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For 421 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Remedy
Lowest review score: 10 Bizzar/Bizaar
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 311 out of 421
  2. Mixed: 94 out of 421
  3. Negative: 16 out of 421
421 music reviews
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Look Into The Eyeball
    What makes this disc cohere is the world view presented in Byrne's quirky lyrics, sometimes stark to the point of simplicity and often with the detached tone of an observer alternately shocked or amused.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Black Market Music
    Do all of these elements add up to an album that offers something more than the usual steady diet of carefully polished, capably executed, but ultimately unremarkable angst-ridden punk-pop? Answer -- probably not.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lions
    Their latest, Lions, gets back to basics without going backward; the brothers Robinson are still ripping off the classics, sure, but they've expanded the history lesson from the Small Faces and Humble Pie to sharpening the attack with Zeppelinesque tricks and modern rock energy.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    OST
    Really, it's not as bad as it sounds.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Survivor
    On third album Survivor, the DC coming-out party, the song kind of remains the same: When the girls are on, this is the kind of surreally and subversively brilliant Top-40 music even the most jaded roll their windows up and blast; when they're not, it's a pretty bad day at the girl-band factory.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rock Action
    Mogwai has moved past relying on Slint-like soft/loud dynamics to get attention. Now it garners attention for the detail of its songwriting, the majority of which can now be heard without turning the volume to 11, only to receive a rude awakening at the crescendo.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Electric Mile
    Electric Mile is good, just not earth-shattering, and coming from someone with Dutton's creativity, it would be nice to hear something a bit more, well, electric.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All For You
    In spite of the sudden changes of mood and style, the album coheres nicely around Jackson's strong personality.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Know Your Enemy
    Know Your Enemy is a fine -- if slightly long and somewhat fractured -- primer to the moods of one of Britain's most (self) important bands
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Leaves Turn Inside You
    Unlike the band's earlier material, which echoed with thunderous volume, Leaves Turn Inside You is textural and sedate, combining the hazy urgency of Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation with the creativity of Yo La Tengo and the ethereality of Slowdive.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Just Enough Education To Perform
    This is a record that delights in the contrast of the group's no-frills rock past and its radio-friendly, mid-tempo future.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take Back The Universe (And Give Me Yesterday)
    Time -- and a bigger production budget -- has lost Creeper Lagoon's fuzzy, scatty edge to a fuller, more cohesive sound.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sincere
    It's Cole's deep vocal tracks, though, that steal the show.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Revelling/Reckoning
    Not every moment of Revelling/Reckoning is a winner. But the record is probably DiFranco's first where all the tags -- staunch D.I.Y.-er, feminist, bisexual folk-punk -- and the baggage of her brutally personal songwriting play second fiddle to the songs found within.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Old Ramon
    Although they were written as early as 1996 and recorded in 1997-98, the songs on Old Ramon (like most Red House Painters material) have a timeless, dreamy quality to them that prevent them from sounding stale. An album this beautiful can never come too late.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
    Although the album lags somewhat in parts and is bogged down a bit by an overarching sameness, this is a promising start.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Isolation Drills
    Isolation Drills may not match Bee Thousand's magical, mystical tone (not many records can), but it's as melodic and powerful as the best of GBV's vast catalog. It also firmly cements Pollard's reputation as one of rock's all-time greats...
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Live In New York City
    Few will quarrel with Springsteen's reliance on his pre-Born in the U.S.A. output, or with the use of only one track, "Youngstown," from The Ghost of Tom Joad. But the absence of anything from the grievously underrated Tunnel of Love is a shame, as is the absence of "Further on Up the Road," a wistful and gorgeous new track played often during the Garden dates.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Time Bomb
    Buckcherry aim to carry on the tradition laid out by the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Aerosmith, and Guns N' Roses -- extolling the virtues of sex, drugs, and rock and roll -- but listening to Time Bomb is a game of spot the rip-off.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Drops Of Jupiter
    Like Collective Soul, Vertical Horizon, and Matchbox Twenty before them, Train is a fairly faceless, generic rock band that writes straight-ahead, sing-along tunes. As a result, some of the songs on this, their second album, will make some people happy -- and other people just sleepy.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Whole New You
    Musically a pretty blend of folksy guitar and lightly new-wave synth, these tunes seethe in a nice-girl way, simmering slightly, but never quite boiling over.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Until The End Of Time
    What saves what sounds from beginning to end like an extremely quick buck -- via material on a music equivalency level of farts and burps -- is Shakur's provocative presence, so urgent in both decadence ("Good Life") and desperation ("This Ain't Livin'") that he still seems here, at least in the spirit of his lyrics.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Renaissance
    Although there are no ballads as moving as "Hello," "Truly," or "Say You, Say Me," the album does offer a nice collection of pop tracks that, for the most part, don't suffer from the stiflingly bland over-production that's characterized other adult-contemporary albums of recent years.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Essential Mix
    A sprawling set of immense diversity that's loaded to the brim with dancefloor anthems.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Impossible Thrill
    Few bands exceed Alpha in the creation of truly encompassing and sensual chill-out tunes, and while The Impossible Thrill fails to really explore new territory, it's revisiting familiar and hallowed ground.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nation
    Though not as stellar as such past Max-era classics as Chaos A.D. or Roots, Nation is another worthy set of brutally dense, hardcore-tinged metal.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Canto
    A lush cruise through the Caribbean's romantic songwriting traditions with some additional stops in South America.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wicked Grin
    Wicked Grin is a rousingly successful experiment. The album's best moments equal -- and often surpass -- anything in both artists' consistently creative careers.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Reptile
    As a slice of rootsy blues, it works nicely.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Discovery
    Matching Homework in quirkiness, buoyancy, and club-ready freak-beats, Discovery combines the best of what Daft Punk has to offer: mid-'80s synth-pop ("Digital Love"), sleazy euro-funk ("Harder Better Faster Stronger"), shake-your-booty electro-metal with spacey guitar effects ("Aerodynamic" -- Basement Jaxx meets Eddie Van Halen), and minimal, big-beat tunes that Underworld wishes it would have thought of first ("Superheroes").
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