The Telegraph (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,227 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 77
Highest review score: 100 Blue Eclipse
Lowest review score: 20 Killer Sounds
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 874 out of 1227
  2. Mixed: 351 out of 1227
  3. Negative: 2 out of 1227
1227 music reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sing the Delta
    This is an album of rare truth and grace.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Acoustic Classics
    If (oh dear) you haven't got a Richard Thompson album in your collection, then this is a great way to get to know a truly inspired songwriter. But even if you know his work inside out, then you will still find much to enjoy listening to a master re-touch some of his best works.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Laru Beya
    Recorded partly in Senegal with contributions from Youssou N'Dour and Orchestra Baobab, the good hearted energy of this second album announces him as a potentially major figure to watch.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Didn't He Ramble
    He brings his expressive voice and interesting lyric-writing to traditional-minded Irish ballads.... Class.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PRE PLEASURE
    This is Jacklin’s most personal offering yet and while the pain of mining her soul for such material is clear, through these diary-like confessionals, so too is her catharsis.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blank Project
    This record is rammed full of fantastically fresh and challenging beats and bears the hallmarks of Cherry's streetwise style.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    $/He Who Feeds You...Owns You
    Protest albums don’t come more subtle and moving than this.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    UGLY
    Ugly makes for difficult listening in places, but that’s not to say it isn’t often brilliant. Experimental, disarmingly honest and conceptually tight, blending rap, alt-rock and electronica, there’s no denying that Frampton is putting in the work.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    James Blake
    In weaker moments he veers into mawkish troubadour territory, but Blake's musical alchemy can be capable of matching the urban, nocturnal beauty of vintage Massive Attack.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Equals
    To some tastes, Sheeran will be corny and trite. Yet what he does well is essentially inarguable: provide songs that fulfil the emotional needs of universal moments.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Red Moon in Venus
    From the opening chimes and birdsong to her sultry vocals, the album cocoons you entirely in its plush, sensuous world.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Inside the Old Year Dying
    Here’s what I Inside the Old Year Dying is: beguilingly atmospheric, beautifully crafted, and yet more proof that PJ Harvey is one of our most idiosyncratic artists. It’s wyrd, for sure. But it’s also lwovely.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Avonmore
    Avonmore is classic, if not quite vintage, Ferry, lacking the distinctive songcraft of his finest work.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Always Ascending
    Always Ascending is every bit as smart and dynamic as their acclaimed debut, but familiarity has dampened its dramatic impact.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bad Plus Joshua Redman
    Trio The Bad Plus are joined by saxophonist Joshua Redman, and the intricate compositions challenge and inspire the soloists.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Way I'm Livin'
    It's great to have Lee Ann Womack back with such a sad and lovely album.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jaguar II
    If sensuous, whip smart R’n’B rocks your boat, Victoria Monét’s debut album, Jaguar II, is a luxurious treat.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nine and a Half Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling of the 1970's and Early '80s
    Its low-budget weirdness will have you laughing into the new year.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Joy'All
    Above all, Joy’All seems like the work of an artist content with floating through life, just having fun – and she’s brought us along for the ride.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Revival
    Like his misogynistic streak, his sound is stuck in the past. What keeps our attention is his exuberant delight in language itself, such as his geometry pun in River: “this love triangle / left us in a wrecked tangle”. (Say it aloud).
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Undun
    The music is astounding, threading erudite raps through ghetto soul jams and panoramic orchestral interludes.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    thank u, next
    An album that ultimately serves as both an emancipation and a proclamation, Grande fully bending her collaborators to her will instead of merely playing in their sandboxes, and creating a blissful fusion of pop and R&B that is entirely her own.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Duck
    Pound for pound and hook for hook, Duck is as strong an album as they have ever made: a bright, giddy, colourful collection of pop anthems to raise the spirits.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Longest River
    There's a real grace about The Longest River, the debut album from self-taught multi-instrumentalist Olivia Chaney.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Born to Die
    Inevitably, 51 minutes of melodrama becomes draining. But it captures Del Rey's mystique perfectly.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue Water Road
    At its best, it’s like a movie soundtrack. String interludes behave like camera pans between scenes; fuzzy production gives everything a dream-like quality.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Encore
    Hall’s deadpan tones offer the same strangely reassuring grounded presence on the opening track, a bullish political anthem Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys. Yet with its slick funk and soul groove, I can’t remember the Specials ever sounding quite so smooth.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of "Inside Llewyn Davis"
    There are inevitable misses as well as hits (House of the Rising Sun is a bit flat) but there is enough variety from musicians such as The Secret Sisters, The Milk Carton Kids, the Punch Brothers and Marcus Mumford (also the associate producer) to keep things rolling along.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There Will Be No Intermission
    This is not so much pop music, as music that might make your ears pop.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rebel Heart
    The tone switches dramatically between dynamic contemporary electro groove adventures, singalong pop and lush synthetic ballads, while veering emotionally between introspective vulnerability and strident defiance. Yet every track adheres to robust, classic songwriting principles, a kind of melodious elegance of structure gleaming through no matter how inventively deconstructed the arrangement.
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