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: | Spiderland [Box Set] | |
|---|---|---|
| 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
The End Of Radio’s cache of 1994 and 2004 John Peel sessions admirably bucks expectations even as it serves up multiple reminders that Shellac are a crack live unit equipped with airtight panic room ragers. And while singer/guitarist Albini takes care to toast BBC DJ Peel, who died weeks prior to the 2004 sessions, the charge here lies in hearing Albini, drummer Todd Trainer and bassist Bob Weston improve upon and deviate from the studio recordings. [Sep 2019, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Aug 22, 2019 -
- Critic Score
This album is not about re-using their old sounds. Most of the tracks offer something different and work well to complement the story being told. [Sep 2019, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Aug 22, 2019 -
- Critic Score
He cites Frank Sinatra and Disney soundtracks as influences, and creates gorgeous music that paired with the vibrant visuals, disguises the horror within the film itself. [Sep 2019, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Aug 22, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Not hating the LP, but not liking it much either, seeing it as a mid-level release covering all bases; political interludes, references to reparations and racism, interspersed with rap-frat boy antics. [Sep 2019, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Aug 22, 2019 -
- Critic Score
They sound for good or ill like they’ve beamed in from psychedelic hard rock’s boom period too. ... Face Stabber is 80 minutes long, with two songs accounting for 35 of those minutes, and betrays mild hubris as regards their ability to jam interestingly. [Sep 2019, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Aug 22, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Torche’s engagingly awry blend of harmony and heaviosity finds full fruition on Admission, an album you might feel somewhat ashamed for enjoying so thoroughly. [Sep 2019, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Aug 22, 2019 -
- Critic Score
There's a mismatch between sound and vision here that forestalls true wonder or joy. ... A little more concision and concentration throughout could have made Guild of the Asbestos Weaver more effective. [Sep 2019, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Aug 22, 2019 -
- Critic Score
An even deeper dig into the wound exposed on her debut. The album is drenched in divinity, its consideration of good and evil as polar concepts is biblical, elevating vengeance to a God-given imperative. Her classically trained voice deals in spiritual cadences, and commands gothic instrumentation of strings and drones. [Aug 2019, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2019 -
- Critic Score
This is folk music for the post-industrial era, which aspires to the condition of a true world music, not as a postcard from some Club Med of the mind, but as a dispatch from the front lines of both climate change and the extinction of animal species (real and imagined). Essential listening, and a real adventure in the undergrowth of the underground. Sit a spell in the shade of the Borametz. [Aug 2019, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Jul 30, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Delivers on the forward-looking promise of The Art Ensemble’s motto: great black music – ancient to the future. [May 2019, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Jul 23, 2019 -
- Critic Score
This is Ambarchi at his most user-friendly, waxing nostalgic for a music that never was. [Aug 2019, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Jul 23, 2019 -
- Critic Score
House And Land’s eternal music drone tendencies are more sparingly employed than their debut, but folkie staple “Blacksmith” is a glorious outlier to this end, Morgan’s shruti box a keening back and forth foil to a two centuries old tale of metalworker induced heartbreak. [Aug 2019, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Jul 19, 2019 -
- Critic Score
he 22a label founder flexes his expansive musical influences across ten new creations. One of the most exciting tracks here is “Buffalo Gurl”. Dividing its time between earlier R&B and sultry jazz chords, it’s the pick me up you didn’t know you needed. [Aug 2019, p.65]- The Wire
Posted Jul 15, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Things improve markedly when he plays to his strengths with the nuanced narrative of “A Boy Is A Gun”, but ultimately such moments [are] hard to hear over the pitiable “Puppet” and “Earfquake”, functional pop wisely rejected by Justin Bieber and Rihanna. When the narrative sags and his mind seems to wander, it just isn’t enough, no matter how stylish the trimmings. [Aug 2019, p.68]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
“Simon Says” and “Pimpin’” prove she works well with Juicy J as long as he stays away from the mic. But “Hood Rat Shit” is the real highlight, a moment where for all the gory details her glee is more Dennis The Menace than Lil Kim. [Aug 2019, p.68]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Brassy and direct, it looked north and west, toward the coastal Caribbean and into the forest. Kicking carimbó, bangué, siriá and other up-country sounds are ably documented on Jambú. [Aug 2019, p.67]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
There’s a food theme to this super light and easy but lushly layered 1970s and 80s themed reverie. [Aug 2019, p.66]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
“Stir The Sea” coasts on a choice yowly blues metal riff, but teased out slow jams like “Arcurlarius – Burke” are equally their forte. The vocal resemblance of Brian Markham and Meat Puppets’ Curt Kirkwood helps crystallise a bubbling under comparison with the latter, although Dommengang aren’t in The Puppets’ league when it comes to ingenuity or, frankly, personality. [Aug 2019, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The music on Old Star is not black metal, stylistically speaking, but it nonetheless telegraphs Darkthrone’s cackling, sardonic grimness so as to transpose a blackened atmosphere into speed metal riff salad, epic/trad doom and frequent moments that call up Celtic Frost’s hallowed splicing of iron and velvet. [Aug 2019, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Limned in choirs, organs and brass, the languorous “Snow Is Falling In Manhattan” flips dolour into something magical, and transcendent. Strip away that prairie pedal steel and loosen the seams, and “Darkness And Cold” would be the kind of standard Leonard Cohen might test drive, were he still with us. [Aug 2019, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
He doesn’t strain in the falsetto passages and there’s no papering over the cracks in his phrasing. He’s as accurate and precise as he ever was, projecting even at low volumes. [Aug 2019, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Davachi’s early love of Bach pervades the initial section of “Perfumes I-III”. [Aug 2019, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Their third album Horizon is mellifluous and pretty, with a rolling, tumbling quality that feels like a downhill race. [Jul 2019, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Jul 1, 2019 -
- Critic Score
I Was Real isn’t going to disappoint 75 Dollar Bill’s old fans. ... Augmentations and roots moves do nothing to dilute 75 Dollar Bill’s essence. If anything, I Was Real is ultra-real. [Jul 2019, p.44]- The Wire
Posted Jul 1, 2019 -
- Critic Score
It joins Titanic and Big Thief’s UFOF (members of Big Thief are present) as one of 2019’s leftfield pop gems, a record created with no detectable consciousness of a wider scene but with a bedroom-wide sense of possibility. [Jul 2019, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Jul 1, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Some tracks go on far longer than is comfortable, some peter out prematurely, some wander off in a direction that doesn’t immediately make sense. But even without the context of Troxler’s career, that’s fine. It’s obviously a personal record, with a distinctive sound palette, expressing some fairly profound and fun experiences. [Jun 2019, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Jun 25, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The bouncy yet deadpan Italo energy of first single “The Girls Are Chewing Gum” sets the tone, with cosmic blasts and ray gun bleeps lending variation to the subsequent tracks. [Jun 2019, p.49]- The Wire
Posted Jun 24, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Real world concerns – motherhood, self-growth, the responsibilities of adult life – are transformed into brightly synthesised fantasias. ... For a small scale project, Bamboo’s vision of pop feels pristine, a little utopia realised. [Jul 2019, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Jun 24, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Sounds as if it could have been recorded in the city 50 years ago with a hotshot producer like Bones Howe or Curt Boettcher at the helm. ... “If You Don’t Know Now, You Never Will” might be the best example of this delicate balance, with the track “Fools” being the second; even though that song sometimes leans into mid-1970s schlock territory best left to Boz Scaggs or Andrew Gold. [Jun 2019, p.65]- The Wire
Posted Jun 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
On their sharply delivered follow-up, they delve into darker realms of the genre utilising the combination of abrasive though sparsely used guitars and dub inflections to exhibit something similar to This Heat, or maybe even present day British noise rock collective Gnod. [Jun 2019, p.65]- The Wire
Posted Jun 20, 2019