Dot Music's Scores

  • Music
For 1,511 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 Untitled
Lowest review score: 10 United Nations of Sound
Score distribution:
1511 music reviews
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    While the wine-favouring moustache-sporting figure of Franz Nicolay is no longer a fixture, the remaining members are present and correct albeit in a somewhat more reflective mode than of yore. It suits them.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Fall are the most predictable and unpredictable band in Britain.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There are some fiendishly catchy hooks and very occasionally a real quality to some of the songwriting, enough to suggest that there are better things to come from the young trio once simply aping the already done-to-death genre du jour has finally lost its appeal.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A dismal and insipid collection of retrogressive mid-tempo ballads and textbook alt.rock moves.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's their confident leaning on heritage-metal in particular that sets Bullet For My Valentine apart from local contemporaries Funeral For A Friend and Lost Prophets, but it's also that strength that holds them back.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bobby Ray has a little way to go to match his mentor's lyrical ingenuity, but as the first post-Lupe rap star he's already absorbed the most important lessons about form and function, inspiration and integrity. It's a great start.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Whacking on the slap and going electro needn't have felt so dysfunctional--the songs do hold up--but a complete disjunction in styles sounds confusing and ultimately robs the album, and perhaps her comeback, of an identity.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The monster-mash hokum can occasionally grate and Brown lacks El Wino's authoritative way with some of the more downtempo material, but there's plenty to suggest she will find a receptive audience for her passionate pop sound, overbearing quirks and all.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's a wonderful, kaleidoscopic groove-fest that has nothing at all to do with a world in which Oasis still hold sway.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It feels like a definite upgrade for her, Kate Nash deluxe, courtesy of producer Bernard Butler's expectedly lavish touches. But her standard style of outloud diary readings are not privy to the same overhaul. They prevent it from feeling like much of a progression.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Because beneath the clownishly self-effacing exterior, there's an artless ambition at work here that's terrible to behold.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where the album triumphs though is the crystalline clarity of the songs, their titanic emotional wallop and Marling's quite exquisite delivery.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Go
    There's a connection with the contemporary world, with the apparatus and detritus that layers 2010 up around us all, that hasn't really been seen in Sigur Ros's music before.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Does it offer us an exclusive window into Slash's soul? No. Is it a neat CV and a sneaky way of auditioning the next Velvet Revolver singer? Probably. Like any other mixtape from a friend, listen to it in the car, then stick it in the cupboard under the stairs with the others.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With each offering clocking in around the two minute mark, 'I Will Be' is over almost as soon as it's begun - leaving behind a smouldering trail of hazy mysticism and filthy bass lines. It's short and sweet, but there's a definite sting in the tail.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There are moments where Usher's old charm and vocal velvetiness briefly resurface and remind the listener of what a bright talent he once seemed....But these highlights are rare, and Raymond vs Raymond mostly sounds as shallow and unappealing as its singer.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's warm, analogue production bolstered by Madlib, ?uestlove and the inevitable J Dilla exhumation that makes it a summer smash in waiting, not least on 'Umm Hmm''s exhortation to let your feelings show.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Let's be clear about this: Head First is by no means a bad record, with its lush pop gloss and flickers of melodic loveliness. But it is a bad Goldfrapp record, their flimsiest and least adventurous yet.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As ever though, Liars emerge with their own sonic identity intact - you can 'hear' LA in the chaos, disquiet and vast, starving spaces of these songs, but they remain a band that don't surrender easily to their surroundings.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The album finishes almost as well as it started with 'The Mall & Misery' (a bit of country, a bit of disco, lightening bolts of new wave guitar, harmonies to intoxicate), proving the album's effective inevitability is not tedious and the quality is clear whichever direction you approach from.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Musically, too, there's a definite sense of progression. These tracks have a richer and warmer sound than anything the band have previously released, and rather than standalone expressions of emotional dysfunction, they feel very much connected, bound together by their complex arrangements and sumptuous yet subtle production.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hands is both exciting and inconsistent, an uncertain step in very much the right direction.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wisely though, they've seen this as a time to consolidate, not experiment or wander off on the tangents which have undermined them in the past.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hidden backs up some audacious conceits with studious application and winds up a major achievement from these po-faced sentinels of the secret history.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Light is, as it implies, a dark record. It's also a brilliant, shinning beacon of electro-pop sophistication, but it's a dark, dark record all the same.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Derulo's desperation to cover all commercial bases is only matched by an inability to stamp his own personality on them.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    While one could be forgiven for dismissing American VI as the scrapings of a barrel, the truth is that five of its ten tracks are worthy additions to the Cash canon; no more, no less.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It may be epic, sprawling and too unwieldy a tool with which to prise open a place in the charts, but it's also nothing short of remarkable.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    So despite the new outlook and lofty declarations, why does 'Falcon' fail to take off? The fault lies partly in Fray's parochial outlook.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Un
    However much electro trickery he has at his fingertips, he needs some songs first.