The Wire's Scores
- Music
For 2,618 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: | SMiLE | |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest review score: | Amazing Grace |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 2,168 out of 2618
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Mixed: 430 out of 2618
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Negative: 20 out of 2618
2618
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
I can’t recommend this as a great hiphop record or remotely the state of the art right now. But for fans it’s an essential, harrowing work – Gang Starr’s equivalent of Big Star’s Third. [Jan 2020, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Dec 9, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The undulating, snarling “Black Transit Of Jupiter’s Third Satellite” is a bubbling 12 minute antimatter expanse, the pot of black gold at the end of this particular rainbow. The journey to get there is ravishingly bleak and massaging. [Jan 2020, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Dec 9, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The Brian Eno collaboration “Here Come The Warm Dreads”, despite having the cheesiest, winking at the camera/self-referential title, coalesces around a regal brass melody and popping rhythm section to created a solidly funky slice of spaced out dub. “Rattling Bones And Crowns” is sharper, darker take on the Rainford cut “Kill Them Dreams Money Worshippers”. [Dec 2019, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Dec 3, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Debut album Labyrinth is Kanda’s most sophisticated solo effort to date, swaying through 13 tracks of gorgeous melodies and electroacoustic layers that skip and skitter between beats and material states. [Dec 2019, p.48]- The Wire
Posted Nov 27, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The five CD expansion pack of his 1982 double LP offers a far more enticing peek behind the purple velvet curtain [than Originals]. ... The outtakes are the real draw here. ... It only leaves you wanting more. [Dec 2019, p.66]- The Wire
Posted Nov 27, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Gloopy Aphexian synths add a heady, after-hours quality to his itchy drum patterns, but the takeaway moment comes on the rather different closing track “Phosphorescence”, an endless plateau of serene deep house laced with jazzy keys, Mike Banks style. [Dec 2019, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Frisell, as always, plays for the group and for the song rather than reeling off solos. He has never shredded, but he doesn’t just shuck corn and whittle, either. Every Frisell performance is shaped with love and care, and with a near perfect balance between form and freedom. He just gets better and better. [Dec 2019, p.47]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
What makes Transmission Suite work beyond its sounds is the belief Massey and Barker still have in the 808 project, the push all their music has of maintaining the future both as ultimate aim and ultimate source of anxiety. 808 State’s music has lost none of its foreboding, finesse and power. Sit deep within and enjoy. [Dec 2019, p.44]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
While The Daisy Age won’t hold many surprises for diehard hiphop fans, the collection is well curated. [Dec 2019, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Ultimately Plantasia is often hard to love for the music itself. It was released several years after more evocative pieces for the Moog had already been released – from Perrey and Kingsley, Dick Hyman and even Garson himself – but it remains beloved as an amusing curiosity first and foremost, and for good reason. [Dec 2019, p.66]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The result is an often awkward assemblage of trial and error decisions that either allow the tracks to keep their era’s verve or attempt to punch things up in a modern sense, where the cut-off date is the mid-90s. ... All is not lost, though. It’s insightful to hear where Davis was heading with sleek arrangements such as “Give It Up” and “Maze”. [Dec 2019, p.65]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
He’s hung up on Jesus rather than pneumatic women. It’s hard to tell if that’s an improvement, but it doesn’t seem like a regression either. ... An album with zero fat, dense in at least three senses, two of them positive. [Dec 2019, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Earthgang have one foot in the now, the other turned toward the horizon and an uncertain future. [Dec 2019, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Leaving Meaning has all of the reassuring turgidity and tortured self-importance devotees have come to expect plus a cast of name contributors (The Necks, Ben Frost, Baby Dee, Anna von Hausswolff among others) for that vital essence of “Well, if they’re working with him, he’s probably OK, right?” [Dec 2019, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
In Cauda Venenum is a peculiarly convincing example of retro rock but that’s not to say the album is anchored to one particular scene or era. ... What’s also helpful is that frontman and bandleader Mikael Åkerfeldt has one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary rock, an impassioned croon whose soulfulness defuses any potential for pomposity. [Dec 2019, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The Sisypheans is a work of personal reinvention that succeeds in open-armed, accessible fashion. [Dec 2019, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
It’s tempting to call these outtakes but their vision is sharp and purposeful, sustained by a consistently monolithic interplay and helped by Steve Albini’s signature traits. It all makes Pyroclasts one of Sunn O)))’s heaviest and most penetrating albums. [Dec 2019, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Their pop is the sharpest it’s ever been. [Dec 2019, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
It’s definitely a mixed bag, but pays off with “The Dawn” in which Lipstate’s guitar exhales in tandem with a spoken admission of small hours frailty. [Dec 2019, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Nelson used to use his voice to give focus to soundscapes; now they are means to express some uneasy feelings about country and relationships in the 21st century. [Dec 2019, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Sounding at times as though someone had isolated the synth track from a classic Hawkwind record, the music here is familiar and invites associations. ... Regardless, On A Clear Day is a pleasant affair.- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Unsurprisingly the mood is melancholy and the louche, theatrical sexuality or carnal drama of earlier albums is replaced by a battered and searching tone, striving to make sense, or failing that, some poetry or beauty out of the tragedy. The narratives take on a less devilish tone here. [Nov 2019, p.46]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Released on their freshly launched record label Keck, Giant Swan is a front-loaded beast. ... The second half of the record loses momentum, danceable rhythms outweighed by slow motion drones and jagged noise- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
A return to form, of sorts. Shifting from the dappled sunshine warmth of the psychedelically swamped “Away From You” to the black stoner sludge orgy that is “Shadow Of Skull”, the direction guiding LφVE & EVφL twists and turns like a bucketful of electric eels. [Dec 2019, p.43]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
This album explores that idea of opposites attracting and co-existing within one entity. It’s also a powerful, confident pop record tooled up to compete with the heaviest hitters (Paul White’s production is key, as it has been for Danny Brown and Charli XCX) while occupying its own uniquely ambivalent and querulous space. [Nov 2019, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Heavy, expressive and uncompromising, both Wrecked and Analog Fluids Of Black Holes gesture at fresh, purposeful possibilities for noise and experimental music. [Nov 2019, p.49]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Heavy, expressive and uncompromising, both Wrecked and Analog Fluids Of Black Holes gesture at fresh, purposeful possibilities for noise and experimental music. [Nov 2019, p.49]- The Wire
Posted Nov 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The sonic diversity and range of Magdalene is a marked departure from the breathy triphop of LP1, yet a thematic trajectory is clearly traced from the suggestive sensuality of the first to the combative provocation of its follow-up named after a defamed biblical figure. [Nov 2019, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Nov 7, 2019 -
- Critic Score
It’s not just that this set feels way more focused and streamlined than the debut; the band have also been sharpened up by incessant live work to the point where Lally and Canty are murderously diamond-tight, and Pirog is flat-out incredible, encouraged by the sheer precision of what backs him to fly into some gloriously discordant fuzzed-up psych and post-punk abrasion. [Nov 2019, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Oct 23, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The musical quality is high, and it’s unusual among the saxophonist’s post-1959 studio recordings in reprising earlier compositions – he mostly featured new material. Coltrane’s rather unvarying dynamic level makes him a less effective film composer than his former employer Miles Davis, with his dramatic mastery – but Trane can’t be blamed for not fitting his music to the action, given that he had little idea what that would be. [Nov 2019, p.69]- The Wire
Posted Oct 23, 2019