The Quietus' Scores

  • Music
For 2,113 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 61% higher than the average critic
  • 7% same as the average critic
  • 32% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 76
Highest review score: 100 Gentlemen At 21 [Deluxe Edition]
Lowest review score: 0 Lulu
Score distribution:
2113 music reviews
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Judging by the results of Juice B Crypts, this revitalisation of purpose feels very much like something radiating directly from the artists themselves. Hardly a complete renewal or about-face, but rather a refining of methodology and intent, a distillation of what made them so exciting to begin with.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The album dazzles with the thrilling cocktail of styles Gordon’s been through, as if changing channels on the coolest radio on earth. But she never makes herself fully at home in any of them. ... Gordon’s bet is that the people are ready for weirdness, that the world can embrace its complexities. And the only way is forward.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Regardless, however you or I might feel about almost-literal computer music is beside the point. The strong sense of perpetual emergence – of listening in on an intelligent system gaining confidence – makes Blossoms an especially remarkable listen.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sonic Citadel is Lightning Bolt at their most poppy and accessible.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It would be a stretch to say that this album is easy going, but it’s probably the most accessible of his records. It’s exciting to find such an artist trying out more populist forms.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For You & I is consistent in its spirit with the label’s catalogue: often in its sound, too, although in a decade and a half Hyperdub has covered enough ground for this to be nebulous. That spirit, though, manifests itself in a defiant queerness; a grab-bag approach borne of big city multiculturalism; and a clear fascination with, and love of, sound in general.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Practice of Love reveals the sensitive humane core that was always behind Hval’s practice of enlightened dissent. The album develops an elegant approach to solving the existential problems of love, care and intimacy from the position of otherness.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There is a playful freedom on display from start to finish. By increasing the importance of the bass and keyboards (a move possibly inspired by fellow Swedish prog compatriots Anekdoten) and simultaneously writing with string arrangements in mind, the innate grandeur at the heart of this band’s music has never been as audible as it is now.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There are clear signs of the heights he’d soon reach on A Love Supreme five months later. Observing such incremental shifts is both fascinating and valuable, and while the performances are all deeply satisfying it remains a tad disappointing that archival projects like this one tend to blot out contemporary work that proves that jazz continues to push forward in the present.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    From first note to last, The Fiery Margin is a recording that exudes complete confidence.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The poetry of Gruff’s lyricism is second to none. His ability to flit from language to language between projects, expressing himself with elegance and eloquence in either, is not only an enviable talent but a unique one.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    One of the best dance LPs of recent times from one of the moment’s most valuable artists.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Trupa Trupa’s ongoing refusal to engage with anyone but themselves is certainly addictive to listen to.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ignoring the slight imperfections in the music itself – it strays into self-indulgence at times, as on ‘Honour’, which spends the second half needlessly stumbling around a relatively uninteresting rhythmic motif – Klein’s motivation for the record is deeply original, a fascinating example of what can happen when you shun precedent and subvert expectations. The result is truly compelling.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PL
    There are moments when the repetitive nature of some of the tracks does wear on you a little bit. ... But these are mere moments of filler on PL, an album which cements the reason why Paranoid London’s tunes appeal to a scene looking for a sound that’s rugged, dark, and illicit. And in that regard, PL has it in spades.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s a big, sonorous, unearthly offering, and it’s difficult to imagine it being created separately by two men, with cut and paste and some incredibly deft stitching. How they’ve managed to bring this Frankenstein’s monster together as a coherent work is testament to a modern friendship by two brilliant musicians using up-to-date technology.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An album that is constantly surprising, occasionally unsettling, frequently beautiful and always mysterious.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ultimately, Hoodies All Summer sounds like it’s been ‘fixed’ by a major label trying to improve Kano’s chances of radio play by throwing some poppy hooks and production into the mix and praying for the best. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but in this case the result is simply banal.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They are now making music that, thanks to its lack of grandiosity and ornateness, has a seeming air of distance. It could almost pass through you unnoticed. But they leave traces in your brain that linger and slowly burn inside of you, long after you’ve stopped listening.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ebbing and flowing between order and chaos, A Universe that Roasts Blossoms for a Horse feels like a long ride in an entropic machine, programmed to descend into mire and din. As such, it’s never dull, it’s just you sometimes wish it had a couple more places to go.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lover is a fabulous record, full of super-fun standout pop hits that make your heart burst. It oozes with Swift’s much more palatable upbeat sass. She’s in love and also thinking about different kinds of love.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Overall i,i sounds expensive and yet – simultaneously – all too safe.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rhythm plays a strong role in all Pharmakon albums, but Devour has a stronger pull and a denser composition. One rhythmic track layers on top of another, sometimes swallowing each other up and sometimes taking songs into different directions. ... Devour isn’t a rallying cry for change, it’s a reflection of the ugliness of it all, from the inside out.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There is definitely room for some trimming. A third could easily be trimmed without damaging the listening experience too much. At the core of Face Stabber is a fun album that gets better with each listen but when it drags, and in places it does, it feels like a laborious chore to get to the good stuff again. The album lives up to its name. From the moment it starts it is an unrelenting, and visceral, album.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The project is stunning and displays a wonderfully acute understanding of what it should do. Duterte knows exactly where this album should stand within her own discography and that of the wider world. Its song-writing is calculated without betraying itself to rigidity and its honesty is telling without falling into a trap of timidity. Anak Ko owes a lot to Duterte’s awareness of how simplicity can breed beauty. Its greatest trick is the delicate fittings of nuance amongst deceptively uncomplicated compositions.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If something’s missing, it’s in production that can’t hide ageing spread; over separate sessions, with separate moods. None of it parlays a singular vision. It’s not meant to. So although the songs often hit the spot (it’s a fuck ton more enjoyable than Teeth Dreams) it’s not a follow-up to Stay Positive.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There was plenty of belligerence and protest on 2017’s World Eater, an album that quite literally bared its teeth, and a track like ‘Wings Of Hate’ delivers exactly what you expect it to. But there’s exasperation and frustration here too, and it’s not quite the maximalist, terrifying work one might expect given the subject matter at hand. Personal grief also informed the year Power spent working on Animated Violence Mild, so following a more reflective, emotionally resonant path makes sense.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Haiku Salut could be a curious fit for this – certainly, anyone looking for an evocation of the honky tonk contemporary to that era of silent film will be disappointed. Instead, Haiku Salut have delivered one of their strongest works to date.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The world has changed, and, though bruised and broken, the sincere, generation-galvanising Sleater-Kinney have changed for the better.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cala is a record that, at its strongest, reaches astounding levels of beauty and emotional fragility, but at its weakest, is just a fading shadow of its most powerful moments.