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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    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nostalgia, Ultra.
    Given how slick and intuitive this album is--full of astral soul that owes debts to Terence Trent D'Arby, Pharrell Williams, even Drake--it's more likely that someone will lose his job than that Frank Ocean will lose his record deal over this kerfuffle.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Live at the Cellar Door
    Live at the Cellar Door--the latest rough diamond from his archives is from a booking in Washington, and it has the coiled tension of its time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Clark
    It’s an album that plays as an album, not a D.J. set.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cruel Country
    On “Cruel Country” Wilco offers no grand lesson or master plan, only observations, feelings and enigmas. Many of the album’s best moments are wordless ones.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bright Mississippi
    It’s a producer’s record. And it works, possibly because Mr. Toussaint is no pushover.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Food & Liquor
    There are few weak tracks on this beautifully quiet album, but there is no truly irresistible beat either. [18 Sep 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Real Animal
    The particulars of Mr. Escovedo’s autobiography on this album — his wanderings to New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin--may not matter much to those not already following his music. But the songs also tell a larger story: of reckless youth and unrepentant maturity, of time’s ravages and insights.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Old
    With all these styles packed in tight, Old ends up being a maybe-inadvertent career retrospective for Mr. Brown, echoing his speedy and jagged evolution over the past few years.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Hate Music
    They’re love songs about persistence, and that’s embedded in the sound of the record; you don’t need a lyric sheet to hear it.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Faith in Strangers
    On his new record, Faith in Strangers, the details are different but the achievement is similar.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tempest
    He sings forcefully, in a raspy, phlegmy bark that's not exactly melodic and by no means welcoming. Battered and unforgiving, he's still Bob Dylan, answerable to no one but himself.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Piano & A Microphone 1983
    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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love
    It’s an album of connoisseurship, revealing the inspired details tucked into so many Beatles songs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Until the Quiet Comes
    The album's aesthetic is elastic and permeable, and yet strong enough to hold its shape.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Amygdala
    [A] sleek and immersive new album.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pain Killer
    Streamlining its roots-minded harmonies and delivering them with new, lean muscle, making for its best album yet, one of the signature country releases of the year.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Harlan & Alondra
    Like YG’s songs, Buddy’s music is full of small homages to the Los Angeles sounds of yesteryear. But while YG is polishing one idea until it shines blindingly, Buddy is crossing generations, building new paths.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Still Brazy
    Still Brazy is an artisanal, proletarian Los Angeles gangster rap record, less tribute to the sound’s golden age than a full-throated and wholly absorbed recitation.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2
    As the hip-hop mainstream shouts and booms its way into the 21st century, Beastie Boys are happy temporal outsiders, partying in their never-ending 1980s.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    High On Tulsa Heat
    At its best, High on Tulsa Heat is starkly elegant, addressing sadness with clarity and directness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An Evening with Silk Sonic
    [Mars and Paak] flaunt skill, effort and scholarship, like teacher’s pets winning a science-fair prize; they also sound like they’re having a great time. Silk Sonic comes across as a continuation for Mars and a playfully affectionate tangent for Paak.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Unflesh
    In her synthetic universe, nothing is stable and anything can be a threat, a condition she greets with matter-of-fact bravery even at her most fragile moments.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sour
    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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Apocalypse
    Apocalypse is bolder and clearer, less blissed-out and more grippingly immediate than [2011's The Golden Age of Apocalypse].
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rival Dealer [EP]
    It’s the sound of something--or someone--rumbling to the surface, about to erupt.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Good News For People Who Love Bad News
    The best Modest Mouse album yet.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War)
    It stands to reason that there should be another album's worth of this material, which flickers back and forth between different kinds of sessions and ideas, some quite elegant, some deeply boring, none of it very well edited.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Uproot
    DJ/Rupture knowledgeably traverses a world of ominous meditations, complete with anxiety about his entitlement as a curator.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hidden
    Somber, arty and quintessentially British: that's Hidden the second album by These New Puritans.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey! Merry Christmas!
    The beginning of Hey! Merry Christmas!--the first holiday album by the country music interrogators the Mavericks--strolls along at a friendly pace, their original songs touching on Western swing, 1950s rock, traditional country and more. But midway through comes a bawdy new cabaret-esque number, “Santa Wants to Take You for a Ride,” that feels less like an apostate take on holiday good will and more like a lost Blowfly original.
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