Hartford Courant's Scores

  • Music
For 517 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 36% 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 Sound Of Silver
Lowest review score: 20 Carry On
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 12 out of 517
517 music reviews
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's Street Sweeper Social Club, pairing guitarist Tom Morello with rapper Boots Riley on a self-titled collection of striking, strident songs that take aim at the status quo with devastating riffs and searing lyrics.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's Sonic Youth's most compelling album in years.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Matthews finds a skillful balance in his lyrics between off-handed whimsy and deeper reflections, and the others back him with a tighter version of the instrumental interplay that has made them one of the most popular American bands of the past 15 years.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Even the songs that seem simple have greater depth than is at first apparent, and the band's skill at crafting complex music in an increasingly accessible way makes Veckatimest a rich listen.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mandy Moore faces the same challenge any other singer-songwriter does: delivering songs that are consistently compelling. She does a decent job of it on Amanda Leigh.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Only one or two of these 15 songs (there are also five skits on the 20-track album) features the dazzling wordplay and unparalleled lyrical flow that made Marshall Mathers one of the biggest names in rap.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Like "More Specials," the Specials' second-record departure, It's Frightening isn't nearly buoyant as its predecessor. Insofar as its purpose is to rattle the bones, it's a fidgety, impenetrable success.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    His voice is as yearning and creaky as ever, at once aged and childlike, and if the music doesn't always have a lot of weight, Lytle's songwriting remains pleasantly distracting on the surface and thoughtfully sublime upon closer inspection.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Green Day's latest is a collection of powerful songs worth waiting nearly five years for.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The soul of Van Zandt is evident on all of these songs--even in the distorted voice effect on 'Lungs'--but Earle best captures his spirit on 'Colorado Girl,' a high lonesome song with rich acoustic guitar chords and wistful vocals.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    At their best, the Meat Puppets tackle swampy rock, erratic punk, boisterous country, ruminative folk, and seedy psych with equal authority, all while instilling a surreal scent of the desert.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The collection presents Big Music on a manageable scale, and even if the songs reference fire, water and sky, the long-running Aussie quartet forgoes the kind of sonic grandiosity such subject matter tends to invite.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This album veers all over the place, but it's united by spotless production, eerie control and a confidence that's well deserved.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The result is a restless hybrid that never completely settles into the groove that has defined the singer and guitarist's best albums.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    No such luck on 'Cause I Sez So, an album that, despite a few bright spots, is too flimsy and forgettable to honor the Dolls' legacy.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Professionalism is the order of the day, and most of Entertainment, recorded over two years and produced by Killers boardman Jeff Satzman, aims for the same middle ground.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Outside Love offers up the best and worst that life has to offer, with love and hate locked in an eternal struggle. It makes the Pink Mountaintops the perfect complement to Black Mountain's lyrical and musical heft.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    He overreaches on occasion, but more often pulls off the sort of trick he manages with 'Families Cheating at Board Games,' merging faith and offbeat, cerebral underpinnings to forge quirky slivers of fresh perspective.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On her second album under the name A Camp, Persson drapes herself in breezy '60s-pop arrangements, lamb's-wool duds that dress some deadly ideas.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sure enough, we know these devils: they're the ones who make so many latter-day metal bands look like hopeless poseurs.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This rethink has by no means robbed the band of its tunefulness, as the snappy 'Inaugural Trams' readily proves. But the dozen minutes of 'Pric,' which meanders charmingly around the musical map, are more representative of an outfit which is at its best wild and weird.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It plays like a late-career recap of all that's come before, referencing both the bubblegum synth-pop of its early days and the self-conscious black-leather sensuality of its 1987-1993 creative peak.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The band's third full-length, Touchdown, is more of a 10-yard pass than a score.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Produced by the Pixies' Frank Black, the band's third album is pretty straight-forward musically, all chugging indie rock with fat bass lines and scribbled guitar solos.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A noodling version of the Truckers' own 'Space City' wanders a little too aimlessly to close, but Potato Hole overall is a subtle album with enough fire to prove that Jones can still bring the heat.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The English duo's cheeky moniker implies some kind of inferiority complex, and while Owen is certainly not immune to wallowing, he spends the group's sophomore album examining loneliness and isolation through a number of different lenses.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The uneven Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle finds Callahan's knack for twangy crispness, pastoral imagery, and stone-faced singing very much intact, though he adopts a distinct growl to utter the title of 'My Friends.'
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Metric is back with its strongest collection of songs so far.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The shambling London trio Micachu & the Shapes embrace all manners of homemade noises on this cheeky debut, surprisingly produced by electronic experimentalist Matthew Herbert.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sov never quite recaptures the brash personality and cutting-edge sound of her first album. The beats here are more pedestrian, the lyrics more tentative, and for all her talk in the press notes about resuming her career (after a six-month break) with a sense of control over her music, Jigsaw sounds more like an album without a firm direction than the wide-ranging statement of purpose she meant it to be.