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For 468 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 73% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 23% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 76
Highest review score: 100 Black Mountain
Lowest review score: 30 Siberia
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 419 out of 468
  2. Mixed: 48 out of 468
  3. Negative: 1 out of 468
468 music reviews
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Outsider
    The Outsider may be a cut below its predecessor, the artistic, critical, and commercial breakthrough that was Fate's Right Hand--perhaps the element of surprise is gone, perhaps the songs aren't quite as sharp, perhaps it's just not possible to catch lightning in a bottle twice in a row--but that was a tough act to follow, and this one's none too shabby.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Who Loves The Sun OST
    Hollywood producers and directors could learn a lot from this deceptively modest score.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Come Away With Me
    Her readings of the Hank Williams classic, "Cold Cold Heart" and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You" alone are worth the price of the CD.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sky Blue Sky
    It's certainly the group's most cohesive album in ages.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Freedom's Road
    This is his State of the Union address, with guitars that chime like the Byrds heralding sentiments that recall the socially-conscious 1960s, yet sound all the more pertinent today.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Said Date
    An impressive album in the best tradition of the Clan... Had this album come out in 1998, people might have hailed it as another Wu classic.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Silver Lining
    Sport[s] a trace more big league sparkle, but with the frayed cleverness and rock-solid musicianship that their fans know best.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Me & Mr Johnson
    [He] attacks these songs with passion, intelligence, and a refreshing lack of blues-rock pretense.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Good Morning Revival
    Their multiple piercings, shaved heads, and abundant tattoos have them labeled a punk band, but on [Revival], Good Charlotte... fall much more under the umbrella of 1970s arena rock and mainstream ballads.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Be Still Please
    Unable to pen and record a clunker amidst his handsome ballads and cascading rockers, McCaughan coalesces sugar-coated melodies with personal, often uproarious lyrics that can make his 40-something voice sound half its age.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Oblivion With Bells
    The best tracks on Oblivion with Bells are also the most ambitious....But after that pair of opening tracks, you have to wait until the very last piece, a long, trancey bit of psychedelic drift called 'The Best Mamgu Ever,' to hear something more than unformed melodies and unstrung ideas.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Loose Screw
    Seldom do you get to see an artist exorcise her pain in public with such poise and fearlessness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ole! Tarantula
    Hitchcock has made a return to garage rock not heard since 1989's Queen Elvis.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Room Noises
    The drawback is a lack of diversity which keeps those sunny, delicious moments from having the impact they should.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Long Road
    For fans of Silver Side Up, Nickelback have delivered the goods once more.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Why Should The Fire Die?
    Why Should the Fire Die? is certainly the trio's boldest and most creative album, albeit one that might not appeal to their earliest fans.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Outta Sight / Outta Mind
    A denim-clad, riff-heavy beast of a rock album. [Amazon UK]
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ys
    An album that sounds unlike anything else.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stand Still, Look Pretty
    Solid songs all, delivered with a muscular vocal conviction that does considerably more than merely sell them.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ce
    The freshness of the arrangements appeals throughout.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How We Operate
    It's as if they peeled away a layer or two in order to reveal more of the pop band beneath the off-kilter country-rock trappings.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Good, The Bad & The Queen
    It's not Blur, the Clash, Fela, the Verve, or Gorillaz. It's more than just names on albums.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Learn To Sing Like A Star
    Hersh has made great personal strides since branching off on her own.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Voxtrot
    There's an undeniable, infectious energy at work here which is put to great use with the self-deprecating humor and immense pop chops.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul?
    Another Public Enemy album is always good news for hip-hop fans, and How You Sell... carries the torch.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paper Monsters
    Lyrically autobiographical, songs deal with Gahan's trouble with relationships and intoxicants and, though they lack Gore's sense of drama and perversity, they do have a maudlin charm.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Or Give Me Death
    Imagine the Long Winters if they were far more in love with the synth and guitar textures of the '80s than the precious pop sounds of the '70s and you'd have this, a hard to pigeonhole album which greatly rewards multiple listens.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Young Machetes
    Imagine the Mars Volta undergoing electroshock treatment or Blonde Redhead at war with an army of feral cats.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's All In Your Head
    It's All In Your Head reveals the band that is very much on top of things.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    There's A Fire
    Brit-leaning space-pop that switches rhythmic gears with pleasing regularity from dreamy to driving.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Out Of The Vein
    To his credit, Jenkins is much more interesting a songwriter when he's wounded, offering candor that's not evident on TEB's first two discs.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Pick Of Destiny OST
    It plays like a hilarious concept album more than anything.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American V: A Hundred Highways
    The songs have a measured, elegiac intensity, the sound of musicians choosing their notes carefully and making just the right choices.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Goodbye
    In fact, "delayed," "drenched," and "dervish" pretty much sum up Goodbye. Schnauss piles on effects and layers in a psychedelic melee that would leave Ozric Tentacles and Pink Floyd standing transfixed by his stroboscopic strategies.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dear Heather
    At once new and old, familiar and fresh.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Schizophrenic
    Despite his dirty mind, Chasez has proven to be an adventurous auteur, taking his music to places where NSNYC would never venture.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams
    Even in its duller moments--the flaccid ballad 'Shirk,' the truncated sax solo that closes 'Virgo,' rainbow messages from God ('Elliptical')--this record fails to depart from the serious verve that has kept this artist relevant and refreshing for years.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I'm Just A Girl
    [A] provocative, if slightly uneven, album full of quirky lyrics and some irresistible melodies.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Bird And The Bee
    As intoxicating as a Brazilian breeze and ironic as a David Lynch night in L.A., the Los Angeles duo the Bird and the Bee make a soothingly hip, deliriously cool blend of pop.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Slideling
    Slideling is McCulloch's best solo offering by a distance.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ten Thousand Fists
    The album isn't without its problems––come the halfway mark ("Sons of Plunder") vocalist David Draiman and his mates lapse into the expected, with a series of songs that are good but rarely as remarkable as those found in Act I.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mary Star of the Sea
    While Corgan's tendency toward self-indulgence results in the tedious 14-minute "Jesus, I/Mary Star of the Sea," it is just a minor lapse considering the rest of the big, glamorous rock on display here.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Half The Perfect World
    Fans of Norah Jones should gobble up this album, but Peyroux is no mere imitator: She's her own, very real thing.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wooden Leather
    By marrying ambitious rhymes to a series of increasingly hot beats, Nappy Roots have effectively avoided the sophomore jinx.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jacksonville City Nights
    His most straightforward country music to date.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sleeping With Ghosts
    As much an album for slam-dancing nights out at Goth haunts as it is music for the psychiatrist’s couch.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Goodbye Alice In Wonderland
    What's changed is that maturity has granted Jewel, now in her early 30s, greater perspective.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hello Love
    While the trio hasn't managed to outshine their spectacular debut, Hello Love is a CD filled with cross-generational charm and musical riches.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Songs For Christmas
    A perfect gift for the Christmas-inclined indie rockster.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Beauty Of The Rain
    While Dar Williams's artistic trademarks--lyrical introspection, melodic warmth, an occasional tendency toward breathy vocal preciousness--remain much in evidence on this collection, the expanded musical support adds more rhythmic propulsion and layers of harmonies to the mix.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Every Kind Of Light
    The time apart has made the Posies come back fiercer, louder and heavier.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    News And Tributes
    Get past the more pedestrian fare like "Yes/No" and "Return of the Berserker," and the full scope of the Futureheads' ambition reveals itself, particularly in the poppiest track, "Skip To The End."
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ten Silver Drops
    Each [song] is epic (and not in the bad Creed "arms-spread-on-the-mountaintop" way): packing in more drama, billowing guitar solos and stealth pop hooks than the Strokes' entire back catalog.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Evolution
    Few modern songstresses work a beat better.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lunatico
    More skilled than the debut, Lunatico is no sophomore slump, though hardcore house music fans may want to wait for remixes.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    At The End Of Paths Taken
    There are moments of light and hope on At the End of Paths Taken, but overall it is a deliriously dark and brooding album.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Somewhere Down In Texas
    Somewhere Down in Texas could have benefited from the addition of an irresistible rhythm tune or another example of the western swing that Strait embraced so fervently early in his career.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Minimum-Maximum [Live]
    Minimum-Maximum is essentially a greatest-hits album with an audience applauding and occasionally shouting.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Armchair Apocrypha
    Making no palpable effort to crack the conventional with overflowing melodies and love songs, Bird instead latches up the intellect to create tiny packages of literature that make always leave you thinking--and snapping your fingers at the same time.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Like, Love, Lust & The Open Halls Of The Soul
    Jesse Sykes is hard to pin down--and that's a good thing indeed.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Search
    While it may be impossible for this Son Volt to ever reach the pinnacle of their 1995 debut, no one can accuse Jay Farrar of going through the motions.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Can't Stop
    I Can’t Stop blows away the dust and finds more life and gutbucket flash in a seemingly inexhaustible vein.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Under The Skin
    Strange, alluring, and disarming.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Saturday Night Wrist
    Features the kind of envelope-pushing fans have come to expect.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Evolve
    Sprawling, funny, angry, compelling, and entirely unafraid.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Get Rich Or Die Tryin'
    Sure, Get Rich could never have lived up to the hype, it’s nowhere near Biggie's Ready to Die or Nas's Illmatic, but there's no fast-forward material here, a near miracle in these times.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shock'n Y'All
    It’s hard to remember that he once wrote well-crafted ballads of romantic infatuation.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eleventh Hour
    Eleventh Hour, his largely self-produced fifth solo album--and first in eight years--lacks much of both the lyrical and instrumental verve of his best records.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Super Taranta!
    On this album, GB make the Dead Kennedys seem subtle. And it would be nice if there were more variety to their sound.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What I Do
    As a whole, the album stands as a benediction to an artist whose integrity and success has prevailed in the face of endless trends and fads that have swept away many lesser talents.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Long Island Shores
    With her expressively breathy vocals and uplifting melodies, Mindy Smith expresses both the romantic and spiritual dimensions of rapture.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Songs About Girls
    Songs About Girls is, for sure, a big, noisy record. But in addition to the kind of hugeness, it's sometimes hard to get your head around.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Taking The Long Way
    On first listen, Taking the Long Way seems too somber--in need of a bit of levity and more than a couple of uptempo songs (like the sexy, '60s-flavored "I Like It") to resonate for the long haul. It also seems to lack the writing quality that Darrell Scott, Patty Griffin, and Bruce Robison brought to Home. But on repeated plays, those concerns dissipate.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One Man Revolution
    The real discovery is that he's capable of making the same old racket at just a fraction of the volume.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Virginia Creeper
    If the tasteful, lissome country-folk backing of steel guitar, fiddle, piano, drums, and harmony vocals from Cindy Wasserman is a tad shy of adventurous, the sound suits the ripe, romantic, and dreamy mood of Phillips's songs.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sound Of Silver
    True, LCD's music is not for everyone, which may have something to do with why their fans love them as they do. If you fall into the latter category, however, Silver is gold.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Soul Sessions
    Worthy of more than novelty status.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Live A Little
    Pernice's unblemished voice is the key instrument.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Patience
    Flitting between fraught ballads and up-tempo adult pop (the misguided sample-laden singles "Freeek!" and "Shoot the Dog" being the unnecessary exceptions), George here returns to the structure and mood of 1990s Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1. [Amazon UK]
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Good Mourning
    Another set of sad but very fun songs.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strength & Loyalty
    A tight disc that skitters from track to shiny track with imagination and a renewed sense of rap's widened boundaries.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Flock
    For a group with one of the most unmemorable band names ever, it's funny that it's their way with words that elevates them from wannabe status.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hell Hath No Fury
    Hell Hath No Fury isn't as well-assembled as Lord Willin' or as spontaneous as Clipse's lauded mix-CDs from 2005 but it is coldly efficient in knocking out 12 songs backed with superbly dark and sparse tracks by the Neptunes.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Birds Make Good Neighbors
    A little more subdued than the songs on its firecracker debut, Make Out?, yes, but hardly lacking brains or bite.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Endless Wire
    No, it does not rank with the band's best work. But yes, as long as Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey walk the earth in tandem, the Who live on.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dylanesque
    Far be it for the imaginative contrarian to retrace Dylan's steps, and sure enough--despite an omnipresent harmonica--Ferry does just the opposite.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Bigger Bang
    Some of their best work in nearly two decades.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Getting Somewhere
    For all of the music's surface catchiness, the writing is some of Moorer's deepest to date.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shine
    The limitations of Lanois’s vocals lend an engaging frailty, leavened with bleak, lonely, instrumental interludes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Free To Stay
    Free to Stay is loaded with complex harmonies and awesome distorted keyboard sounds (hey, this is what Quasi were supposed to sound like!).
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Talk To La Bomb
    Brazilian Girls maintain the same kinetic thrust and hook-laden melodies as before, but they've turned up the rhythmic aggression and electronic squelch to 11.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Live Like You Were Dying
    While McGraw may not be the greatest of warblers, nobody in country can touch him at conveying emotions too deep to express in words.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
    We Were Dead... is denser than its predecessor with tunes that seem willfully harder to penetrate.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Seal IV
    Seal never goes all out in any direction and this coolness, combined with Trevor Horn’s perfectionist production, plants the album inescapably in the realm of adult contemporary (although this is as good as adult contemporary gets).
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dignity
    Duff edges ever closer to adult sensibilities; her goofball Lizzie McGuire days seem far behind.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Memory Man
    He's an expert at creating mesmerizing, sophisticated pop.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quality
    Compared to ambitious contemporaneous concept albums by peers such as Common and the Roots, Quality feels unexpectedly conventional--a strong collection of songs in need of a unifying force.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Blessing And A Curse
    All in all, this is a calmer Truckers set, less ragged and more polished.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bitter Honey
    You'd buy this album for the same reason you buy Robyn Hitchcock, for the observations, sardonic-ism, and sarcasm--not to mention Eef's singular, strained voice.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Axis Of Evol
    Although this isn't the masterpiece that the self-titled Black Mountain disc was, it certainly gives devotees lots more music to listen to until their next disc comes around.
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