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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    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Joni Mitchell Archives, Vol. 1: The Early Years 1963-1967 [Box Set]
    A thorough but imposing six hours of material, this collection is less about any specific unearthed gem than the larger transformation it charts.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Vulnicura
    Even amid the most abstruse music, these songs have an emotional immediacy. The physicality of Björk’s voice and the strings are even more striking against the impersonal electronic sounds, all the better to reveal the interior landscape of heartbreak and healing--not a simple story, and all the better for it.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    CTRL
    She fully commands the foreground of her songs. Her voice is upfront, recorded to sound natural and unaffected, with all its grain and conversational quirks.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Love You, Honeybear
    This warped, lovely album suggests that a true longtime partnership isn’t two people who love each other even for their flaws, but of two people accepting decay--their own and each other’s--and choosing to ride it out nonetheless.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Be the Cowboy
    Mitski’s songs about love are a tangle of mixed messages in precise, idiosyncratic packages. ... On this album, even more than she has before, Mitski makes the music her partner.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    xx
    In fairness to the XX, that song was one of Aaliyah's most languorous, its eroticism delivered in small, subtle kicks, but that does little to soften the airlessness of the XX's version. And it's that same fundamental reluctance to engage that suffocates this group's self-titled debut album, which has become a favorite of bloggers and the British.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Neon Bible
    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]
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs By Karen Dalton
    Working separately, the songwriters converged in lonely reflection; the album adds up to a composite portrait of a ghost.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beautiful Africa
    The Malian singer Rokia Traoré has a gentle voice with a steely core, one that’s revealed more clearly than ever on Beautiful Africa.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Now and Then [Single]
    The finished track simplifies Lennon’s emotional give-and-take; it edits out his misgivings about himself. .... As in many Beatles songs, “Now and Then” has an unexpected closing flourish: a decisive, syncopated string phrase. And low in the mix, after a final shake of a tambourine, a voice says, “Good one!” Like the other posthumous Beatles tracks, “Now and Then” leans into nostalgia. Its existence matters more than its quality.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Spirit Moves
    The five-piece ensemble handles each tune with soulful aplomb.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    22, A Million
    The results are, in many places, as ethereally and lustrously beautiful as the best Bon Iver material but more removed. ... Because this album travels in so many directions, there are places where Mr. Vernon sounds unanchored, and where his reluctance gives way to lack of commitment. His naïveté has always been carefully studied, but sometimes here, especially in the middle of the album, it feels just vague.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Let England Shake
    Ms. Harvey's vocals rise out of a kind of bleary skiffle, with the strumming of Autoharp or distorted electric guitar above rudimentary drumbeats.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sound Of Silver
    The strongest stuff of Mr. Murphy’s career.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Who Kill
    For all the ups and downs of the lyrics, the music has no doubt that manic creativity and craftsmanship, along with rhythm and noise, are a survival kit.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Comicopera
    Comicopera, his 12th solo record since 1970, has indulgences and longueurs, as all his records do. But it also has some burstingly beautiful songwriting.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    thank u, next
    Thank U, Next has some hiccups but is still her most musically flexible and au courant release to date. ... The [Max] Martin songs are crisp, as always ... [But] It’s in the other songs [not produced by Martin], however, that Grande takes her most intriguing leaps, largely because of the new fluidity she brings to her singing.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Are We There
    For a wallow in obsessive love, it’s hard to top “Your Love Is Killing Me” on Sharon Van Etten’s fourth album, Are We There.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    How I Got Over
    Even in its boasts, How I Got Over is selfless: an album of doubts, parables and pep talks.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love & Hate
    The music makes space for him to ache.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    RoundAgain
    If “RoundAgain” has anything notably in common with “MoodSwing,” it is the feeling of musicians with a scary level of talent playing into the moment, with full faith that they belong within a lineage.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Estudando o Pagode
    He's both analytical, distilling songs down to essential parts, and whimsical in his fondness for funny noises. [10 Apr 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Separation Sunday
    These are songs full of offhand aphorisms, and they can grab you from the first line. [23 May 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    But Here We Are
    “But Here We Are” has a back-to-basics immediacy and intensity that was missing from the last few Foo Fighters albums.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Promises
    Not until the latter half of the album does the orchestra fully come alive, with a rich and immersive passage on Track 6 — sometimes regal, sometimes bluesy — that almost eclipses the motif, but not quite. And then there is Sanders’s tenor saxophone, a glistening and peaceful sound, deployed mindfully throughout the album. He shows little of the throttling power that used to come bursting so naturally from his horn, but every note seems carefully selected.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heaven & Earth
    On Heaven and Earth there’s a balance between big-stroke conceptualism--the first CD, “Earth,” is meant to represent worldly preoccupations; the second, “Heaven,” explores utopian thought--and the workmanlike reality of collaboration. The two collections don’t vary significantly in terms of sound; instead, they’re a testament to the sturdy rapport of Mr. Washington’s ensemble.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    to hell with it [Mixtape]
    This layered approach makes PinkPantheress’s debut album, the warmly ecstatic and cheekily gloomy “To Hell With It,” so striking. It’s short, controlled and lived-in. ... On some new songs, though, like “Reason” and “All My Friends Know,” the balance is slightly off: She sounds more firmly embedded in the music, not quite riding atop it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Luxury Problems
    You need several listens to get your head around it, to recognize the landmarks and figure out the proper speed of anticipation and delivery.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Platinum
    Her characters in these songs--which feature some of the most incisive songwriting in any genre--are complex, self-confident and self-lacerating all at once, and most crucially, completely knowing and in on the joke.
    • 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.
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