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 | |
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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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- Critic Score
“Folklore” songs fall into roughly two camps — excellent Swift-penned songs that are sturdy enough to bear the production, and others that end up obscured by murk.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 27, 2020
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It is an album that aims to repel, or if not quite that, then at least is at peace with alienating some of its audience. ... [The album] often feels insular, lyrically and musically. “Mr. Morale” is probably Lamar’s least tonally consistent work. ... Rangy and structurally erratic, full of mid-song beat switches, sorrowful piano and a few moments of dead air.- The New York Times
- Posted May 17, 2022
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- Critic Score
Clark and her co-producer, Jack Antonoff, have clearly had fun with the creation of this finely tuned alternate universe, but at a point, its many detailed references start to feel like clutter, preventing the songs from moving too freely in their own ways.- The New York Times
- Posted May 13, 2021
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- Critic Score
For much of "Late Registration," the striver has turned into a hip-hop V.I.P., and a cool arrogance has crept into the songs. [29 Aug 2005]- The New York Times
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Overly familiar sounding and spotty. ... “Midnights” feels like a concession to an older, safer idea of Swift, full of songs that are capable and comfortable but often insufficient. ... Some of the lyrics can be lackluster and bluntly imagistic, with little of the detail that made Swift one of the signature pop songwriters of the 21st century. ... “Midnights” by and large feels like a fuzzy Xerox of old accomplishments.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 21, 2022
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- The New York Times
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- Critic Score
This music sounds fantastic, as usual--clean, tight and separated in the mix--but songwriting inspiration is in short supply.- The New York Times
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It’s filled with spacey, leisurely songs about desire, longing, betrayal and letting go. The album plays as one long tease on the way to its last song: the 10-minute, three-part “Out My Mind, Just in Time,” which is even more protracted.- The New York Times
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“Harry’s House” is a light, fun, summery pop record, but there is a gaping void as its center; by its end, the listener is inclined to feel more intimately acquainted with the objects of his affections than the internal world of the titular character himself.- The New York Times
- Posted May 20, 2022
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Black Thought... sounds more focused than he did on the Roots’ last album, “The Tipping Point,” and more engaged than on the one before it, “Phrenology.” But because he’s not the kind of rapper to modulate his emotional pitch, his intensity can level off into monotony.- The New York Times
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Few songs on "Blunderbuss" truly knock the wind out of you, as the White Stripes could - even with riffs that were fragmentary, simple or borrowed. This is a songwriter's record, and a kind of orchestrator's record; there's also a new overall vehemence in the lyrics, hammering on dishonesty, jealousy, immorality.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 23, 2012
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- Critic Score
Normally, she's emphatic in the right places, but this album also includes some of Ms. Lambert's least committed singing.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 31, 2011
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Broken Social Scene confuses integrity with indulgence, burying good songs under way too much studio tomfoolery. [10 Oct 2005]- The New York Times
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She’s still a strong singer, especially on “Told You So,” but some of her essential grit is lost to the machines.- The New York Times
- Posted May 12, 2017
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- Critic Score
When this album whispers, as it does on large swaths of the second half, it neuters Ms. Lambert’s gifts. Even with a voice as signature as hers, there’s little to elevate songs like “Good Ol’ Days” or “Dear Old Sun.”- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 17, 2016
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- Critic Score
The songs are still sullen, smart and cleverly constructed. But too often on AM, Arctic Monkeys sound less like amalgamators than like imitators.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 9, 2013
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- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 3, 2013
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- Critic Score
The album wears thin in totality, but has isolated moments: entrances and releases and dropouts.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 15, 2012
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At 10 songs that span barely 30 minutes, this album is so terse it makes Nas’s “Illmatic” seem like “Infinite Jest.” And often it can feel as if Earl Sweatshirt is rapping his dense syllabic tumbles with his back facing the microphone, which is perplexing, since few rappers love the sound of sticky syllables as much as he does.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 23, 2015
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- Critic Score
There are 17 songs here, and after a while, they feel short on basic songwriting surprises: Built on narrow foundations, high on crude intuition, they keep running into walls.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 26, 2014
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- Critic Score
The results have been slow and messy and atmospheric, full of contemporary R&B's customary ingredients (virtual strings, AutoTune, gold-plated emotion) but stretched out, heavy on atmosphere, light on hooks.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 28, 2013
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- Critic Score
Mr. Haggard sounds more fatigued than his old sidekick, his voice less willing to bend. There are some lovely moments of stern self-loathing ("Bad Actor," "How Did You Find Me Here"); Mr. Haggard is always sharper when pointing the finger at himself than when celebrating love, as he often does on this album.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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- Critic Score
Too many of the new songs sound diligent and derivative, as if Sleater-Kinney were working through a pop apprenticeship. It’s good to know that the group doesn’t want to repeat itself, that the band is also out to master 21st-century digital tools. But on “The Center Won’t Hold,” Sleater-Kinney hasn’t found its version 2.0.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 14, 2019
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- Critic Score
But she's not attempting a simple 80's revival; for all the vaguely familiar hooks, there are also sustained, wistful overlays of strings and acoustic guitar that enfold the music like a haze of indistinct memory. [14 Nov 2005]- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
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- Critic Score
It has some sparkling vocal moments. It reminds us how easily Lady Gaga, 34, can coax the world onto the dance floor. But it feels overwhelmingly safe. ... “Chromatica” is also a mixed bag.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 3, 2020
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Taking the onus off his guitar playing dilutes Mr. Banhart's talent, and sometimes "Cripple Crow" makes of him what some people perhaps want him to be: a simulacrum of an obscure 1960's musician, a maker of albums that were so rare they never existed. [12 Sep 2005]- The New York Times
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"Show Your Bones" doesn't confide much, but it's a picture of a band that's not quite sure what to do next. [27 Mar 2006]- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 5, 2012
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- Critic Score
Why is her big-voiced delivery so similar and balanced in nearly every song? Why are there no sharp intakes of breath, stutters, meaningful cracks or strange textures, like the battling squeaks that made "Love," one of her early singles, so good?- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 30, 2012
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Mr. Toussaint's florid yet precise New Orleans piano, the way he can make a horn section laugh or sigh, and the stubborn idealism and canny humor of his songs temper Mr. Costello's convoluted earnestness.- The New York Times
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He is clearly searching for a more mature style. But the musical and rhetorical convolutions of “Cassadaga” are no substitute, yet, for the way he used to blurt things out. [9 Apr 2007]- The New York Times
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When it works, it works. And when it doesn’t, well … you get a song like overzealous-ally anthem “Everybody’s Gay,” which aims for Paradise Garage euphoria but lands closer to Target’s collection of Pride month apparel. The energy of the opening track, “The Sign,” somehow manages to be both relentless and listless.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 19, 2022
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- Critic Score
The new LP has more oomph and darkness than the band’s self-produced 2021 LP “Path of Wellness” and more emotional resonance than its mechanical 2019 effort “The Center Won’t Hold.” But even in its wildest moments, when compared to the band’s mightiest work, “Little Rope” sounds unfortunately diminished and curiously restrained.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 18, 2024
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- Critic Score
"The Colour in Anything" grows self-pitying, almost maudlin, in ways Mr. Blake has managed to avoid in the past simply by using more elusive lyrical metaphors. It is also unreasonably long: a little over an hour and a quarter.- The New York Times
- Posted May 8, 2016
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- Critic Score
It’s effortfully tossed off; it’s a middling record battling against his built-in high standards.- The New York Times
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He’s worth your $13.98 even when he’s only offering a grab bag like this one. [11 Dec 2006]- The New York Times
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This is a dull album, revealing how over the space of three records, Mr. Albarn and Mr. Hewlett have moved from wacky conceptualists to self-satisfied dilettantes.- The New York Times
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The record is awkward and seriously pretentious at times, but you can’t miss the heat of its ambition.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 1, 2013
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What's intended to be raw can sound smug. In "Dirt" the Thing pushes past the tenderness that lives in that song to get to aggressive, stylized and finally anonymous squalling. Its loud catharsis rolls over her quieter one, and it's not the only time that happens on this record.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 18, 2012
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- Critic Score
Emotion is full of pure cotton candy--delicious, distractingly sweet and filling, with a mildly suspicious aftertaste.... [The album is] full of excellent songs that seem to give up about two-thirds of the way through.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 19, 2015
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- Critic Score
Redolent of Southern gospel and feather-light country-rock, it's a comfort zone for this group, employed consistently in the choruses, which can be arrestingly sharp, and often elsewhere. But piled on top of plangent guitars, the convergence can become grating, with all the emotion of archery, or some other sport that prizes accuracy above all.- The New York Times
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- Critic Score
He raps in tight clusters of syllables that sound smooth but say little. Mainly he's interested in getting high and, occasionally, getting high with other people. Still, many of his friends, under the influence or not, perform better.- The New York Times
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For me it doesn't work; it stomps on the fragility he's been building up for 40 minutes. But because it comes together so slowly, it's of a piece with this record's careful mood.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 2, 2011
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- Critic Score
Ms. Cosentino and her collaborator, Bobb Bruno, envelop the songs in guitar reverb and distortion--between the Raveonettes and the Jesus and Mary Chain--to place them in an ominous haze.- The New York Times
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"Wide River to Cross," by Buddy and Julie Miller is a contemporary outlier on an album crowded with relics, and its beautiful realization invites the question of what other sort of album Ms. Krall and Mr. Burnett might have made without any point to prove.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 1, 2012
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With a little folk-rock and a little Memphis soul, the cozy arrangements are supposed to play down her craftsmanship and bring a listener closer. But that only happens in the best songs. [12 Jun 2005]- The New York Times
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Figurines don't have lyrics as rewarding as those of their obvious polestars, but "Skeleton" puts an intriguingly genteel spin on indie grit. [27 Mar 2006]- The New York Times
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Accordingly, Jaheim is not at his best on ballads or on up-tempo numbers (a pair of which, “Another Round” and “Her,” weigh down the middle of this album), but he is on songs that combine the two.- The New York Times
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This is an art-school record; Ms. Levi's work resists easy pleasure and traditional beauty.... [yet] her songs hook you.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 23, 2012
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- Critic Score
The first half of “My Name Is Buddy” may not be for those who get their news from sources other than old social-realist novels, aren’t serious cat-fanciers or are older than 12. [5 Mar 2007]- The New York Times
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The disappointment of La Radiolina is that Manu Chao’s music isn’t as arrestingly odd as it used to be. Too often his band’s ska-punk gets uncomfortably close to dull rock, and the repetition doesn’t communicate we are all singing the same song- The New York Times
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Mood music doesn’t get any moodier than the Good, the Bad & the Queen. [29 Jan 2007]- The New York Times
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A rowdy, unpredictable CD that careens wildly from filthy shout-alongs to mournful hip-hop gospel. [27 Jun 2005]- The New York Times
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At times, the album is a return to form. Its first two songs are potent reminders of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance. .... Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit. The sharpest moments of “The Tortured Poet’s Department” would be even more piercing in the absence of excess, but instead the clutter lingers, while Swift holds an unlit match.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 19, 2024
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- Critic Score
The arrangements are bold but often misplaced, cluttering and distracting from the songs instead of illuminating them; the characters get lost in their costumes.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 29, 2013
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It means well and conjures fellow feeling and makes you think the long thoughts. But it is a trudge, and strangely ponderous in its smallness.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 27, 2015
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Bullets in the Gun is his most scattershot album to date, a jumble of attitudes and tactics. Much of the time Mr. Keith, who has been one of the most underappreciated vocal stylists in country music, is singing without conviction on songs that are mere archetypes and lack any of his signature gestures.- The New York Times
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Strangely, given the unified palette and temperament, the album feels disjointed: one track doesn’t pull you to the next.- The New York Times
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These songs don’t have a great dynamic range, or produce very surprising events. They float past you, often made of three or four chords and a trickling, curious beat.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 5, 2014
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It all feels tasteful, companionable and often saggingly dull. Perhaps a steelier singer could use this much gauze; for Ms. Peyroux, it’s Vaseline on the camera lens.- The New York Times
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While he’s well served by the rugged immediacy of the mix--make no mistake, it’s an improvement--his songwriting lags noticeably behind his musical prowess. And he sings much of the album on falsetto, a thin part of his vocal range.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 9, 2015
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There are times when Mr. Callahan’s deliberate, word-centric approach seems merely perverse instead of brave, and somehow the album seems much shorter than its 40 minutes, as if it’s only a sketch for what’s next.- The New York Times
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In making the songs so monumental, Florence and the Machine have also made them impersonal.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 7, 2011
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"Merriweather Post Pavilion," had comparatively more open space, medium tempos, and a lot more Panda Bear, who restricts himself emotionally as he tries to make his limited voice beautiful. This record is dominated, even saturated, by Avey Tare, who does not.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 4, 2012
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So let’s file Voltaic, released by Nonesuch a couple of weeks ago, under the category of Things We Didn’t Think We Needed.- The New York Times
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Her uneven but warmly satisfying new album, Silver Pony, attempts the best of both worlds.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 3, 2011
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The music combines the kitchen-sink inclusiveness of psychedelia with the swerves and jolts of the hip-hop era, to approach the ravenous eclecticism of Latin alternative rock. [27 Feb 2005]- The New York Times
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Fall Out Boy hasn’t turned into a band of rock-star blowhards yet; it’s still too hyperactive and catchy. But the songs were more fun when it was a band of underdogs. [5 Feb 2007]- The New York Times
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He doesn't sound like he's trying to chase after Nashville's contemporary norm, which is admirable. But his confidence often scans as complacency.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 6, 2012
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While the lyrics are uniformly excellent... the songs mainly range from not good to pretty good. [3 Apr 2006]- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 16, 2012
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None of these guests feel out of place here, but not because of the potency of Diddy's vision. Rather, it's because they have made records like these elsewhere, giving Last Train to Paris a secondhand feel.- The New York Times
- Posted Dec 20, 2010
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The album's unity of mood becomes a haze over the course of its nearly two-hour running time.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 1, 2012
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Subtle sounds -- acoustic instruments, electronic tones, environmental noises, distorted echoes -- well up around her, and they open up pockets of shadow around her usual pinpoint clarity. Now the atmosphere is as important as the words.- The New York Times
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“What You See Is What You Get” challenges him less than his debut album did. It is mundanely forceful, laden with chunky guitars and hard-snap drums, and just barely ambitious. Which is to say, in the current country ecosystem, reasonably effective. Where Combs shows the most promise is in his emergent desire to restore the genre to the high-octane pep of the 1990s.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 8, 2019
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- Critic Score
Some of the strongest songs on this up-and-down album sound like lost 1998 Stretch and Bobbito freestyles.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 6, 2015
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Somewhere Under Wonderland teems with lyrics full of rambling travelogue and mystical gobbledygook. Mr. Duritz sings them confidently, in a voice that’s not as laden with meaning as he seems to think, and preserving his shambolic nature.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 3, 2014
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The group’s gospel-gangsta fusion sounds as weird and as inevitable as ever. [7 May 2007]- The New York Times
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His new album, Further Complications--musically more immediate, lyrically more beleaguered--was engineered by Steve Albini, whose aesthetics dictate big drums, big guitars and small vocals. So Mr. Cocker is shouting to be heard, which only improves on his comic persona.- The New York Times
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It’s possible to like this record in theory while imagining one that’s 50 percent more enjoyable.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 9, 2013
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What's wrong with the record is plain. The lyrics' first-person mythmaking gets trite. The guest appearances sound fainthearted, tailored to the ears of Grammy voters. But the heart of the record is deeply, honorably misbehaved.- The New York Times
- Posted Nov 4, 2010
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- The New York Times
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Glasvegas is determinedly provincial, insisting there is grandeur in everyday lives. But what sounds rousing in Britain can sound sodden and overwrought to American ears.- The New York Times
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- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 26, 2016
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- Critic Score
Sometimes the lyrics don’t match the energy of the music here, especially Jack Fowler’s guitar. They tend toward the blandly inspirational, with a handful of notable exceptions.- The New York Times
- Posted Mar 18, 2015
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She largely picks songs that serve as launch platforms for her ballistic-missile voice, but they don’t cohere into a whole identity.... If Ms. Underwood has developed a thematic specialty, it’s the woman-done-wrong anthem. The ones on this album are some of the better songs here.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 21, 2015
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- Critic Score
Listening to the album as a whole, there are diminishing returns from the certainty that a new gimmick is coming every eight bars. Pop songs live by their hooks; it’s no wonder that Merton’s debut album piles them on, eager to please. But for the follow-up, suspense and spontaneity--even if it’s an illusion--would go a long way.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 23, 2019
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Anti is a chaotic and scattershot album, not the product of a committed artistic vision, or even an appealingly freeform aesthetic, but rather an amalgam of approaches, tones, styles and moods.- The New York Times
- Posted Jan 28, 2016
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Lorraine is evenly split between mercilessly detailed songs like these and frustratingly blank ones ("Sweet Disposition," "Rocket Science"), which feel like hollow templates designed to be inhabited by other, less imaginative singers. On those songs Ms. McKenna sounds complacent; discomfort suits her better.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 22, 2011
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The number and potency of these guests sometimes make Cass County sound like a tribute album to someone not yet gone. They also take away from Mr. Henley, now 68, whose voice has decayed nicely, though it now lacks the wise punch it had on “The End of the Innocence,” his excellent 1989 album.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 23, 2015
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Despite its occasional moments of brilliance, “We” too often finds Arcade Fire stuck in a digital maze of its own design, ignoring the fact that it’s always sounded more at home off the grid.- The New York Times
- Posted May 5, 2022
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- Critic Score
For about half of “Highway Companion” Mr. Petty’s reticence opens the songs to a sense of mystery. For the rest, he just sounds reserved and cagey, singing about restlessness but sounding all too settled. [24 Jul 2006]- The New York Times
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KOD, his fifth album, has the feel of a casual placeholder between bigger ideas--it has neither the grim purpose or intense emotional acuity of his 2016 LP “4 Your Eyez Only,” nor the cohesion of the prior one, “2014 Forest Hills Drive,” the record that set the terms for his new direction.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 25, 2018
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The cuts are manic psychedelic jams--there’s even a sitar--riding electronic drones and throbbing, insistent riffs. Timbres of instruments are barbed with fuzz tone and static; the voices that infrequently appear might be shouting unintelligibly or nearly buried in the mix.- The New York Times
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Here were two artists, anxious and passionate, who knew how to talk to each other. That connection is missing from much of the rest of this collection, an exercise in Rolodex-flexing and loose oversight.- The New York Times
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Mr. Young is pushing toward guilelessness in these 10 songs; these are messages of nearly transcendental forgiveness that have lost their old edges of fear and anger. [26 Sep 2005]- The New York Times
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The embarrassingly specific lyrics about her personal life… give the album the feel of a nocturnal diary with the immediacy of a Web log.[16 May 2004]- The New York Times
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Charmer, her eighth studio album, represents a sunny turn for her, at least in relative terms.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 18, 2012
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