The Wire's Scores

  • Music
For 2,628 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 SMiLE
Lowest review score: 10 Amazing Grace
Score distribution:
2628 music reviews
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Meek is doing the one thing he does well and nothing else. [Nov 2013, p.66]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Volume X [is] their best album since 200's The Red Line. [May 2014, p.70]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Somewhere in Asphalt For Eden is buried beautiful music. [Jun 2016, p.62]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Woptober, his second album as a free man, returns to the knotty, impenetrable rabbit holes of his storied mixtape run. [Jan 2017, p.77]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A confused but compulsive listen. [Feb 2017, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The initial impression given by Death Valley Girls’ third album is of a hypertypical Los Angeles band: kinda punky, kinda raucous, but wholly beholden to the rock canon, in the style of past-decade LA outfits like The Icarus Line and The Warlocks. Multiple spins of Darkness Rains don’t refute this, but do reveal an undeniable spirit and likeable energy. [Nov 2018, p.65]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Only after wading through the swamp to the final three tracks do we get anything approaching sincerity, albeit of a cloying kind. [Oct 2007, p.55]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If anything, however, Autechre have pulled back the throttle on their excursions into the unknown. [#254, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    He might be a slightly better rapper [than his father Will], he’s certainly a more adventurous artist and the fact that he’s a product of his generation shouldn’t detract from that. [Jan 2018, p.78]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A high-level concept album that never wastes a note. [#266, p.59]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It feels rough and raw and sketchy. [#245, p.69]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    While the high energy interplay between the players remains solid, their proto-punk edginess is less pronounced. [Apr 2015, p.54]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tracks run the usual gamut, aggregating pop references and stylistic tropes from the entire history of hiphop, rock, punk, techno and their esoteric subgenres, and assembling them into a harrowing Frankenstein that’s more sardonic than revelatory. [Sep 2018, p.50]
    • 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
    • 70 Critic Score
    A certain bass jumpiness is evident throughout these six tracks, a post-grunge melodic murkiness that is at once reassuring but also puts paid to elevating the record into the realms of the ethereal. [Oct 2011, p.58]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The addition of Steven McDonald from Red Kross and Jeff Pinkus from The Butthole Surfers lends more low end weight to the band’s already bottom heavy sound, but otherwise Pinkus Abortion Technician is business as usual. [Jun 2018, p.65]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's fun but nonessential. [Nov 2012, p.64]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They actually have something fresh to express. [Apr 2012, p.62]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The album never quite wallows in gross out carnage or tragedy or blame (though these are here, for sure), but spins these yarns, perverse detail at a time, with the laconic humour of a short story by Richard Brautigan or Thomas Pynchon, stopping just short of mockery. [May 2017, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The voice of singer Rolynne provides a fluency and depth missing elsewhere; her emotional precision and expression cut right through the ornament of this otherwise rather forgettable album. [Nov 2017, p.66]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Marks a return to the kind of intricately interleaved rhythms, seamless progressions and aching harmonies that characterise their earlier sound. [#245, p.69]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black's pleasure at rediscovering these old songs in new company is infectious and makes the exercise engaging and worthwhile. [#252, p.62]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The mirth on offer here is thin fare, for the most part. [May 2014, p.63]
    • 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
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 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
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Remember Me lacks depth, being essentially a collection of keg party crowd pleasers, but its biggest singles are undeniable. [Jun 2014, p.63]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    New material is conspicuous by its absence, and several shambolic passages indicate that the band barely managed to rehearse, let alone write songs. [Jul 2017, p.58]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    For much of the record he has opted for the middle ground of an unchallenging electronic music LP in the twinkly and tasteful tradition of Four Tet and Border Community, as ready for coffee table listening as a full AV show at London’s Barbican centre. ... At its most restrained Ephem:Era advances the sound of Signals in exciting directions. [Aug 2018, p.63]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    An album remarkable only for just how bland it gets, despite every effort to the contrary. [Feb 2016, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nomad is well-name--but what's most striking is not its diversity, but its coherence. [Dec 2008, p.73]
    • The Wire