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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    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Well-Done
    It's tougher, and stricter, and highlights the dexterity in Action Bronson's rhymes by emphasizing the breaking points.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mac and Devin Go to High School [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    It makes for pleasant-sounding, unmemorable listening, driven primarily by the production, which is largely slow and bubbly.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Purple Naked Ladies
    While the production is woozy, stop-start delirious and off kilter, the lyrics, sung by Syd in an appealing, unpolished style, are cutting.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Let's Go Eat the Factory
    Mr. Sprout's songwriting helps raise the average. Guided by Voices has a reputation to uphold, and much of the time it does.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Voyageur
    Sounds lusher, more dramatic and sometimes riskier than Ms. Edwards's early albums. In places, this record is drowsily beautiful, almost wearily so.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Les Voyages de l'ame
    Alcest's new record,Les Voyages de l'Âme is the best example yet of what it can do.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Making Mirrors
    The album merges catchy gizmo-loving pop constructions with a stalwartly depressive mindset.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rich Forever
    With clusters of meaty verses and throbbing, moody production, Rich Forever is almost on par with his last two solo albums, "Deeper Than Rap" and "Teflon Don" (Maybach Music/Slip-N-Slide/Def Jam), both great.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)
    Air's music for it [the Méliès film], whether rhythmic or choral, static or episodic, minimalist or anthemic, is slight and smooth as glass.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paralytic Stalks
    Convoluted as his words and ideas are, they're surprisingly singable, in all their mad profusion.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Who's Feeling Young Now?
    Mr. Thile on mandolin, Noam Pikelny on banjo, Gabe Witcher on fiddle, Chris Eldridge on guitar and Paul Kowert on bass--have shifted the emphasis from instrumental wizardry to playful storytelling on this album, their third.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    With Love
    The singing is bolder and more outgoing than on her previous albums.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Careless World: Rise of the Last King
    Even though he remains a cipher, his surroundings are lush.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One Second of Love
    She's found a strong, vibrato-less voice that's confident but imperfect in funny ways.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    SSSS
    Ssss is a modest, genially impersonal effort: 10 instrumental tracks that don't flaunt their authorship.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Father Creeper
    A nervy urgency courses through all of the album's experimental tangents.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Church That Fits Our Needs
    Mr. Picker fills these songs with uncomfortable imagery, reliving his mother's pain and imagining her golden transfiguration.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sweet Heart Sweet Light
    It's grandiose--slouchy, broody, mock-churchy, self-pitying.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    MDNA
    It's a bipolar collection that pumps out effervescent electronic pop before making way for a contentious personal agenda.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The MF Life
    Though this album lacks some of the intensity of her debut, "The Bridge," which hit hard with done-wrong vintage-soul updates, it still showcases Ms. Fiona ably.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mirel Wagner
    Whether or not it's shtick--time will tell--it's a spooky, fully realized one.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    awE naturalE
    Their vocals are overshadowed by the hypnotic momentum of their grooves: dense and swampy, with thick jazz harmonies and, often, rhythms that lurch and skip, demanding alertness because they keep things off balance.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Our Version of Events
    What's magical about this album is how Ms. Sande's stance remains unmistakable regardless of what the backdrop is. It's not a flawless album, but rather one with a number of flawless moments.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Changed
    Even though there are hints here of the ambitious melancholy that's become this group's trademark (for instance "Hurry Baby,") what stands out are the new moods, on songs like the jumpy "She's Leaving," which cloaks hurt in a sparkly package.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Boys & Girls
    Compared to computer-tuned radio pop, or even the big-time pop-soul of a genuine singer like Adele, the Alabama Shakes sound raw-boned and proudly unprocessed.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nothing to Do
    It's raggedy and satisfying, unconcerned with anything beyond its very elemental attitudes and poses.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    R.I.P.
    R.I.P. (Honest Jon's) is the most mysterious of the Actress records yet, and the one most suggestive of dream states.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blown Away
    While the album starts bold and mechanically impressive, it gets progressively quieter over the course of its first half, as if she were taking a break from fire-breathing... [Yet] relaxation is not her milieu.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Different Ship
    The album discreetly shows off the band's meticulous virtuosity.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ufabulum
    It's still dance music, for those who can dance through a barrage.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Go! Pop! Bang!
    The Baltimore-style synthesizer jabs are less of a novelty, though they still pump up the songs.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Body Wins
    There's no unmixed sweetness on this album, only partly healed scars.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Predict a Graceful Expulsion
    As the words mourn and pray, the music promises redemption.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Born and Raised
    Maybe Mr. Mayer didn't really set out to make his version of a Ryan Adams album, but it suits him at this moment.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Valtari
    It's as if the band's old pure musical sanctuary has been overgrown and started to crumble, with different light and air glinting through the cracks.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    That's Why God Made the Radio
    Vocal harmonies abound, burnished to modern studio precision.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Banga
    At 65 [Smith] presents herself unburdened by age. She identifies on this album with voyagers, adventurers and her fellow artists; she's still determined to explore.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Musostics
    Behind the cerebral diversions, there's a sense of play and a certain wistfulness, as if the Beach Boys had gotten Ph.D.'s in game theory.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Seeds from the Underground
    The better of these compositions suggest the pithy durability and deceptive simplicity of folk songs.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Triple F Life: Friends, Fans and Family
    [Triple F Life] isn't quite as striking as his debut but preserves much of its appealing mayhem.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles of Spaceghostpurrp
    An air of menace and depression hangs over this album, embodied in SpaceGhostPurrp's stream-of-consciousness raps, leaning on sneering boasts and mantralike chants. This single-mindedness can be invigorating.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tucson: A Country Rock Opera
    Steel guitar, accordion, mariachi trumpet, lounge piano or a small string section are available as needed, but most of the music stays modest and intimate, staying out of the way of the graceful tunes and laconic thoughts.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Silfra
    Ms. Hahn, who had tiptoed toward spontaneity in her work with singer-songwriters like Tom Brosseau and Josh Ritter, takes the full plunge [into improvisation] here, with gratifying results.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Confess
    Most of the time he's bleeding, which is to say alive.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Spirit Fiction
    His most complete artistic statement, and one of his most self-possessed.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hypnotic Nights
    It's the simpler stuff that's special.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Another Country
    To her credit, the songs she has written here sustain a mood.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gossamer
    "Gossamer" opens up the music and lets it breathe. For all the artificial splendor, there's clearly a very human, very troubled voice at the center of these songs.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fragrant World
    On a first listen, the music sounds aloof and arty - and it is, full of conceptual wiles. But the next time around, pop hooks sink in; more often than not, "Fragrant World" is a snappy synth-pop album.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute To Fleetwood Mac
    The last third of Just Tell Me That You Want Me is completely skippable, but at its best stretches, new obsessions complement those of the originals.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ascent
    His extended solos during one or two-chord vamps - particularly on "Close to the Sky," "Waswasa" and "Even if You Knew," in that order of quality - are scrabbling, circular, slightly heroic, pulmonary with wah-wah and squalid with distortion. They're exciting, but they're also good for the head: they shove you into long-form listening mode.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life's Quest
    8Ball released Life's Quest, an album that, from a distance, appeared relatively low profile but up close proves to be modest and warm in a way that feels like a surprise.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Four
    The band's new jolt of stylized catharsis, attempt to engage with issues both personal and sociopolitical, and Mr. Okereke does his part to level the field, inflating some and cutting others to size.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chapter V
    One of his most consistently strong albums.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    II
    To label this music a tribute would feel disingenuous. To call it an update would be too generous.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Big Inner
    A dramatic pop-gospel record that hits extremes of the mood spectrum: very easygoing and very obsessive.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Coexist
    A wonderful experiment in the power of absence.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love This Giant
    One of the most striking facts about this record is that it doesn't sound definitively like the work of one or the other, though occasionally you will catch a whiff of something one or the other has created in the past.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tornado
    Tornado does turn out to be Little Big Town's least predictable album.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Truth About Love
    Her sixth studio album, The Truth About Love, is, as usual, an assortment of potential singles.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Melody's Echo Chamber
    As Ms. Prochet's lyrics melt into the hiss and buzz, her lilting tunes come through. Amid the derangement, it's still French pop.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    He Is #1
    The guitars don't stay in tune, but the voices do. They're remarkably steady and resolute, filled with spirit.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Formerly Extinct
    This album has more use for intertwined guitar lines that adhere to Eastern scales, and strong but light-footed rhythm.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ultraista
    The lyrics often hint at the push and pull of relationships, but they're contemplated serenely from afar and cushioned by those synthesizers, just one more element in the pattern.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lonesome Dreams
    If the music grew much gauzier, it would cloy. But for most of the album, Lord Huron stays poised precisely at the edge of weightlessness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Oblivion Hunter [EP]
    This album is a throwback to the group's fundamental low-fi assault--less a premeditated statement of musical progress than a controlled release of pressure.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Psychedelic Pill
    Psychedelic Pill doesn't try to ingratiate itself with new fans. It's a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, and one worth taking.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Landing On A Hundred
    It's a knowing classic-soul revision, with Mr. Chesnutt openly indulging his vocal debt to Marvin Gaye. Lyrically he's still reaching for raw emotion and ripe provocation.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Made Possible
    The band is tinkering here, and it says something that the album still feels traceable to no other source.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Music From Another Dimension!
    [On Music] the band aggressively reclaims every last one of its trademarks through the decades.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Unapologetic
    The music is just as brutish and bruised; occasionally Rihanna shows up essentially unaccompanied, but most of her songs are built tough and layered. The songs that are the least texturally confrontational are also by far the least successful.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rebel Soul
    Kid Rock is an amateurish singer, but over the last few years his unsteady squeal has been become burnished and is now credible.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Warrior
    There's no revelation here, only strong fun.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Grace/Confusion
    The album clocks in under 40 minutes, and its experimental touches are modest.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bastards
    Most of them, from Death Grips' percussive spatters to Matthew Herbert's spacious processionals, bring out something earthier in the songs.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Feeling Mortal
    Mr. Kristofferson's voice wavers, indicating general pitch areas rather than specific notes, and he doesn't use it artfully to stress images or ideas as he rolls through the words. Some of those lyrics, though, can be dense and strong, working inside and outside the styles and structures of his best years.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    1619 Broadway: The Brill Building Project
    What works best here works gorgeously.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Berberian Sound Studio
    The music doesn't need film imagery to be deeply unsettling.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Elements of Light
    Elements of Light begins and ends contemplatively, letting metallic tones shimmer and sustain.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blood Oaths of the New Blues
    The songs take their time but never ramble, as Mr. Toth faces his existential conundrums with something like equanimity.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My True Story
    It's a tasteful genre exercise that employs old-fashioned conventions with strategic license.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beta Love
    When Mr. Miles gets too literal, as on "Binary Mind," you can begin to feel cornered. Far better is his bittersweet keen on "Angel, Please" and "For Once" and "Is It Too Much," songs of direct melodic and emotional thrust.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wonderful, Glorious
    It’s less confessional, less bleakly vulnerable than he has been on past albums.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fourth Corner
    Her mercurial, dramatic songs aren’t tied to the standard forms or plain rhetoric of the blues or pop. Her melodies hop and swoop asymmetrically, and most of them ride choppy patterns of distorted guitars, played and layered by Ms. Whitley.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    You're Nothing
    Iceage has only improved on its formula of turbulent energy and disaffected poetry, managing still to sound youthful, even juvenile--not such a stretch, age-wise--while reaching toward new ambitions.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vexovoid
    It doesn’t sound as if the songs were inventing their own structures and falling apart in the process.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Highway
    Her music is roots-rock with an Appalachian foundation, in arrangements that rise alongside her forthright alto or let it hold its own nearly unaccompanied.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Images du Futur
    Ben Shemie sings admonitions--“These same visions/It takes years for things to change”--that could be comments on the band’s fascination with modular structure or just testimony to its calm obstinacy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Invisible Way
    Its 10th full-length album in two decades as a band, the band pulls back from that intensity but adds layers of depth and surprise.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wondrous Bughouse
    He’s mulling over cosmic, metaphysical thoughts: about time and space, good and evil, love and death, all in music that certifies every uncertainty.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Welcome Oblivion
    There’s a distinct band lurking here and there, although it may never escape Nine Inch Nails’ shadow.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Recover [EP]
    Chvrches makes prickly early-’80s synth-pop that recalls fellow revivalists Robyn and La Roux.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Native
    The craftsmanship is painstaking and impressive: layer upon layer of glossy keyboards, reverberant guitars and choirlike backing vocals (although Mr. Tedder applies too much obvious Auto-Tune to his leads). But these crystal-palace productions are proud showcases for unctuous, sometimes oddly morbid lyrics.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Terror
    It’s a take-it-or-leave-it album that’s willing to be inert or annoying. But its obsessiveness brings its own rewards.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Victim of Love
    The new album is a little less pointed [than his debut], and a good deal less surprising. But Mr. Bradley, once again wailing against the convincing grit of the Menahan Street Band, sounds bolstered by all the touring he has done over the last two years.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shaking the Habitual
    This music has deep weirdness but incredible will and charisma.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bankrupt!
    The wry premise behind "SOS in Bel Air"--distress signals emitting from privileged enclaves--could easily be applied to the album.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Haw
    The songs ponder mortality and devotion, love and family, searching for peace of mind and finding it, no doubt temporarily, in the folky benediction of “What Shall Be (Shall Be Enough).”
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