The Wire's Scores

  • Music
For 2,613 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 7% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.6 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Spiderland [Box Set]
Lowest review score: 10 Amazing Grace
Score distribution:
2613 music reviews
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Saga Continues is a somewhat unwieldy collection of Wu offcuts with seemingly no concept. Less an album than a collection of outtakes. [Dec 2017, p.64]
    • The Wire
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sandoval's overly stylised vocals really start to grate over the distance of a whole LP. [#213, p.65]
    • The Wire
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    To run with the cinematic analogies, I'd suggest that Frost is the musical equivalent of Nicolas Winding Refn, all neon lit brutality and state of the art emptiness. [Oct 2017, p.52]
    • The Wire
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's only when that rhythm programming is either stripped right back or broken apart that you get a sense of overabundant glee in playing with the blurts and splurts of the synth timbres, and this feels like more than the generic, albeit impeccably executed IDM record that the title rightly suggests. [Mar 2016, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    he way the music suddenly jerks into life from stasis to movement is fine and the whole thing is beautiful and embracing and makes you think peaceful thoughts. By mid-afternoon though things get really ragged. ... Whatever made those earlier tracks sound so great is missing now. [Jan 2018, p.62]
    • The Wire
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Old
    This strained affair makes the party rocking simplicity of 2 Chainz or even LMFAO look absolutely artful. Brown's too smart to make music this dumb effectively. [Nov 2013, p.66]
    • The Wire
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    When the beats are sparse he shines, but the album bloats in its middle with too many R&B assisted dramatic gestures and not enough dead eyed and cracked crack music. [Nov 2013, p.66]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    There's no bullshit and no nonsense here, but listening to this album,, you might end up wishing that there was. [Dec 2011, p.68]
    • The Wire
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's clear that Bell retains a sure grasp of form and dynamics. Hard to shake off, however, is the nagging feeling that you've heard all this before. [#236, p.62]
    • The Wire
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's more letdown than meltdown, as veteran drummer Steve Reid runs out steam about halfway through disc two. [Dec 2011, p.70]
    • The Wire
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    DeGraw's skill for mixing and matching swatches of sound is unparalleled, but without context it becomes much like choosing colours for your living room. [Dec 2013, p.48]
    • The Wire
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Get Lost is no worse (and no better) than 2010's Living With Yourself. [Oct 2011, p.56]
    • The Wire
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    There is, in the end, something vaguely nauseating about a bunch of popular entertainers in middle age creating state-supported art inspired by the deaths of countless young men caused by an act of state-subsidised slaughter. [Jan 2015, p.61]
    • The Wire
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wire’s music is characterised by unusual structures and perspectives, an approach largely absent from Mind Hive, the post-punk group’s 17th studio album. The most prominent themes here are political, with mixed results. [Mar 2020, p.57
    • The Wire
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tracks like "Huis Clos"... can drag... And the garage rock of "(I Wanna Be) Waiting For My Plane" is an unwieldy cross between early Sonic Youth and Two Lone Swordsmen's axe-men incarnation. [#253, p.69]
    • The Wire
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst sings over roughly half the album, but his melodies are about as memorable as weak tea. [Mar 2013, p.64]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tracks have potent moments, but they’re slapped together with little thought for overall flow. [Jun 2019, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It seems telling for an album about self-discovery that the most convincing tracks are those where he’s openly panicking over his identity rather than those where he’s found an uneasy peace. [Mar 2020, p.61]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    For all of its constant activity, [the album] feels stale. It does next to nothing new to build on previous releases, and from song to song there's so little variation that its ultimate effect is numbing. [Feb 2016, p.50]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    PC Music Volume 1 resembles the soundtrack to a posh private schooler's teen sleepover--glossy, giddy, sparkly and shallow. [Aug 2015, p.55]
    • The Wire
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What's lacking on Date Of Birth, though, is any sort of excitement. [#212, p.75]
    • The Wire
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    If music is ever really going to change the world, it's going to need more vigour and vitality than this. [Jan 2014, p.66]
    • The Wire
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In truth most of it is middling stuff. [Oct 2011, p.62]
    • The Wire
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    There's not much going on texturally. [Nov 2015, p.56]
    • The Wire
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pablo grips your attention through an attraction-repulsion effect: the attraction largely pertaining to the sonics, the repulsion manifesting almost entirely in the lyrics. [Apr 2016, p.52]
    • The Wire
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mess is more immediate than the past couple of albums, and in context, more baffling. [Mar 2014, p.63]
    • The Wire
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rat Farm has only the occasional flash of brilliance. [Apr 2013, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    There’s a lot to unpack, endless fun to be had cataloguing his references from Three 6 Mafia to Octavia Butler, his consummate brilliance as a wordsmith and architect of flow. ... But it gets monotonous quickly. [Nov 2019, p.52]
    • The Wire
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Phase One impresses more on first listen [than Phase Two].... But it wears thin quickly. [Feb 2016, p.54]
    • The Wire
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A fitful and languishing affair whose best moments will have you yearning for more, while the worst may leave some listeners wondering what they were doing here in the first place. [#248, p.59]
    • The Wire