The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,073 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: 1,595 out of 2073
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2073
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2073
2073 music reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Resistance
    The Resistance, the crispest Muse album yet, is unapologetically and ambitiously beautiful.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Man On The Moon: The End Of Day
    Man on the Moon, the debut album from this rapper-singer from Cleveland, is a colossal, and mystifying, missed opportunity, misguided if it is in fact guided at all.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mi Plan
    The songs stay bright, friendly and generalized yet heartfelt, awaiting the singalongs they invite in Ms. Furtado’s latest language.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Central Market
    On Central Market, Mr. Braxton’s first full album under his own name in seven years, he has moved forward with exponentially more complicated music. It’s exponentially more entertaining, too.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Haih...Or Amortecedor
    Haih or Amortecedor is a deliberate but merry throwback. Its new songs reclaim the early Mutantes sound.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Joy
    Steve Lillywhite’s clear and ungimmicky production makes Joy sound like the band members onstage responding to one another.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II
    It doesn’t reflect a lack of evolution, or even a regression, but rather the completion of a circle--and probably a landing pad, even as the world continues to whiz by.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love Drunk
    Its self-titled debut was pop-emo at its dimmest, but Love Drunk is, in places, a pleasant improvement, with the band’s brattier instincts tamped down.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Strange Arrangement
    By layering his naive vocals and harmonizing with himself, he conjures a forceful richness, but when it’s just his unadorned voice, aching its way through a melody with audible strain--say, at the top of 'Shiny & New,' where he slithers in and out of the correct pitch as if drunk--his structure begins to collapse.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Curse Your Branches
    His identity crisis, drinking binges and family tensions are chronicled in chunky, rootsy rockers that can be stately or foot-stomping--and can, perhaps, offer some resolution.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Red
    Originality, nostalgia, sincerity, camp--none of these are stable elements in Datarock’s world, which may explain why Red comes across as well as it does.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Look To You
    She’s tentatively climbing back into the pop machinery, no longer invincible but showing a diva’s determination.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Classic
    Its sound is lustrous, its personnel impeccable. What’s missing is the sense of conviction that Mr. Nelson brings to his strongest work.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Old, Familiar Friend
    A sturdy power-pop effort in the Paul McCartney vein, it projects an air of self-effacement.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Keep On Loving You
    On Keep On Loving You, her spotty 25th studio album, her voice still has that slightly nasal quality that makes it sound always on the edge of a harangue, even though she rarely bares her fangs anymore.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blood From Stars
    If Mr. Henry wants to suggest a less phlegmatic Tom Waits, as often seems the case here, he could stand to loosen up further. His lyrics can feel too artful, too self-conscious.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    King Of Jeans
    There’s a blunt but effective wit at work here, pressed into the service of misanthropy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wind's Poem
    Mount Eerie’s third album, is deeply homemade and crazily dynamic, running from quiet harmonium-and-voice drones to black-metal cataclysm.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Turn Me Loose
    Turn Me Loose also has its share of kiss-offs and entreaties--Ledisi can manage both, though vulnerability eludes her even on a track called 'Alone'--and enough tight musicianship to satisfy any retro-soul partisan.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stupid Love
    This is a scattered, sometimes awkward effort from a singer who has been, until now, tonally consistent and confident.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Destination Tokyo
    Their new album, Destination Tokyo, casts a spell in unpolished ways, evoking a gritty hybrid of Krautrock, dance-rock and art-punk.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    See Mystery Lights
    It’s indie-rock party music, and its spare-parts feeling comes honestly.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anjulie
    All together it makes for an often sumptuous debut album of lithe, modern coffeehouse soul (in senses musical and literal: Hear Music is a joint venture between Starbucks and Concord Music Group) that smartly avoids the bohemian.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Guilty Pleasure
    Ms. Tisdale, an average singer, gasps on 'Hot Mess.' "I’m leaving every piece of my conscience behind." But being bad, it turns out, is sort of boring.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Battlefield
    Battlefield, her expertly constructed second album, upholds a darker, more experienced tone without losing an ounce of melodrama.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Leave This Town
    At best Leave This Town inches beyond its predecessor, deeply tunneled into the hard-rock mainstream but a touch more confident and eclectic.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Central Dust
    It’s all a clear throwback, but the starkly countrified vibe underscores the plaintive cast of Mr. Farrar’s lyrics.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life On Earth
    She moves slowly, but she’s a good musician and singer; this is the surprise, because in her line of work you expect more dishevelment.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rated O
    The cuts are manic psychedelic jams--there’s even a sitar--riding electronic drones and throbbing, insistent riffs. Timbres of instruments are barbed with fuzz tone and static; the voices that infrequently appear might be shouting unintelligibly or nearly buried in the mix.
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