The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,072 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: 1,594 out of 2072
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2072
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2072
2072 music reviews
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hemingway's Whiskey
    Mr. Chesney is playing with a different sort of relaxation here - not sun-bleached and fatigued, but genuinely troubled, and maybe narcotized. This is a Chesney that's only rarely appeared before.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Familial
    Familial (Nonesuch), Philip Selway's solo debut, is more like a warm, delicate nest. Surrounded by pastoral acoustic guitars and whisper-level electronics, Mr. Selway--who wrote all the songs and farmed most of the drumming out to Glenn Kotche of Wilco--sings in a breathy, almost maternally soft voice about seeking peace and raising children.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Charleston, SC 1966
    This album is in small ways slicker than his outstanding 2008 country debut, Learn to Live, and of course less surprising.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Ghost Who Walks
    The backup flatters Ms. Elson's voice, which shows the wavering concentration of a promising amateur. Some phrases are focused and persuasive, with a girlish feistiness; others are shaky. The lyrics, too, have graceful moments alongside awkward ones.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fool
    Warpaint's songs are pensive and elegiac, transmuting the jabs of yesteryear into folky incantations.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Epic
    Like Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak or her fellow Brooklynite Holly Miranda, Ms. Van Etten has an incandescent, moaning alto that can be fragile or vengeful.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What Lasts
    The band--also with Justin Craig on guitars and keyboards, J. Tom Hnatow on pedal and lap steel, Colin Kellogg on bass and Robby Cosenza on drums--works on tour enough to have a sound of its own. And that sound, notably sweetened by Mr. Hnatow, levels the field for the songs. Which ends up being good news for Mr. Elliott.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Man on the Moon, Vol. 2: The Legend of Mr. Rager
    The album makes for uneasy listening, though Kid Cudi is not entirely oblivous to commercial imperatives.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Merry Christmas II You
    The rest of this album intersperses originals with classics--a respectful "First Noel," an aptly baby-making take on "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and "Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane)" as routed through a strip club. But nothing beats "All I Want for Christmas Is You," from her 1994 album Merry Christmas," one of the great modern holiday albums.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Lady Killer
    Throughout, Mr. Green's vocals are buried low in the mix, mere decoration for the arrangements and textures, which are the real stars.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Gift
    Mostly she and the producer Steve Mac render traditionals--"Auld Lang Syne," "O Come All Ye Faithful" and more--in unerringly gorgeous, if wrenchingly polite, arrangements, performances that smooth flat the many creases in Ms. Boyle's sometimes erratic public persona.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Loud
    Loud works the pop gizmos as neatly as any album this year, maintaining the Rihanna brand. But the album has a hermetic, cool calculation until it gets to "Love the Way You Lie (Part II)," her take on the tortured hit she shared with Eminem.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    O
    Although the music came out of a computer, it's decidedly unmechanical. Loops and metronomic repetitions are far outnumbered by impulses and spasms, stops and starts. Each track could be a separate Petri dish, testing how selected musical organisms interact.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Get Closer
    That's two versions of a daylight watch, from two ends of the romantic spectrum, and Mr. Urban sells them both. It's the emotional distance between them that lends this album, optimistically titled Get Closer, a hint of intimacy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Death Seat
    His characters are round and puzzling, not just sour. He uses bitterness not just as a good look but as a method of getting inside his characters.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Libra Scale
    Ne-Yo's best songs--like "So Sick" from 2006 or "Closer" from 2008, which he doesn't outdo on Libra Scale--are driven by obsessive longing, not self-satisfaction. And halfway through the album the tone changes.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love Me Back
    Her voice is narrow and jagged, with more grain and more tears as she applies gospel dynamics to her venting; the productions use hip-hop programming but aim for soul. While Ms. Sullivan revels in drama, she still has a sense of humor.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love Letter
    In the main Mr. Kelly has kept his baser instincts in check, without damaging the creative spark they typically give shape to. What remains are, in essence, secular spirituals, bombastic and warm, meant not to raise an eyebrow.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    III/IV
    In the end III/IV may be of interest more for therapeutic than aesthetic reasons, especially when Mr. Adams complicates the issue, as on "P.S.," a postpunk churner: "Don't ask someone to change again/'Til you know what you want them to change into."
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Best Night of My Life
    It's good that Mr. Timberlake doesn't operate at full throttle, because this album's successes often come in spite of Mr. Foxx, who sings as if he were delivering lines for the camera: declarative, extra literal, sharp at the edges.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Science & Faith
    The best songs here sound as if members of toothless soft rockers like the Fray or Augustana were fixing for a bar fight, maybe even one they could win.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Teenage And Torture
    Ms. Ray isn't shy about unleashing her raspy howl or working up to a shriek. Yet behind all the hollering and the band's frenetic buildups it's not all comedy. Ms. Ray's songs zero in on all the contradictory pressures women face: to be cosmetically perfect but authentic, independent but nurturing, flippant but honest, and more.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cloud Nothings
    His first full album, Cloud Nothings (Carpark)--11 songs in 28 minutes--raises the production values only slightly, cutting back distortion while layering on guitars. But it keeps the sound of a guy holed up with his instruments, concocting hooks and strumming retaliation for every slight.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kaputt
    The record as a whole can seem to disappear or evaporate almost as you're listening to it. But that's its charm; that's why you might want to hear it again.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    21
    Sometimes the additional flourish comes from Adele herself, who is a forceful enough singer, so confident with her agony, that she can bend words into new shapes without losing their meaning.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bird Songs
    The elastic interplay of Us Five is in fact the main point of Bird Songs, which approaches its Parker-centric repertory as a springboard rather than an altar.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mission Bell
    Mission Bell, his fourth album on Blue Note, sharpens the payoff.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Talk About Body
    Talk About Body, the band's first album, sounds alternative, but not off to the side; it's not the greatest record you'll hear this year, but it's pretty remarkable as a political and musical polemic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    James Blake
    His first full album, James Blake, sounds as if it were made for an assignment in an electronic music course. It's a bit intellectual, a bit process-oriented and a bit undercooked.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Seefeel
    Trudging, lurching beats and sullenly deliberate riffs are heaped with distortion and distraction, and every so often Sarah Peacock's voice can be heard with possible explanations for the sonic wreckage.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light, Vol. 1
    The guitarist Dylan Carlson is still Earth's leader, playing slow themes over and over with minimal improvisation on Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I (Southern Lord), the first of a projected two-parter; but now the cellist Lori Goldston has joined the group, putting an achy drone into the long, dark, peaceful songs.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tell Me
    Slouching into her notes, with the barest tremor of vibrato, she can almost suggest a precocious child peering past the bounds of innocence.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Anika
    Her voice is faltering and off-key, but dogged. The grooves are minimal, with the bass pushed way up front, and the sound is fresh and lumpy: the songs get your attention; they've got texture.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Unlearn
    Unlearn (Hardly Art), their full-length debut, lurches from Tropicália ("Where the Walls Are Made of Grass") to Brill Building pop ("Powerful Lovin'") to doo-wop (the title track), all with an air of shrewd dishevelment.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Love EP
    By all means, skip over the wan, pointless re-enactment of Prince's "I Wanna Be Your Lover." And put aside the interminable live version of "Que Sera Sera," a poor approximation of Sly & the Family Stone. What's left? A winningly seductive neo-soul take on Bob Marley's "Is This Love," released as a single last year. A sparse, lilting reading of Paul McCartney's "My Love." And a wild card, "Low Red Moon," by the 1990s alternative-rock band Belly.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kmag Yoyo (& Other American Stories)
    What makes Mr. Carll something other than a torchbearer is the frank timeliness of his lyrics, which draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    the JaneDear girls
    Their album, produced by the country modernizer John Rich, is brassy and chipper and fun. And polished too.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wounded Rhymes
    Wounded Rhymes, her follow-up on the same label, has thumping drums, Farfisa organs, girl-group vocal harmonies and darkly pealing guitars. It also has songs of desolate stoicism and disconsolate fury.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    II
    This is instrumental power-trio prog-rock for those who never had time for Rush and find the Mars Volta a bridge to nowhere; it's greasy and physical and incredibly loud.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Music's Not for Everyone
    It's meta and enigmatic and inconclusive; it's also very droll.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Goodbye Lullaby
    It's the pop-factory material, not Ms. Lavigne's own presumably more personal songs, that offers details, humor and a sense of letting go. Her grown-up seriousness could use a little more of them.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Constant Future
    The lesser tracks here actually seem fit for a Burning Man festival; maybe it's the earnestly cryptic lyrics, or the brightly pummeling rhythms. Better tracks, like "Outnumbered" and "Bright White," convey the potency of this band's formula.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Georgia Clay
    He sings with an easy, un-self-conscious Southern accent, and his songs, often written with collaborators, address the issues you'd expect: family, courtship and self-doubt, with a faint flicker of vice.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Capo
    The chaotic Capo, his fifth solo album, is often successful in spite of itself.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Holy Ghost!
    The group--mainly the keyboardist and singer Alex Frankel and the drummer Nick Millhiser, childhood friends from the Upper West Side--brings the same uncorked enthusiasm to its self-titled debut.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cotonou Club
    The grooves lean toward salsa in "Koumi Dede" and Afrobeat in "C'est Moi ou C'est Lui," but Orchestre Poly-Rythmo ratchets up the rhythms. Its singers work hard too.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chopped and Screwed
    For a few songs the dissonant clatter of Micachu's debut album, "Jewellery," gets transferred to grunting strings and the band's homemade instruments, but most of the new music is slower and spookier, with sliding, wavering massed strings and a sulky, gathering, finely orchestrated paranoia.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Constant Pageant
    Sometimes, here and there, you want a better take of a vocal. You might want the solos to be a bit more worked out and the drums to sound bigger. You might want a producer pushing the band around a bit.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Flux Outside
    All the elements are tightly packed, in a crowded production that crams together (distorted) keyboards and (distorted) guitars, pushes the singers toward a tuneful yell and splashes cymbals over the top.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wit's End
    He knows his 1970s AM-radio rock ballads, his English pastoral folk.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Help Coming
    Lawyer Dave, a more focused singer and an able musician, holds down the drumming and guitar solos. He prevents the songs from falling apart, while she makes them strange.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    GB City
    The songs on GB City, this band's debut album, are surly and mischievous, a pungent, effective collision of garage-rock bashing and Ramones sneer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mirrorwriting
    Things are moving at two different speeds on Jamie Woon's casually entrancing debut album, Mirrorwriting.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Am Very Far
    While the rich palette and varied arrangements are welcome, they also put load-bearing pressure on Mr. Sheff's songs, which feel intended more for evasive maneuvers.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    James Farm
    James Farm [could have felt] like a chore, too cerebral and micromanaged to take flight. The album does occasionally skirt that fate but never succumbs to it. Beneath the veneer of sleek accomplishment, there's an undertow of risk.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stone Rollin'
    Stone Rollin' is a better, more lively album than the last one Mr. Saadiq made in this vein, "The Way I See It," from 2008.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    James Pants
    The tracks seem to have hidden reserves, pockets within pockets; they develop hooks in weird places. Sweetness suddenly emerges out of fuzzy slime, and startling emotions rise from merely cool ones.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Aesthethica
    It's sonically assaultive, a riot of full-sprint drumming--by Greg Fox, increasingly this band's central nervous system--and guitar lines with the spasmodic precision of strobe lighting. But aside from the bleached gut-howl of Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, and the dark ritual the band so purposely invokes, the music doesn't fall cleanly within black-metal parameters.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Demolished Thoughts
    The music channels Mr. Moore's fascination with overtones toward a meditative glow; while some of the chords resemble Sonic Youth songs, the dissonances don't bristle as much here, and the consonances drone and soothe.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Street of the Love of Days
    At times the group is just too determinedly subdued, but never when Ms. Nunez-Fernandez is upfront; in English or Spanish her breathy voice is an enticement.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Finally Famous
    Big Sean is a clever but convictionless rapper, full of snappy punch lines that he's clearly impressed with.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Planet Pit
    Mostly, though, the music on Planet Pit is of the Euro-house variety, grand and stupid and tough to deny. Its appeal is global, largely because it lacks specific reference points.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Harrow and the Harvest
    There is nothing that is new here at all, except ambient evidence of further slow refinement.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sagara
    It's a concise album, just 35 minutes, but its ethereality makes the time drift slowly: the percussive plink of a piano (or something like it), about 24 minutes in, registers as a decisive event.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Where Country Grows
    Her voice seems to bind her. What she needs are songs that unwind her instead of proving her authenticity, godliness and mother wit. Given a reprieve, her singing becomes a treat.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stranger Me
    Spookiness suits her.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mega Rama
    There are plenty of good songs on Mega Rama (Uninhabitable Mansions), the debut album by Radical Dads, and one great one.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    LP1
    Her voice is a loose cannon; LP1 figures out how to aim it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Here I Am
    It's a chewy and moody R&B album on which Ms. Rowland sounds assured and vital. Or, at minimum, is made to sound that way.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    From Africa With Fury: Rise
    As the Afrobeat funk cross-hatches its syncopations and sets brasses against saxophones, the production captures the antiphonal clarity without sacrificing brawn.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cerebral Ballzy
    He sounds like a chaos orchestrator--the sound of his voice alone can get people moving in the wrong direction--and he's the best part of this adrenalized fecklessness.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Owl Splinters
    I've put it on many times, but this is a record that takes a while for the memory to map, so smoky are its landmarks.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jeff Bridges
    In general there's the dusky, reverberant sound of the album, which turns Mr. Bridges into a cog in the T Bone Burnett Americana machine.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Welcome Reality
    Welcome Reality pulls dubstep toward the arena-pop spotlight without leaving its shadows behind.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What Matters Most
    Some of her high notes may have slipped away, but the body of her instrument has ripened. The overall tone is fairly subdued.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I'm with You
    Mr. Klinghoffer leaves only a few faint marks, most notably on the contemplative "Brendan's Death Song," which ends with two moving minutes of chaos with Mr. Kiedis wailing and the drummer Chad Smith bashing away. More of this would be welcome on this overly polite album: this band once thrived on such abandon.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Program 91
    Program 91, the band's first album on Smalltown Supersound, is light as air, with lyrics about young love and frustration, and guitar tones so transparent they sound almost African.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tha Carter IV
    Because Lil Wayne has been so sharp, so dexterous in the past, it's tempting (and ultimately necessary) to overanalyze him. But even on this album's weak tracks, and there are several, he remains a commanding presence, deploying just enough of his insistent croak to tether the song together.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hell On Heels
    The songs have the feeling of rejuvenative writing, small experiments in genre and style for artists versed in country's classic modes but who rarely get to fiddle around with them.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Here for a Good Time
    At this point he's most genuine when being reasonable, wistful, reassuring or grateful.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Goldwing
    The songs are stubbornly engaging, filled with characters who drink and regret it, and struggle to understand their own decisions. Tucked amid the pastiche are good laments like "Taking It Easy Too Long," a rueful self-evaluation, and "Love the Way You Walk Away," a brokenhearted shrug.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dreams Come True
    The disparate parts align into a moody, liminal funk, orchestrating songs that obsess over a relationship irrevocably slipping away.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dedicated: A Salute to the 5 Royales
    The songs rise or fall with their singers--thumbs up for Bettye LaVette, Dan Penn, B. B. King and Shemekia Copeland--and the performances are stalwart enough. But they can't come close to the rip-snorting gusto of the "5" Royales nearly half a century ago.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lady & Gentlemen
    It's Mr. Haggard who leads her toward her best performances.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Veronica Falls
    The boy-girl harmonies on this album at least suggest the possibility of outside points of view, but really, Ms. Clifford's tension is everything.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All We Are Saying...
    It beings with a cache of Lennon's more familiar songs"Across the Universe," "Revolution," "Nowhere Man," "Imagine"--treated with too much cautious respect. The album's superior stretch takes up what would be Side B of the LP, with a beautifully lilting "Julia," a starkly tender "Woman," a terse, slow-drag "Mother."
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Wake Up Screaming
    The first in 14 years, sounds more alive and wriggling than you'd expect, a collection of Antillean beats, lean guitars, rumba vamps and rapid-fire teasing lyrics.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    1977
    These songs aren't much more than melodic rants, but that's enough for Mr. Nash, who's never been a forceful singer, but whose talent for cramming oddball twists into R&B remains unparalleled.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Breaks in the Armor
    Previous Crooked Fingers albums have been more elaborately orchestrated, fortifying themselves; this one, even when cushioned by Liz Durrett's backup vocals, makes a wary peace with its own sense of isolation.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Get Lost
    The album is warm, well paced, reassuring, confident and manageable in length; it's also self-consciously naïve in feeling, floppy and weirdly distant.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stronger
    Essentially everything here involves Ms. Clarkson's clobbering her subject while getting clobbered with guitars.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Divine Providence
    Maybe it's the contrast, but the album's cooler-headed and more sentimental songs also thrive in this mess.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Very She & Him Christmas
    She & Him, the duo of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, maintains its early-1960s retro cool on its Christmas album.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bright and Vivid
    Sweetly ambitious math-rock, put across with folky tunefulness and a girlish effervescence.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hello Sadness
    All those words compete for room uncomfortably sometimes.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fallen Empires
    What makes this all feel reasonably unforced is the abiding earnestness in the songwriting.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Talk That Talk
    Rihanna's version of this sound [dance music] dates to the club music of the early 1990s, an era in which she would have shined. The best songs on this lively and often great album sound synth-perfect for that time.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lioness: Hidden Treasures
    "Lioness" is just the scraps of what might have been.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Christmas
    Mr. Buble's sparkly sincerity commands the spotlight at every turn, but he plays well with others, too.
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