Hartford Courant's Scores
- Music
For 517 reviews, this publication has graded:
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62% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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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: | Sound Of Silver | |
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Lowest review score: | Carry On |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 398 out of 517
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Mixed: 107 out of 517
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Negative: 12 out of 517
517
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- 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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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Green Day's latest is a collection of powerful songs worth waiting nearly five years for.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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This album veers all over the place, but it's united by spotless production, eerie control and a confidence that's well deserved.- Hartford Courant
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The result is a restless hybrid that never completely settles into the groove that has defined the singer and guitarist's best albums.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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Sure enough, we know these devils: they're the ones who make so many latter-day metal bands look like hopeless poseurs.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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The band's third full-length, Touchdown, is more of a 10-yard pass than a score.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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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.'- Hartford Courant
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The shambling London trio Micachu & the Shapes embrace all manners of homemade noises on this cheeky debut, surprisingly produced by electronic experimentalist Matthew Herbert.- Hartford Courant
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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.- Hartford Courant
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