For 2,073 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 | |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest review score: | Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,595 out of 2073
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Mixed: 443 out of 2073
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Negative: 35 out of 2073
2073
music
reviews
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- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
The Whigs are from Athens, Ga., and like Kings of Leon and My Morning Jacket, they give what they’ve learned from indie-rock a distinctly Southern stamp: a drawl in the vocals, twang and resonance in the guitars, a sense of continuity with the past..- The New York Times
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While Nada Surf is only a trio, in the studio it stacks up guitars and vocals, multiplying Mr. Caws’s thin voice into a dreamy or determined chorale.- The New York Times
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The frame of reference effortlessly spans country, bossa nova and a few different shades of vintage pop, with only one distracting allusion (the late-era Beatles crescendo that swells up within “Close Your Eyes”).- The New York Times
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At heart Just a Little Lovin’ is one fine singer’s homage to another, but the album also serves as a lean platform for the material.- The New York Times
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As with many a lasting romance, the album’s secret is variety within the constancy.- The New York Times
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Once again she’s the voice of rural innocence all dressed up in big-city trappings, and still coming through as herself.- The New York Times
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Old electro sounds and disco-era strings might hint at camp, but not for long; Ghostland Observatory hits too hard.- The New York Times
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The album is both a generous, transparent body pleasure and a flinty, oblique mind pleasure.- The New York Times
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The songs are written handsomely, and with effort: solemn introductions, multiple gear-shifting bridges, cruising solo passages.- The New York Times
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While the sound of this blues-rock duo has been fleshed out, none of its grit has been glossed.- The New York Times
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Foals make hard, trebly, uncomfortable, spiky, anxious, uptight, straining-to-be-different music, and for all that, it’s rather good.- The New York Times
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The Raconteurs are singing, more often than not, about desperate characters. But that desperation only makes the crunch of the music more euphoric.- The New York Times
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Estelle Swaray is something of a novelty. Not because of her reference points, which range from classic hip-hop to lovers’ rock reggae to 1980s pop, and not because she raps even better than she sings, effortlessly switching between the two.- The New York Times
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Their sound--enhanced by the energies of a second guitarist, Chris Head, and a bassist, Chris #2--literally urges participation. Every song’s chorus helpfully comes prearranged as a sing-along: no room for sullenness here.- The New York Times
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The words are upfront, with a naturalistic delivery that sometimes recalls Kanye West. These are storytelling songs, not club tracks, moving at midtempos and often easing back toward ballads.- The New York Times
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Through all her riffs and rhythms Ms. White comes across as both a scrappy underdog and a girlish cheerleader for everyone who feels like one.- The New York Times
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The old gizmos and low-res sounds bring out Matmos’s sense of humor in cartoony tracks that go blipping and snorting along in bouncy 4/4, coming up with a new sonic rib-tickler every few bars.- The New York Times
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The record is super studied, but never bloodless. And it’s much better than that sounds.- The New York Times
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The tracks on II Trill are brawnier and slicker than before. The minor chords are pumped up with reverb and orchestral heft (though the horns and strings are synthesized), and the songs are full of pop vocal melodies, like the Jamaican singer Sean Kingston’s harmony choruses in 'That’s Gangsta.'- The New York Times
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Cosmically synthetic, subversively euphoric: such are the attributes of Midnight Juggernauts, a three-piece band from Melbourne, Australia. Dystopia, the group’s first full-length album, advances the same mishmash of glam rock, disco and electro pop that won the endorsement of Justice.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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Watershed, the new Opeth album, broad enough to encompass death-metal pummeling as well as cello and English horn, is typically engrossing--symphonic, and in a way organic.- The New York Times
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The material seems to have been chosen for its precision of image and ease of melody, and perhaps for some inherent ruminative languor.- The New York Times
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Mr. Burnett’s songs for the show are the basis for his new album, and a decade of marinating and reworking has only deepened their black-humor charm.- The New York Times
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The songs glow with rumination, and she avoids heaviness by staying elusive.- The New York Times
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Naturalism is the idea, but this is a beautifully constructed record, from Mr. Moran’s blenderized, genre-defying piano solos to Ms. Wilson’s judicious phrasing, using the full range of her double-smoked voice.- The New York Times
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A reasonable first impulse is to try to identify all the sound sources; the inevitable second impulse is to marvel at how well he has chopped up and rearranged them into units of rhythm.- The New York Times
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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.- The New York Times
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Despite some subtle new touches --a harpsichord, a banjo, light strings--the sound proposes constancy.- The New York Times
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The songs hold sorrow and longing, keeping self-pity in check with serene grace.- The New York Times
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The musicianship is intense regardless of the subtext, with all three players hurling themselves into their effort. They have an equally convincing way with bruising thrash punk, one-chord-vamp heroics and brooding atmospherics.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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Black Kids’ peppy songs juggle yelpy Cure-style lead vocals, beats from the intersection of new wave and disco, wordplay (“Hit the Heartbrakes,” “I get angst in my pants”), comic synthesizer squeals and, under it all, enough ache to justify all that desperate sublimation.- The New York Times
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Armstrong’s example created the conditions for this to happen, and the record is an almost classical example of his old game: eluding American stereotypes of country, city, blues, jazz, race, class, humor and sadness.- The New York Times
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Like much instrumental rock, Ratatat’s tunes can still sound like a soundtrack in search of a credit sequence. Yet all the new transformations enrich Ratatat’s music both sonically and psychologically, stoking new drama and hinting at hidden reservoirs of melancholy.- The New York Times
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A year later Mr. Shields turned The Coral Sea into an evolving, reverberating, nearly unbroken wash of sound, as boundless and mutable as the ocean itself.- The New York Times
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It’s a brave album in the way it sets aside all his old consolations.- The New York Times
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Her songwriting is modern and quick-tongued, as she casually glides between sassy singing and melodic rapping. She handles syllables, rhymes and ideas far more skillfully than her liaisons.- The New York Times
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Bajofondo brings in guest vocalists as wild cards: singers including Nelly Furtado, Elvis Costello, the Argentine rockers Gustavo Cerati and Juan Subirá, the Mexican rocker Julieta Venegas and the octogenarian Uruguayan tango singer Lágrima Ríos, in her last recording, as well as rapping by Mala Rodriguez (from Spain) and Santullo (from Uruguay). They tip the balance toward imperfect, immediate humanity, and their drama rubs off on the instrumentals too.- The New York Times
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The album’s surprises are glimpses of misgivings shared with the groove, like the keyboard obsessively jabbing one chord in 'Losing Myself' or the eerie track--tom-toms, fluttery organ notes, high “ahs”--behind 'I Want Out.'- The New York Times
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Ms. Thomas sings warmly and forthrightly amid the two-fisted rumbas, R&B vamps, jazz ballads and barrelhouse flourishes. And without getting heavy-handed the song choices haven’t forgotten what happened to her beloved city.- The New York Times
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The album holds together, not only as a memorial to past tragedy but also as a testament to whatever emotional terrain lies ahead.- The New York Times
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At times the music, like the lyrics, does illuminate the problem of a band taking itself too seriously. But Bloc Party has always favored drama, and there’s plenty of precedent for overblown sentiment when it comes to pop and broken hearts.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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Self-conscious as the lyrics are, the music is uninhibited: lurching into motion like a bar band, picking up speed, piling up instruments and letting them fall away.- The New York Times
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Learn to Live, his second solo album (in 2002 he released “Back to Then,” a tame, awkward, largely unpleasant collection of neo-soul), is impressively eclectic and sharply written. It’s one of the year’s most vibrant country albums.- The New York Times
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Ms. Lewis, also the frontwoman for Rilo Kiley, is unwrapped here, emboldened in her songwriting and more flexible in her voice.- The New York Times
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The ache, the anger, the elegance and the edge of Mr. King’s blues are undiminished and authentic.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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For the familiar songs the original album choices were usually better, with tauter lyrics and arrangements pushing away from the generic. Still, with a songwriter like Mr. Dylan the rough drafts, alternate lyrics and multiple versions of “Dignity” and “Mississippi” are fascinating glimpses of how restlessly he tinkers with mood and meaning.- The New York Times
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The sounds themselves, produced by Ms. Molina in what sound like very private and very light-headed sessions, have few edges; they’re rounded and melted like chocolate left in a summer sun. Each song feels as if it could go on forever, or quietly vanish into the mist.- The New York Times
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So this album--its best, and indicative of a band that can keep climbing--contains two great punk songs: 'Days of Last,' with an echoed guitar line, and 'Crooked Head,' based on a 12-beat drum rhythm.- The New York Times
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Elizabeth Powell, the lead singer of this three-piece Montreal indie-rock band, sounds marvelously self-assured on Some Are Lakes, its reverberant full-length debut.- The New York Times
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The territory is familiar, occasionally too familiar....But it’s not a comforting nostalgic reprise; it’s another plunge into the maelstrom.- The New York Times
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In Deerhunter’s latest songs Mr. Cox sings about time, perception, crucifixion and murder, while the band maintains its gift for realizing just how far a small idea can be carried through repetition and accretion.- The New York Times
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The repetition of the loops turns from mechanical to hypnotic to hallucinatory to ecstatic as the songs barrel along.- The New York Times
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Reflective but never dour, and serious about staying hopeful, Aterciopelados proposes “a bombardment of love/attack of laughter/invasion of smiles.”- The New York Times
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He has a point, though, and on Thr33 Ringz, his third album, he makes the case for his misunderstood genius.- The New York Times
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For much of the album, Mr. Walker sings about breakups and aftermaths, and songs like 'Here Comes the ...' and 'Vessels' show he can still write pop choruses. Now and then, his instinct for drama makes him sound mawkish. But he’ll probably never be so unguarded again.- The New York Times
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There’s still something to be gleaned here, perhaps especially from the frisky pianist Ruben González and the debonair vocalists Compay Segundo and Ibrahim Ferrer, all of whom are now gone, having enjoyed twilight acclaim.- The New York Times
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At the center of the album’s sound is Mr. Eick’s trumpet, with its pristine yet penetrating tone. He’s a commanding improviser, capable of serious drama and conscious of what goes unsaid.- The New York Times
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It is also among his breeziest, with just a touch of nimbleness animating his reliably sleepy growl over surprisingly exuberant production.- The New York Times
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The album isn’t such a departure after all. Beyond that aberrant (abhorrent?) single, its tone is imploring and the sound is warm.- The New York Times
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His new EP, “Blood Bank,” is due out on Tuesday on the same label, and three of its four songs abide by similar prescriptions [as “For Emma, Forever Ago."]- The New York Times
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Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future is a useful title for this record, which can feel like a stroll through Tomorrowland with an archly enthusiastic guide.- The New York Times
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The melodies are exquisite, and with each verse he surrounds them with more and more parts, creating pop crescendos of dizzying ingenuity.- The New York Times
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To Willie is more than a curatorial feat; Phosphorescent reaches down to the pain.- The New York Times
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Mr. Conley and Mr. Bemis have honed each other’s songwriting; each track on the album tries something different.- The New York Times
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All those guests have a lot on their minds--the economy, the history of hip-hop, their own skills--and the N.A.S.A. team makes sure no one wears out a welcome.- The New York Times
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Instead of fixed verses or choruses there are two-chord patterns that run as long as Ms. Case wants, or as short; they might add or subtract a beat, suddenly switch chords or support an entirely new tune in mid-song. Subliminally that rhapsodic approach keeps the songs off balance and suspenseful, ready for every possibility of disaster or exaltation.- The New York Times
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It’s not a big departure for Ms. Copeland, but it does open up a new way to hear her, backed by musicians like Mr. Wood, the keyboardist John Medeski and the guitarist Marc Ribot.- The New York Times
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The molten riffs and pummeling fills heard here in such abundance aren’t just tokens of style. They’re part of a persistent push for self-definition.- The New York Times
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The record rarely seems overcrowded; it confidently puts everyone to selective use. “Beware,” generally excellent if occasionally meandering, has an outer color and an inner truth; it’s never what it seems.- The New York Times
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Fuller backdrops don’t inhibit Karen O at all. She still sounds unguarded and madcap, sometimes girlishly vulnerable, sometimes indomitable.- The New York Times
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Fantastic in every sense, the album is also girded with hard-fought musical and emotional maturity.- The New York Times
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Behind the whimsy she defies her own frailty. She stays on the move, with uncertainty wherever she alights.- The New York Times
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The music is imaginative like a good dream--not the kind some of his older records intimated, the kind in which you’re walking but can’t move forward.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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'Love Like Jazz' comes from LotusFlow3r, the set’s strongest disc, and the one that best narrows the distance between Prince’s airtight studio work and his rampaging live shows.- The New York Times
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On Yonder Is the Clock, the Felice Brothers loosen up, making room for absurdity as well as the travails they sing about.- The New York Times
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Booker T. Jones, the organist who led the M.G.’s on their own and as the Stax-Volt studio band on countless Memphis soul classics, sounds more pithy and forceful than ever on Potato Hole, an album of rock and soul instrumentals.- The New York Times
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It’s a producer’s record. And it works, possibly because Mr. Toussaint is no pushover.- The New York Times
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Taking its lead from Mr. Marsalis, a saxophonist of obstinate candor, the band has become both looser and more imposingly self-assured. Metamorphosen, its new album, captures that dynamic almost perfectly- The New York Times
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The lyrics, sometimes also sung by Mr. Cohen, abound in surrealistic metaphor: the bloom of a flower in darkness, the derisive laughter of the moon. Yet there are lines, and even entire songs, that beg to be taken at face value.- The New York Times
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Ever the self-conscious transgressor, Peaches presents herself as both exceptional and mutable.- The New York Times
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The songs on Wild Young Hearts are well written, and the band is tight. They put me in the mind of Earl Greyhound, those three-piece sets that really work.- The New York Times
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On Set ’Em Wild, Set ’Em Free, the band has produced something practical, with less clutter, and many times better.- The New York Times
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The output of Isis, a Los Angeles band often filed under the subcategory of post-metal, upholds a deliberative truce between brute physicality and moody rumination. Wavering Radiant, the group’s impressive new album, satisfies both sides in a way that suggests a balance of prior achievements.- The New York Times
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The fabulously snotty attitude, the melodic wit, the rhymes that tend toward glossolalia: yes, Cam’ron has returned to form.- The New York Times
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White Rabbits favor physical instruments over electronic abstractions, and the drums kick the music toward an American sound that fortifies its brains with muscle.- The New York Times
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It’s a fragile recollection of California rock from more auspicious times, with stately melodies and vocal chorales over jerry-built foundations: elegies for vanished certainties.- The New York Times
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This album is a blast of nostalgia that doesn’t sound bitter or even particularly dated.- The New York Times
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'You' in this case is a placeholder for Mr. Richie’s core demographic, which skews overwhelmingly female, and generally older than any of his kids. But if that makes Just Go a textbook adult-contemporary album, it also lends credible emotional footing to the songs.- The New York Times
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So here’s a Sonic Youth record in which Ms. Gordon sings all the best stuff.- The New York Times
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Words are secondary for Sunn O))), a k a Greg Anderson on bass and Stephen O’Malley on guitar, who long ago made thunderous resonant sounds their stock in trade. What’s striking about this new release is its wealth of additional textures: woodwinds, brass, strings, male and female choirs.- The New York Times
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It’s a bit out of focus, perhaps intentionally. Made with his new band, Us Five, it’s sketchy, groovy and a little burdensome.- The New York Times
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The panache of the singing, and the radiant complexity of the music--an achievement shared by Mr. Rodriguez Lopez and a handful of regular collaborators, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante--drive the album relentlessly forward. And it’s the subtle touches, no less than the sweeping ones, that leave an impression.- The New York Times
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For most of the album the band reveals new levels of craftsmanship and detail, mastering one unexpected style after another, mostly from the 1970s and ’80s: house, disco, funk, T. Rex glam, synth-pop. After the surprise wears off, the hooks of the songs linger.- The New York Times
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Battlefield, her expertly constructed second album, upholds a darker, more experienced tone without losing an ounce of melodrama.- The New York Times
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