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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    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is Country Music
    The song [This Is Country Music] encapsulates Paisley's status as a premier upholder of traditional country within a contemporary framework, and the 15 songs that follow confirm that status.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intimacy: Album III
    On first listen, the disc seems unassuming because of its subtlety, but slowly it reveals its layers. The tracks about love, devotion, and transcendence are refreshingly honest and (mercifully) lacking in leering lasciviousness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Utopia
    Utopia is both resolutely avant-garde and absolutely beautiful, a combination those who associate experimental music with dissonance and ugliness will find utterly paradoxical.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Never Hungover Again
    When Joyce Manor cracks open its sound the results are satisfying despite (or maybe because of?) being delivered in bite-size form.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crack The Skye
    The album will be attractive to head bangers, math rockers, and now even classic-rock devotees thanks to guitarists Brent Hinds's and Bill Kelliher's deep devotion to the almighty riff.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Electric Lady
    She’s the star of her own movie--and that’s very much what this album feels like--and she’s in charge.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Revelator
    Expectations were high for this first joint record from the husband-and-wife team, but they generally settle for easy-listening, adult-contemporary blues music that rarely unleashes the power for which they are known.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Conflict
    Composition is just part of what makes pop music work, and the best tracks on In Conflict succeed on the arrangements and production as well as the writing.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Freetown Sound
    What results is an album to live with, and to live inside: engrossing and necessary.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mesabi
    If this sounds ambitious, it is. But Russell pulls it off with an engaging nobility.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Weather
    It adds up to an album of left-field soul that's downcast but not at all a bummer.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    America
    Baltimore's Dan Deacon has piled all facets of his musical persona together here.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Slow Phaser
    Atkins’s songwriting has since mutated, so that even songs that would have fit on “Neptune City” (the remix-ready disco track “Girl You Look Amazing”) or “Mondo Amore” (the stomping country-gospel “Sin Song”) represent a progression.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Favourite Worst Nightmare
    Forget about the dreaded decline. Arctic Monkeys have moved from their alarmingly evolved infancy into rock toddlerhood with glibness, swagger, and whip-smart songs intact.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Back to Love
    The smooth-groove classicism here is just part of Hamilton's mature command of the form, with none of neo-soul's studied Afro-Sheen patina.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Theatre Is Evil
    The record is the most unvarnished rock music Palmer's ever created, leaning heavily on '80s goth and the oddball New Wave of folks like Lene Lovich.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Love Surreal
    This sensual song suite about the ephemeral nature of love and what it takes to sustain happiness should end up among this year’s finest efforts.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
    Thomas Mars sings with a casual amiability so hard to resist that it helps carry Phoenix through some of the less immediate material on the album's back half.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Renaissance
    The disc is an affirmation that life, and hip-hop, can indeed get better.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shadows in the Night
    Far from an indulgent wallow in saccharine nostalgia--and disproving absurd accusations of a quick-buck dip into a fountain of easygoing oldies a la Rod Stewart--the album is lean and subtle
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Samson & Delilah
    Samson & Delilah casts the English singer and songwriter even further afield, a mesmerizing right turn into the murky waters of throbbing R&B and ambient dance pop.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Do You Like Rock Music?
    BSP has backed up its postured oddities and idiosyncrasies with a new raison d'être: to deliver the true stuff of rock 'n' roll.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Words & Music by Saint Etienne
    The dizzying succession of beats per minute paired with thoughtful lyrics about music's role in shaping memories gives Saint Etienne a chance to create a rare entity: Dance music for the thinking person.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fade
    Fade isn't a dramatic reinvention, or even necessarily any progression at all, just Yo La Tengo not needing to be anyone else.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ripely Pine
    Over the slack strum of guitar, Spaltro tells a spectral tale that feels like a hazy dream until a violent outburst yanks you elsewhere. That’s precisely where Spaltro likes to keep you: on edge.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ears
    Smith creates wide-eyed compositions with textures that cascade over one another, capturing the vast celestial wonder of synthesized sound.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Doris
    It’s the work of a talented rapper who takes palpable pleasure in the possibilities of language.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Vampire Weekend
    At its best, Vampire Weekend takes the exceedingly familiar template of indie rock and invigorates it with a chiming guitar sound that suggests the band has been spending its downtime browsing afropop.org.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Parallax
    It sounds like a recipe for a dozen buzz bands this year, but Atlas Sound transcends the fads. Melodies shine through like faint stars through the window.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Slave Ambient
    It's a rock album that mixes 30-year-old influences with the deep, hazy production of indie synth-poppers like M83.
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