L.A. Weekly's Scores

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For 70 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 90 Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)
Lowest review score: 10 Bridge
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 54 out of 70
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 70
  3. Negative: 6 out of 70
70 music reviews
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    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    69 Love Songs
    After three discs, Merritt's mesmerizing display of sustained inconsequentiality starts to seem like one of those Guinness Book of World Records stunts, impressive but pointless.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
    A beautiful album that even non-Harvey fans might relate to, Stories is an undeniable, unrelenting triumph.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Blueprint
    Blueprint is his best since debuting with Reasonable Doubt in 1996.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Remedy
    Warmer, more soulful and worldly than the average drug-fueled ravers, Basement Jaxx may not quite have relaid house's foundation, but they've at least redrawn a few of its rules -- beat by gleeful beat.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Argument
    The Argument provides a rough blueprint for Fugazi’s current music: more melodic, fascinated as much with miniatures as grand anthems, more tensed, better prepared for the inevitable explosions.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Party Music
    Not as consistent as The Coup’s outstanding Steal This Album from 1998, Party Music still manages to be one of 2001’s best.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Girls Can Tell
    Perverse as it may seem, this album is more tightly arranged and crisply recorded than anything the group managed on a major label; in fact, it’s a small masterpiece of home production, with Eno’s economical drumming framing stabs of rhythm guitar and precisely placed daubs of vibes and viola.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bow Down To The Exit Sign
    Equally comfortable in the realms of rock and dance, Holmes is hard to pin down stylistically; his latest album, Bow Down to the Exit Sign, like Moby's 1999 Play, draws from classic blues to add new life to electronic music.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    In Search Of... [Second Version]
    An early contender for album of the year.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eye Shadow
    His songs are beautiful if simple ballads to whatever crosses his fancy.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dizzy Spells
    If I were suddenly appointed Minister of Improving Music, my inaugural act would involve sending shock troops to ransack the CD racks of every would-be cookie-cutter punk in, say, Orange County, replacing all recordings by Social D. and Suicidal T. with copies of Dizzy Spells.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Coast Is Never Clear
    There’s more going on here than mere escapist fare.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Point
    Point is even weirder than previous Cornelius records, even if its emphasis on acoustic guitars makes it seem uncharacteristically mellow at first listen.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Epitaph
    Played quiet, Epitaph is like rain on the roof; when you’re rattling the casements with the monster bass, it’s like an air mattress.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Moon & Antarctica
    The Moon and Antarctica is darker and colder than their previous stuff, but maintains the very particular blend of peculiar lyrics and uncompromising rock that consistently weaves through all their records.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Insignificance
    The fly in the ointment is the lyric content, which plumbs depths of misanthropy that make labelmate Bill Callahan (Smog) sound like Bobby McFerrin.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kid A
    Kid A may feel cold and ahuman at first, but stick with it for the full 50 minutes: Listen long enough, and a fragile, flickering glow becomes apparent amid the chill. It?s the sound of human warmth flooding into a formerly alien space -- of Radiohead finally going exactly where they wanted.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American III: Solitary Man
    I'm assuming the problems began when Rubin presented Cash with a cache of songs to choose from. From there, Rubin's production only makes a bad situation worse, putting Cash's dusty, reverbless voice -- which is beginning to show its frailties -- unnaturally in your face.... But if you can wade through the chaff, it's Cash's originals that save the disc.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
    There isn't the slightest pause between any of the tracks on Thirteen Tales, just one big schmeer of good-rockin' vibes cresting and troughing for the length of this ode to, well, hipness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Walking With Thee
    Sure, the songs are short, fast and catchy, but Clinic isn't filling prescriptions for ear candy; the music cuts into you with a desolate, sarcastic, scalpel-sharp edge.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP
    It just isn't as much fun this time around, no matter how fresh Dre's beats are or how many worthy targets get shot down along with the innocent.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Elephant Shoe
    The recipe has changed little; if anything, it?s only become more articulate. Hauntingly beautiful backing tracks that could easily stand on their own float along, barely moving.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Standards
    Tortoise have finally integrated their influences and discovered how to do more than mimic...
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Art and Life
    His latest finds the Jamaican lyrical wizard working Rasta magic on a humorous pastiche of sexual posturing and socially conscious manifestoes, all nailed down on a canvas of ass-shakin' ragga, hip-hop, reggae and dancehall jams.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Regeneration
    Devoid of the cartoonish cabaret crooning of 1997’s breakthrough Cassanova, Regeneration is more down-to-earth, with less grandstanding and more adventurousness.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Relationship Of Command
    Producer Ross Robinson (Korn, Deftones, Slipknot, etc.) brings a degree of alt-rock punch to the proceedings, but there's more than enough garage grit left in the grooves to keep the indie kids smirking. There's certainly some downtime on Relationship of Command, but when it hits you'll be smarting, and smiling.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Haunted
    Propelled by her aggressive but seductive voice, Haunted walks the line between dark, beat-driven trip-hop and warm, melodic pop. What separates the album from its competition is Poe?s smart and emotionally charged songwriting, rife with raw energy balanced by gorgeously understated hooks.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Everybody Got Their Something
    In a just universe, Nikka Costa, with her near-perfect American debut, Everybody Got Their Something, would become the ‘00s answer to Janis Joplin, Teena Marie and Like a Virginal Madonna.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Foliage: Animation Music
    Amiable multi-instrumental pop shuffles in the hazy mode of the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour, gauzed with intricate four-part harmonies and a host of sound effects, bump up against loping, kitchen-sink ambientronic instro-ludes in albums that seem created somewhere outside of standard time by art students with a serious pop jones.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Invisible Man
    Eitzel’s written with genuine warmth before, but it’s been several albums since he’s backed it with sounds that stand on their own this well.
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