Under The Radar's Scores

  • TV
  • Music
For 5,843 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 40% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Siamese Dream [Deluxe Edition]
Lowest review score: 0 Burned Mind
Score distribution:
5843 music reviews
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    he biggest shoes to fill are their own, and for much of Happiness Bastards, Chris and Rich Robinson acquit themselves admirably. The biggest takeaway might be that this is certainly not a band whose best days are behind them. One can only hope for more to come.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    What’s largely great about Playing Favorites is just how FUN it is, a rambunctious rock ‘n’ roll record with a big heart and a smart mouth.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    There’s nothing mind-blowing, nothing genre-bending or jolting on What Do We Do Now, just a bunch of familiar hooks, sad words, and sepia riffs, a thick blanket of lackadaisical warmth.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ultimately, Underdressed at the Symphony’s greatest achievement is the balance it strikes between opposing elements: the familiar and the novel, humor and heartache, dreams and reality. While Webster maintains her stylistic singularity, she doesn’t sit in it; instead, she expands beyond it, keeping it in tow as she explores different sounds and sentiments.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where’s My Utopia? is an album that overflows, both in excess and excellence, with the former sometimes costing the latter its due.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    For every part of I Got Heaven that feels new, what remains is just as potent. The record finds the band radiating both love and fury, at their most powerful and at their most vulnerable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    As per the band’s recent promise to deliver “only bangers,” they fully deliver. Led by instant fan-favorite lead single “Cold Reactor,” these tracks include some of their catchiest and most memorable hooks.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    It’s lively and vibrant, and puts under a spotlight the best impulses of Shygirl and her collaborators. Most importantly, Club Shy succeeds in its key goal: it makes you want to dance.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Loss of Life is MGMT’s most cinematic record to date, allowing the duo to grapple with mortality through meaningful introspection which reveals that, at the end of all things, there’s always love.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wall of Eyes is just as good an effort as any Radiohead album, and rivals the work its members have done in other projects. It’s a complete joy to watch these artists work, for their creative expression is a treasure.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    On TANGK, IDLES have broadened their horizons while retaining the guts and soul that made them. With prudence, craft, and ambition they’ve created something that borders on the monumental. Divisions be damned.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Though there is nothing neutral to be said about what Ducks Ltd. bring to bear on Harm’s Way, there is no doubt that the music the partnership produces is what our bodies were programmed to receive.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    I think this album is perhaps their very best, or if not, at least tied with Lifes Rich Pageant (my favorite of the incredible 1982-1987 I.R.S. era), though at the time it confused me a bit. .... The vinyl is lovingly remastered by Kevin Gray and like the original, it’s a double LP that doesn’t come with a gatefold. The two-CD version also has a bonus disc containing their live set from the set of the TV show Party of Five.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    With Weird Faith Madi Diaz once again gives all that she’s got, crafting a stormy and searching chronicle of falling headfirst into new love.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chubb’s delivery throughout is full of historic trauma, honesty and fiery perseverance.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Perhaps it doesn’t quite capture the magical energy of the band’s live performances, but again, that is a totally different experience that would be hard to replicate. Album of the year? Without a doubt, it will be a strong contender.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The band’s signature sound is obviously intact on Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs, but the songs are rendered with such immediacy and melodic intensity that the new wrinkles are amplified and any sameness rendered meaningless.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It shows that Herring and company know exactly who they are and what they’re capable of, and that makes it a quietly exciting and gratifying chapter of a band who are clearly in this for the long haul.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In spite of its pondering otherwise, Blue Raspberry is as real as it gets and in its most composed moments a confident step forward.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Los Angeles is a rollercoaster of twisting and churning tempos that frequently plunge headlong into a frothy mix of paranoid drums, bass, keyboards, and guitars with intriguing vocals at every turn. But sometimes it’s dreamier, slower, and more melodic, and it’s always done with a tuneful ear and is highly entertaining. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With the 10 tracks on the album, Sleater-Kinney have successfully captured the complex emotions of both our fraught present times and the delicate process of mourning, with taut songwriting coupled with energetic guitar textures, earnest vocals, and pop nuances. Some might even call it a return to form.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A record that can sit proudly at the top table of The Pretenders’ work to date.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    This is a document of one man’s mission to highlight the imperfections, inadequacies, and injustices of right-wing policies, tell the stories of ordinary folk, and give voice to the voiceless; it’s a volume of solidarity, both political and personal—something Billy Bragg will always be the standard bearer for.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Cartwheel is a big, bright, beautiful album. It uses familiarity to bring you in, scratch those indie rock itches, then fires up the pleasure centers with its dedication to sonic satisfaction.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    And the Wind (Live and Loose!) is not the on-stage retread of the familiar we’ve come to expect from countless, thoughtless live releases. It’s an expansion of Lenderman’s expression, an organic outgrowing of ideas from imperfect but beautiful seeds, come to beautiful bloom.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    From a 1972 Carnegie Hall show to a spring ’74 performance with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express and an appearance the following September at Wembley Stadium, Mitchell reveals herself here during each period as a fascinating artist who was well worth returning to year after year, as she continues to be.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Superchunk remind us so often why they remain one of the greatest guitar bands of a generation with their insanely melodic, rapturously supercharged, endlessly loveable punk rock and this expansive set is testament to their continued majesty and mirth.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Overall, it’s another great record from a peerless band that, year after year, reinvent themselves. And, each time, they deliver the goods.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Live in Brooklyn 2011 is a great swansong with the bandmembers dragging all their pent up feelings of frustration, loathing, and distrust with each other onto the stage and playfully tearing it all to shreds.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    For a record titled Action Adventure, it’s surprisingly short on excitement.