars of a pair of Erics (Pulido and Nichelson), and the tasteful work of a the drummer McKenzie Smith bring gravity to the band’s gloss on psychedelic folk.- The New York Times
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The songs might have been better as parodies than as imitations, although “Knockout” — a Coldplay homage backing a raunchy lyric — comes close to being both.- The New York Times
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Mr. Lamkin’s foul moods are a source of vitality on this gritty and amiable album, his songwriting accomplishing loads in compressed, tightly shelved spaces.- The New York Times
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Blackjazz was produced by Sean Beavan, who has worked with Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, and its sound skews dark but a bit cartoonish.- The New York Times
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