Boston Globe's Scores

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:
2093 music reviews
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An out of the ordinary offering, the disc proves Beck still hasn’t stopped growing.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Much of Somewhere sounds remarkably consistent, even organic. Tyler, who co-wrote all of the album’s strongest material, proves a solid storyteller with a gift for melody.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Further songs follow suit, rarely deviating from verse-chorus-verse-chorus rigor. The upbeat “Sunday Love” breaks that mold with its rhythmically catchy verse and earworm chorus, which almost hides the fact that the song--about the would-be bride seeing a girl everywhere she goes--repeats the album’s most common problem: It’s unclear just what the song is about, and how it relates to the core concept.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Even at its moodiest, this is a deliriously inventive and often whimsical dance record.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    His deeply felt meditations on matters of the heart and the soul are matched by the meticulously detailed, gorgeously rendered music that surrounds them.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    While her sonic template, modern and spare yet lush, works wonders for “Don’t Go,” it’s otherwise isolated moments — the discordant saxophone blats pulling her toward St. Vincent in the danceable and lopsided “Waste”; the chewy synth bassline of “Crazy [Expletive]”; and the line “When you left me, I was ready for you to leave” in “Walls”--that suggest an excitement the songs can’t quite sustain.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Conscious may be polished to a high gloss, but it lacks the personality and emotion that made Broods’ debut such a shadowy revelation.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is soul music with personality and real instruments; best of all, it’s unflinchingly honest.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Mountain Will Fall utilizes a wealth of live performances and ingenious programming to create an album that’s funky, futuristic, and thrilling for new fans and old heads alike.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The earworm riff of java paean “Kafe Mania!”; the huffy boom-bap funk of “Life Is Suffering”; the TV-metal urgency of “Learning to Apologize Effectively,” urgent synths nicked from Bon Jovi; the claustrophobic electropop revamp of “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire”; the power-pop jangle of “Plastic Thrills”--it’s all irresistible.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    [An] unapologetically polished album, which reframes their music without sapping their identity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This fourth release from the Texas native is in a singer-songwriter mode; four songs feature just Jarosz and acoustic guitar, while others are tautly arranged progressive-folk gems with backup from guitarists Luke Reynolds (Guster) and Jedd Hughes (Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell).
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Her songs have the sophistication and idiosyncracy of a singular talent. At times (“Show Me Love”) the ethereal arranging meanders, but mostly (“Bread,” “Kiss My Feet,” “Angel”) it has the authority of a signature.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Co-producer Jacknife Lee overcooks tracks, alternately adding too much sugar and bluster (“Bitter Salt”). Throughout, it seems Bugg’s ambition has clouded his creative judgment.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The album is simultaneously beautiful and shocking, its razor-sharp originality infinitely relatable.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Here, it’s less about what Y.G. does than how he does it; digging deeper into vintage G-funk flavors with a blend of personal, party, and political tracks, the young Compton rapper takes a sizzling step forward.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Echoey wall-of-sound sheen, soft-rock flourishes, guitar bombast, and omnipresent programming predominate. Presumably the intention was to create a sonic mood to match the album’s thematic concerns, but too often the execution leaves the songs sounding plodding and inert.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If you’re looking for alternatives to mainstream country, Clark is still providing one with Big Day in a Small Town--you just have to keep listening beyond the first two tracks to find it.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Re-examining its signature brat rock through an industrial prism, Garbage forges something more haunting and honest.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Colvin & Earle is rough, just this side of ramshackle, and thoroughly charming.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The band’s glossiest record yet seems geared toward merging its brassy, retro-glam aesthetic with a commercial-minded agenda. For a time it succeeds, meting out earworms with take-no-prisoners rapidity. Eventually, though, Fitz’s mainstream pop ambitions outpace its once-emblematic sense of funk (and fun).
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The album that resulted is Simon’s richest, most instantly appealing collection since “Graceland.”
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The maturation of the Kills continues with this taut, emotionally complex fifth record, which deepens their sound even if it doesn’t break new sonic ground.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    “Highway Anxiety” shimmers with melancholy and evocative locomotive persistence; “Gone Clear” travels from Tyler’s intricate fingerpicking to a barrage of chiming bells and back again.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Quins’ voices give songs like “Faint of Heart” extra dramatic heft, while adding anxious shades to the steely-eyed façade of “Hang on to the Night.”
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Finally, the Strokes sound as if they’re having fun again.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    While satisfying, the record could have used a bit more of that invention and risk.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The group’s power has always come from its Spice Girls-like ability to form a massive unit of self-actualization, and the peppy 7/27 has no shortage of that, both lyrically and musically.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Kidsticks swings back toward electronica; the problem is that it’s poorly done. It’s the first time she’s written on synthesizers, not guitars, and frankly it’s a mess.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A sophomore record that does Catfish few favors in exposing its limited lyrical scope (mostly concerned with lost lovers) and tedious reliance on shoehorned guitar solos and uniform drum lines.