The Wire's Scores

  • Music
For 2,617 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:
2617 music reviews
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A good bit stranger-sounding and more interesting in their excavation of the past. [Jul 2017, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Part of Souleyman’s thing is upsetting delicate ears with his so-called vulgarity – it’s music for taxi drivers and party crashers. Likewise these swooning synth stabs may sound kitsch to discerning ravers, but the fun is heroically nonstop. [Jan 2020, p.69]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Every gesture feels bold and assured. [Nov 2015, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With the stylistic anchor lifted, the 12 cuts sound progressively more deranged as they blossom into alien dance floor mutants from bubbles of heady synths, deliriously processed voices, absurd squiggles and reversed beats. ... It’s difficult to imagine a better debut for ex-DFA head Jonathan Galkin’s new imprint FourFour. [Nov 2021, p.48]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    While several guests appear on the album – Tool’s drummer Danny Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor, among others – Krüller feels gorgeously desolate, befitting a world in a dire state. [Mar 2022, p.42]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Out of a dangerous, pitfall-laden area of song, she makes a variety of riches. [Jun 2015, p.48]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Son
    What's distinctive about Son is that it is more layered and inventive than Segundo and Tres Cosas. [#268, p.58]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The risky juxtapositions that mark his best work are critically missing. [#224, p.51]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Downhome and earthy, cut through with sensitivity and intelligence. [#229, p.58]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    One of the year's best releases, remix or not. [#241, p.71]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sometimes Liars sounds like a group whose previous sonic journeying has inspired a fresh look at the familiar. All too often, however, it's as though, having stepped outside the confines of conventional song, they can never believe in it enough to return. [Sep 2007, p.56]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sol Invictus is a looser, more relaxed record than its predecessors, occasionally dropping into a lounge ballad mode that suits Patton's vocals. [Jun 2015, p.52]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Most of this material has a tense, enervating effect, despite the haziness of the sonic palette Field-Pickering favours. [Feb 2013, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Daze's exhilarating intensity is tempered by an undercurrent of grim pleasure in physical discomfort, worming under your skin like Tri Angle labelmate Rabit's similarly caustic "Pandemic." [Feb 2016, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With this score, Greenwood might have set out in the footsteps of the masters, but he ends up forging his own path. [Jan 2015, p.64]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The dryness of the recording is key, there’s an intimacy to everything that makes even the heaviest moments (“Skin A Rat”) feel like you’re hearing them in a dead room, and the shifts in tone from the punchy (“Sorry Entertainer”) to the plangent (“The Greatest”, “Tried To Understand”) and the gorgeous chorale-like (“Feminine Water Turmoil”) remain utterly convincing thanks to Ashworth’s miraculous voice. [May 2022, p.55]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What unites them is the boldness of the material and their treatment of it. [Jun 2014, p.48]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No one, really, has taken their precise marriage of classic rock 'n' roll moves and steely cybernetic deformity further than themselves. [Aug 2014, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This analogy of applying interdisciplinary approaches to uncover a certain reality carries through to several aspects of the album, where a folding over of electronic and acoustic space circles in on and augments a broader understanding of sound. [Aug 2018, p.67]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The eight pieces here function as a drummer’s showcase, certainly, but Contact’s wilful limitations conceal an eclectic approach. ... Time spent immersed in Contact will reap reward. [May 2020, p.52]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The ten tracks are built on foundations of looped percussion and tight bass sequences, usually based around short, sharp and undeclarative sounds – synthetic rimshots and damped hi-hats rather than snares or kicks. While this can run into staid territory, as on the triphop shuffle of “One Two”, for the most part its subdued hardness accents the drift of Milton’s vocals. His delivery often overwhelms the matter of his lyrics in the best way. [Apr 2021, p.54]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    To these ears at least, Rundgren’s finest since 2008’s Arena. [Jan 2023, p.75]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One of the chief sources of the album's power is the value it assigns to the act of witnessing, of seeing and taking account of the most vulnerable. [Apr 2016, p.47]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Several tracks differ little from versions on their 1987 Flying Nun debut Brave Worlds, but the instrumental rarity "Moonlight On Flesh" brings a welcome expansiveness redolent of a more modest Echo And The Bunnyman. [Dec 2014, p.57]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    93696 is their sixth to date and, in many ways, it still sounds like music made to illustrate a theory. [Apr 2023, p.56]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The desire of the group to progress feels palpable here. [Nov 2015, p.55]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Many of Mike’s verses lost me, but when it clicks, and you can follow a thought through a few mutating bars, the effect is astonishing. [Aug 2021, p.58]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A highlty nuanced album which is at once razor sharp, and rich in new openings and possibilities. [#206, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    He rationalizes the darkness of Trauma with the breeze and bounce of 1998's Rhythmalism, and the results are often downright hilarious. [Jun 2011, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Somehow unconvincing, it's like beach bar escapism spliced with an incidental tune from the TV comedy show The Mighty Boosh. [Mar 2015, p.60]
    • The Wire