For 2,075 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 | |
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Lowest review score: | Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,597 out of 2075
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Mixed: 443 out of 2075
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Negative: 35 out of 2075
2075
music
reviews
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- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
It's an album so strong and so unexpected that it may change the way people hear all its predecessors. And that's just a start. Listen long enough, and this album might change the way you hear lots of other bands, too.- The New York Times
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It is something most indie-rock bands take a long time to achieve, if ever: a heavy footfall, a no-half-stepping opus, a defining statement. [9 Oct 2005]- The New York Times
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You probably won't hear a better CD all year long. [30 Jan 2006]- The New York Times
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It captures Davis's finest working band at its apogee, straining at the limits of post-bop refinement.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 24, 2011
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The outstanding “Clarity” is her first full-length album, full of songs that are stitched so tightly and varnished so brightly that they cease to be mere pastiche and transcend into something utterly new.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 10, 2019
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The music still sounds contemporary and alive. ... Every song exults in the architectural savvy of a musician who, from the drumbeat up, seemed to know exactly how he’d be jamming with himself as he built the song. ... A handful [of the previously unreleased material] — including the absolute standout, “Purple Music” — are gems; none is a dud.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 27, 2019
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“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is daring in a new way, scrambling and shattering the pop-song structures that once grounded her. ... I am floored by this record. I hear freedom, too. These songs make some breathtaking hairpin turns. ... It’s not just the wild craftsmanship of each song. It’s also that she’s fearless about what she’s doing: with sounds, with structures, with people’s expectations.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 17, 2020
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One of the geeky joys of “Wildflowers and All the Rest” is observing Petty at the absolute peak of his songwriting powers, making small, intelligent tweaks to these songs in progress. Sometimes it’s a single world, a few letters. ... The deep despair is there, too, in the rich soil of these songs. But what makes it bearable, and makes the record so timelessly listenable, is everything else that’s mixed in: humor, wisdom, a little randiness and a palpable sense of hope.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 15, 2020
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Humanity isn’t exactly humane in the songs on “Hellfire,” the caustic, exhilarating third album — a masterpiece — by the English band black midi. Each song on “Hellfire” is a whirlwind of virtuosity and structure, an idiom-hopping decathlon of meter shifts, barbed harmonies and arrangements that can veer anywhere at any moment.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 14, 2022
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Beyoncé’s singing here transcends any price tag. The range of her voice nears the galactic; the imagination powering it qualifies as cinema. ... Its sense of adventure is off the genre’s map, yet very much aware of every coordinate. It’s an achievement of synthesis that never sounds slavish or synthetic. These songs are testing this music, celebrating how capacious it is, how pliable.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 1, 2022
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- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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It may be Mr. Darnielle's best album so far (which is saying a lot) and his most straightforwardly autobiographical (which isn't saying much). [25 Apr 2005]- The New York Times
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What's most exciting about ''Black Sheep Boy'' is that Okkervil River sounds more than ever like a band. [9 Apr 2005]- The New York Times
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There's a new layer of perspective on her magnificent third album. [3 Oct 2005]- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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It is a fully legitimate, clear and strong rock 'n' roll record in the band's own style. And it may really be the best one.- The New York Times
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It’s more experimental yet catchier, more introspective yet more assertive, by turns gloomier and funnier, and above all richer in both sound and implication. “Return to Cookie Mountain” is simply one of this year’s best albums.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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As a sustained effort, it represents the band’s sharpest and most satisfying work, and one of the most accomplished albums of its kind this year.- The New York Times
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Simultaneously brutal and hilarious, and bristling with wake-up-call urgency, “The Black Parade” may prove to be the best rock record of the year.- The New York Times
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Barring some last-minute surprise, he has made the best hip-hop album of the year. [9 Nov 2006]- The New York Times
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These clattering and clear-eyed tracks add up to something singular. [27 Nov 2006]- The New York Times
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Arcade Fire mines classic U2 and Bruce Springsteen far better than the Killers recently did. And Arcade Fire didn’t lose its own voice in an attempt to sound bigger and grander. [5 Mar 2007]- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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The year’s most exciting rock ’n’ roll album. [26 Feb 2007]- The New York Times
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“The Reminder” is a modestly scaled but quietly profound pop gem: sometimes intimate, sometimes exuberant, filled with love songs and hints of mystery. [15 Apr 2007]- The New York Times
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Somehow The Con is even more obsessive sounding than Tegan and Sara’s earlier work, and it’s probably even better; it could well be one of the year’s best albums.- The New York Times
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Lupe Fiasco and his producers--mostly Soundtrakk--have clarified the lyrics and brought out the hooks. The result is a three-act allegory that’s also one of the year’s best hip-hop albums.- The New York Times
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Album is one of the year’s most bracing pop releases, and one of the best, a devastatingly fresh reframing of the pop songbook.- 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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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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This band's self-titled debut (on Fat Possum) is disarming all the same, certain to be one of the year's most unabashedly beautiful albums.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 11, 2011
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That Take Care is an almost complete success is no small feat, especially given that it's an accomplishment of form more than of content, content having been handled assuredly on the last two Drake releases- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 16, 2011
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Apocalypse is bolder and clearer, less blissed-out and more grippingly immediate than [2011's The Golden Age of Apocalypse].- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 10, 2013
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You sense that he’s walked past those doors, revising his ideas, waiting, looking for something. He’s found it. Listen through his astonishing new album, Dream River, and you will hear, lined up neatly, his trademarks.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 18, 2013
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None of [the guest vocals] disrupt Drake’s effortless triumph over mainstream rap excess.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 27, 2013
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The songs are alert to the current sound of clubs and radio, but not trapped by it; the refrains are terse and direct, but what happens between them isn’t formulaic. And while Beyoncé constructed the songs with a phalanx of collaborators, they all know better than to eclipse her creamy, soulful voice.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 13, 2013
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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.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 29, 2015
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[A] rather brilliant record.... You almost want to hold the whole thing still, flatten it out and study it.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 21, 2015
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["Sorry,"] is a combative, unglossy track on an album full of them. ... As she did with her 2013 album, “Beyoncé,” she has also paired the music with full-length video that expands and deepens its impact.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 25, 2016
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It is spartan but sumptuous, emotionally acute but plain-spoken. There’s an extraordinary sense of calm pervading this album, one of the year’s most finely drawn.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 14, 2016
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There is sad music, which is to say music that deploys lyrical or musical motifs meant to connote misery. And then there is this album, which mostly exists in a space beyond those concerns. It is an album because a musician made it and it is broken up into songs, but it is also a diary, a balled-up tissue, found art.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 22, 2017
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- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 29, 2017
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Tart and punchy.... Sometimes boisterous, sometimes swampy, rarely fanciful album--it’s Mr. Lamar’s version of the creeping paranoia that has become de rigueur for midcareer Drake. And yet this is likely Mr. Lamar’s most jubilant album, the one in which his rhymes are the least tangled.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 17, 2017
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The remasters find some new glimmers of clarity and sparkle, particularly on guitar sounds, but aren’t startlingly different from past versions. ... After 20 years, it’s clear that “OK Computer” was the album on which Radiohead most strongly embraced and, simultaneously, confronted the legacy of the Beatles.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 22, 2017
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Soul of a Woman is a final set of genre-perfect old-school soul: brisk rumba-soul in “Sail On,” hand-clapping neo-Motown in “Rumors,” a girl-group slow dance topped with hovering strings in “When I Saw Your Face.” The band sounds as if it’s playing live in the studio.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 15, 2017
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Time & Space is its outstanding second album, just over 25 minutes long, and an urgent, clear and bruising statement of purpose.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 21, 2018
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What’s most promising about the exuberant and impressive Invasion of Privacy--an album full of thoughtful gestures, few of them wasteful--is that it’s a catalog of directions Cardi, 25, might go in, slots she might fill, or even invent. ... A hip-hop album that doesn’t sound like any of its temporal peers.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 10, 2018
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Ms. Grande backs up her statements with song-and-dance mastery. ... She’s her own choir, support group and posse. While a few guest vocalists (Mr. Williams, Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliott) provide a little grit for contrast, Ms. Grande sails above any fray, past or present. Her aplomb is her triumph.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 29, 2018
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What she wants to say on Room 25 is complex: thoughts on community, sensuality, mortality and self-determination. ... Noname is a full-fledged maverick, but not an abrasive one. Phoelix’s production situates her in leisurely, atmospheric R&B, and there’s almost always the hint of a smile in her voice. But no one should mistake her soft, playful tone for submissiveness.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 17, 2018
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While the session is informal--he sniffles now and then, and at times something rattles in the piano--the performance is not sloppy for a moment. The one-take, real-time vocals are exquisite. .. He shifts musical styles and vocal personae at whim--melancholy, playful, devout, flirtatious--yet it’s all Prince. ... It’s a glimpse of a notoriously private artist doing his mysterious work.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 20, 2018
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On This Land, his third major-label studio album, his songwriting has caught up with his playing. ... It has something to do with the power of contrariness: that is, Clark’s determination to deliver the raw, analog, spontaneous opposite of crisply quantized digital content. And it has a lot to do with America in 2019, where division, frustration and seething anger can use an outlet with the historical resonance and emotional depth of the blues.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 20, 2019
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Although the album is punctuated by spoken-word interludes--bits of poetry, self-help, comedy and tribute--it is designed to flow as a whole, gradually infusing a room like incense or the smells of home cooking. ... And Solange’s voice is sure-footed and playful, confident that the music will follow her every whim. ... Outside a few prominent guest raps, Solange and her musicians slip the collaborators into the background. This is her space, her sanctuary.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 6, 2019
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Beyoncé joins their ranks [Paul Simon, David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Carlos Santana] soulfully and attentively, seeking full-fledged fusions. She mixes (apparently) personal thoughts and archetypal ones; she savors musical hybrids and rhythmic challenges; and she digs in to every line she sings. ... Unlike the movie that occasioned it, “The Lion King: The Gift” is no remake or reiteration, no faraway fable. It tells a story of its own.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 24, 2019
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Enchanting. ... It’s liquid, fast-moving and rerouting. Into it he mixes the soul-opening honk of Albert Ayler, full of enough breath to evoke a door blowing wide open; the winding intensity of John Coltrane; and the troubled placidity of Lester Young. And somehow, he never seems to need any more volume than Young did to get his point across.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 17, 2020
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“After Hours,” his rousing fourth studio album, is laden with sparkled trauma, kaleidoscopic emotional confusion, urgent and panting physical release paired with failed-state romantic dyspepsia.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 1, 2020
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Strange and exquisitely moving. ... Bridgers’s lyrical talent was evident on her 2017 debut, “Stranger in the Alps,” which had a few perfect songs but as a whole sometimes felt muted, languid and downcast. “Punisher,” though, moves along fluidly with its eyes to the vast sky. Bridgers’s arpeggiated guitar work remains quietly deft.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 19, 2020
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Some of the Vault tracks are early or alternate versions of familiar songs, but dozens are newly revealed. Prince’s original choices for the album hold up. But it’s a delight to hear so much more.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 25, 2020
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A thorough but imposing six hours of material, this collection is less about any specific unearthed gem than the larger transformation it charts.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 30, 2020
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Magnificent. ... Although she played all the instruments on “Little Oblivions” herself, she built out most of its arrangements so they could be performed with a full band onstage. This choice brings a new, sweeping dynamism to Baker’s music, and keeps “Little Oblivions” from feeling sonically repetitive.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 25, 2021
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Nuanced and often exceptional debut album. ... Songwriting flourish is emblematic of what Rodrigo has learned from Taylor Swift on this album (which, in shorthand, is Swift’s debut refracted through “Red”): nailing the precise language for an imprecise, complex emotional situation; and working through private stories in public fashion.- The New York Times
- Posted May 21, 2021
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“In These Silent Days” consolidates Carlile’s strengths: musical, writerly, maternal, political.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 5, 2021
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“Valentine,” her remarkable second album as Snail Mail, is alive with such crackling and revelatory emotion.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 5, 2021
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Even as she sings about desperation and uncertainty, on “30” Adele’s voice is more supple and purposeful than ever, articulating every consonant and constantly ornamenting her melodies without distracting from them. Details are fastidious.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 17, 2021
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“Dawn FM,” his fifth major-label album, is sleek and vigorous and also, again, a light reimagining of what big-tent music might sound like now, in an era when most global stars have abandoned the concept.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 10, 2022
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Throughout “Ants From Up Here,” and through the course of every song, Black Country, New Road tests and reinvents itself, creating music that sounds both intricately plotted and precarious.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 7, 2022
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Another collection of all originals, it is just as unrelenting as “Omega.”- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 2, 2022
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Superb. ... “Big Time” (which she recorded in Topanga, Calif., with the producer Jonathan Wilson) is charged with a continuous current of weighty, transformative and bracingly cleareyed emotion.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 3, 2022
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With a few takes of each song, the session tracks hint at how intuitively the Beatles worked. ... The new mixes on the expanded “Revolver,” made with current technology and 21st-century ears, are a pleasure; they have more transparency and a more three-dimensional sense of space than the 1966 mixes. ... The new set insists that the clearer it’s heard, the odder it is. “Revolver” still holds surprises.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 31, 2022
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Every so often, this imperative to speak big-tent truths can become strained and make her lyrics frustratingly vague, as on “Children of the Empire” (“we tend to live long, that’s why so many things go wrong”), but that song’s gorgeous vocal melody and Mering’s impassioned performance lift it beyond its limitations.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 17, 2022
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“Seven Psalms” stays true to Simon’s own instincts: observant, elliptical, perpetually questioning and quietly encompassing. ... It has places of lingering contemplation and it has sudden, startling changes; its informality is exactingly planned.- The New York Times
- Posted May 18, 2023
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It is just as electrifying as the group’s first two LPs, but with a wider sonic horizon and more parts in motion. And there’s a triumphant streak running through it that only heightens the pain of Branch’s demise.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 29, 2023
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Poignantly fraught, spiritually and sonically agitated. .... Her self-doubt is a powerful animating force. Throughout this album, she kiln-fires her anxieties into lyrics that cut deep. .... Here [on "Teenage Dream"], and in the most potent moments on “Guts,” Rodrigo’s music pulses with the verve of someone who’s been buttoned tight beginning to come loose. Unraveling is messy business, but it is also freedom.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 8, 2023
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“Black Rainbows” is one songwriter’s leap into artistic freedom, unconcerned with genre expectations or radio formats. It’s also one more sign that songwriters are strongest when they heed instincts rather than expectations.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 14, 2023
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It’s an album of breezy confidence and sly ingenuity, easily moving among futuristic electronics, 1990s nostalgia and Latin roots. .... Lavishly layered vocals nestle among glimmering electronic sounds and programmed beats, and on “Orquídeas,” her voice sounds completely untethered by gravity.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 11, 2024
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An album that sums up and expands what Usher does best. .... Throughout the album, Usher cruises through the musical and dramatic challenges that he has set for himself.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 9, 2024
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Eilish and Finneas further expand their sonic territory, reveling in electronics and plush subtleties, while they alternately honor and warp pop structures. .... In that song ["Blue"], and for a good part of the album, Eilish turns her gaze toward characters outside herself and sets aside easy pop satisfactions. She has earned the prerogatives of a superstar, and on “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” she’s using them.- The New York Times
- Posted May 17, 2024
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- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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The arrangements are light and immaculate, the vocals coo and cajole, and the melodies are addictive.- The New York Times
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"Pretty Toney" doesn't match the high standard of Ghostface's first two, "Ironman" and "Supreme Clientele," but it's a strong album nonetheless, packed with dense narratives and weird conceits.- The New York Times
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He uses a roomful of instruments and toys to turn the album into a homemade pop symphony.- The New York Times
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There are moments when the Secret Machines imitate their influences a little too closely, and at times the brothers' voices aren't as imposing as the arrangements. But for most of "Now Here Is Nowhere," the Secret Machines make music that matches the scale of their ambitions.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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Tense, febrile and messy, but tuneful and cohesive at the same time. [2 May 2004]- The New York Times
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He often starts with a familiar scenario or sentiment, then finds a way to wriggle free of predictability without giving up on the initial idea.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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In his world, being grown and sexy doesn't mean being complacent - it means being curious, maybe even brave.- The New York Times
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The low-fi yet meticulous arrangements only add to the sense of isolation and the poignancy of the songs. [18 Oct 2004]- The New York Times
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While the album might seem to be a conceptual stunt, it finds gorgeous and startling new ways to extend Bjork's longtime mission: merging the earthy and the ethereal. [29 Aug 2004]- The New York Times
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It's a collection of odds and ends, yet the music can be cathartic and it can be achingly intimate. [29 Nov 2004]- The New York Times
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It's an intensely private album, full of desolation, leave-takings, recriminations and regrets. [21 Feb 2005]- The New York Times
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Her most down-to-earth album in years, because Ms. Amos has decided she doesn't have to pack every impulse into every song. Sometimes, now, a simple melody and a steady groove are enough. [21 Feb 2005]- The New York Times
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It is a collection of stark but sly threats and come-ons, nearly as addictive as its predecessor. [3 Mar 2005]- The New York Times
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For all that the Kills owe to P. J. Harvey, they also have angles of their own. [13 Mar 2005]- The New York Times