Boston Globe's Scores

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For 2,093 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 66% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 31% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 72
Highest review score: 100 City of Refuge
Lowest review score: 10 Lulu
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,670 out of 2093
  2. Mixed: 412 out of 2093
  3. Negative: 11 out of 2093
2093 music reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Alexander
    "Awake My Body" crash-lands somewhere between "Yellow Submarine" and Harry Nilsson's kid-friendly "The Point!" and it's as clumsy as that analogy implies. When the songs stay on track, though, they are often otherworldly.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rolling Papers
    After clearly finding his identity on his mixtapes, it's like he used his debut to make music for everyone but himself.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Georgia Clay
    The music is well-crafted, and Kelley a more than passable singer, with a voice that breaks or gets a bit husky in all the right places. But there isn't anything that makes him stand out from other inhabitants of Music City's sensitive-guy subdivision.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Angles
    Is this it? Don't feel ashamed if that's your initial reaction to the Strokes' new album, the natty New York rockers' first in five years. Stick with it, and you'll be rewarded with a record that's completely oblivious to expectations and past glories.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    F.A.M.E.
    Brown needs to bring the undeniable every time. Unfortunately that's not what he's done with this middling fourth album. Instead, only a handful of tracks truly showcase Brown's strengths.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fall
    It's your quintessential on-the-road/off-the-cuff indulgence, a sometimes successful merging of traveling-band existentialism and boredom-killing filler.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Some Kind of Trouble
    From the plinky, high-tuned acoustic guitar to the mindlessly skippy rhythm to the "whoa-oh-oh-ooh" chant, there's not a major element of "Stay the Night" that doesn't sound exactly like "Hey, Soul Sister." For some, that's a selling point; for others, a warning siren.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Best Night of My Life
    The success of a record like this is pretty easy to track on a utilitarian level: After listening you either want to party with the dude or you don't.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Boys Allowed
    Hilson loses focus with hookless songs the busy production can't save, while the MCs largely shoot blanks.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Basic Instinct
    The singer works with hit-makers The-Dream and Tricky Stewart on several tracks; unfortunately, it seems they've saved their best hooks for their next gig.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Beginning
    You can probably imagine what it sounds like: minimalist drum machine beats, techno-lifted synth pulses, plinky keyboard hooks, retro-fitted hip-hop callbacks, pitch-shifted vocals, and songs that chain your brain to the furnace and beat you over the head with their cursed affability.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Endlessly
    Endlessly both reverts to old tricks quickly and constantly strains to update Duffy's appeal, and it's an awkward mix. Her material is frustratingly hit-or-miss either way.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Coal Miner's Daughter: A Tribute to Loretta Lynn
    Reverence, or at least too much of it, is often the death knell for tribute albums. If a legend's legacy looms too large, artists err on the side of homage instead of interpretation. That's the obvious problem with this salute to country icon Loretta Lynn, which cherry-picks from her 50-year career with an emphasis on songs she either wrote or co-wrote.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nothing
    The side project of superstar producers the Neptunes makes a stark departure from its hot mess of grinding funk-rock on this often disappointing mixed bag.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am Not a Human Being
    Typically, the complaints against Wayne are that he's annoying, grating, and ubiquitous; but for the first time he's made himself seem uninteresting, which is far more career-threatening.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hands All Over
    Really this is lead singer Adam Levine's show. Thus, the band's success lives and dies with his delivery. That delivery remains technically sound, though as a whole, the band underwhelms here.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No Gravity
    This follow-up for the Bajan singer-songwriter drops all Caribbean influences and leans toward club tracks mixed with canny pop and emotional, hook-laden ballads.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Interpol
    Intentional or not, some of that transition seeps into the music, giving songs room to ramble but nothing resembling a core.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dream Attic
    Thompson's playing is as fierce as ever, and his band (which includes multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn) are tight and focused in this setting. Too bad, then, that the songs feel more like Thompson treading water, snipping bits and pieces of past favorites--a guitar solo here, a vocal sneer there--into new songs that lack personality.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Familial
    You get the sense that Familial, with all of its good intentions, might have made a better gift to a girlfriend than a serious petition to come out from behind the kit.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Catching a Tiger
    Lissie is certainly a phenomenal talent and one to watch, but it's disappointing that Catching a Tiger doesn't make a more lasting first impression.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    31 Minutes To Takeoff
    This short, lightweight disc finds Posner evolving from his hip-hop leaning early mixtapes into a nasal-voiced talk-singer with some serious woman issues. Mostly, though (unlike, say, Kid Cudi), his lyrics barely scratch the surface of real emotions.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tribal
    Tribal, which too often plays it safe with its good-time gumbo of funk, blues, jazz, and swamp rock. Courtesy of his band, the Lower 911, the musicianship is superb, but the songs aren't especially memorable, serving up political commentary in fortune-cookie philosophy.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Masts of Manhatta
    She has always been a skilled composer, but while there are some great songs on Masts of Manhatta, it's not a great album.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Expo 86
    Expo 86 is ultimately too dense for its own good, with interesting things happening on a surface that's so difficult to pierce that there's eventually little urgency to keep trying.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Can't Be Tamed
    Her new album isn't half bad. Of course, that means it's also only half good, but Can't Be Tamed is full of the catchiest Top 40 hits money can buy.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Five Ghosts
    Stars may be moving beyond songs like the soothing and dramatic opener "Dead Hearts," but it's not quite clear where they're going.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bingo!
    The results are mixed. Some of this is merely a hobbyist homage to his roots (his shuffling cover of Jimmy Reed's "You Got Me Dizzy'' is unexciting), but some of it crackles.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bionic
    Bionic, the 29-year-old's fourth studio release, is a disappointing album that will have listeners asking: Will the real Christina Aguilera please stand up?
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Goon Affiliated
    He has repeated the same formula on successive sets, and here he simply runs out of ideas.
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