Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 1,600 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 35% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Chemtrails Over the Country Club
Lowest review score: 25 The New Game
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,362 out of 1600
  2. Mixed: 176 out of 1600
  3. Negative: 62 out of 1600
1600 music reviews
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    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Shadows in the Night
    His voice raw, pitchy and quivering, Dylan croons his way through elegantly crafted songs with seeming disinterest in flawless takes or perfect pitch. Yet it's profound, thematically devastating and so well curated as to feel essential.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Vulnicura
    Vulnicura is a serious, heavy journey through a rough ordeal, a work certainly too deep to fully absorb so quickly after its release. Like many of her recent records, it's not toe-tapping beat-based music. But fans like myself will find much to love as we explore its many peaks and valleys.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance
    Murdoch, Jackson and Martin treat lyrics as vehicles for dance-friendly expository narratives and snapshot moments.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
    What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is the Decemberists' seventh album and sees singer and songwriter Meloy in peak form.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    American Beauty/American Psycho
    The result, at least for the first half, is almost comically exciting, one fist-pump adrenaline rush after another.... Alas, Stump and his bandmates run out of steam by the end of American Beauty/American Psycho.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Title
    She doesn't give you the sense that she's thought through the opposing themes in her music: the individual versus society, modernity versus tradition, dependence versus independence. It all feels as unexamined as her use of certain vocal patterns typically associated with black singers.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Uptown Special
    [Ronson] crafts solid, instantly catchy pop songs, the kind that strive for an everyman universality while acknowledging a rich past of soul-inspired pop music.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Black Messiah
    Rife with the kind of sublimely loose grooves achievable only through instrumental precision, Black Messiah is as vital as it is sublime.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Pinkprint
    If the late-add dance track confuses things, it's hard to fault Minaj. Throughout The Pinkprint, she's intent on channeling her talent to explore and document her many moods. The combination is often, if not always, intoxicating.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    36 Seasons
    It's an urgent, soulfully steely album of hip-hop unconcerned with the genre's current twists into pop structures and woozy electronics.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    2014 Forest Hills Drive
    A deeply skilled empathizer, Cole can put you in his shoes too.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Art of McCartney
    If only the others brought aboard were extended as much freedom to do something other than trace outlines over the contours of this familiar canon.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014
    What could have been a random collection of odds and ends--or worse, a nostalgia grab--isn't so much a look at Wilco's alternate-history past as it is a glimpse at ground the band still has to cover.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Pt. 1
    Like the best of such collections, it connects enough dots to leave a listener sated and educated when it's over.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Four
    They're growing up not by going wild but--get this--by relaxing. And the result is their best work yet.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Endless River
    The aimless fragments on The Endless River, on the other hand, are so excruciatingly dull (even by Pink Floyd’s often-dull standards) that the band’s name on the cover feels like a straight-up bait-and-switch.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Broke With Expensive Taste
    Taken as a whole--and heard loudly and with great focus--it confirms Banks' promise, and her great reflexes in collaboration.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Man Against Machine
    His primary weapon--and the quality that most sets him apart from the country stars who’ve surfaced in his wake--is his earnestness. The singer’s aggressive sincerity remains intact.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Motion
    The presence of those strong women [Gwen Stefani and Haim] does wonders for Harris’ amped-up music. They bring out the man, not the meathead, in the machine.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    ...Honor Is All We Know
    Epitaph Records owner (and co-founder of Bad Religion) Brett Gurewitz returns to the producer's seat for this one, wringing a thrashy but precise performance out of the well-seasoned quartet.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    RTJ2
    Headphone rap of the highest order, tracks on this sequel hum and groove, laced with texture and hidden sonic accents.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pain Killer
    As freaky as the production gets, Little Big Town’s crystalline vocals (and sturdy structures by Nashville’s craftiest songwriters) keep the music approachable, even tidy; it’s always heading toward a catchy chorus.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    1989
    1989 is a deeply catchy, sleekly-produced pop record with the slightly juiceless quality of an authorized biography, a would-be tell-all bleached of the detailed insight she’s trained us to expect from her.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Melody Road
    Are these new tunes likely to move arena audiences in the same way? Nah. But Diamond sings as though they will. He's still a believer.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    ...And Star Power
    ...And Star Power is scattered, often silly and mostly inconsequential.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Trick
    While nothing on Trick feels incredibly urgent or revelatory, it's a rare late-night album that assumes you'll wake up next to someone you actually like.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Aquarius
    Aquarius heralds an essential new voice, one that coheres 100 current ideas about women, sex, sadness and musical restlessness in one excellent album.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault
    Whatever the arrangement, though, Nicks’ voice--that signature drone that’s gotten only more appealingly imperious with age--defines the music here. Her singing dominates as easily now as it ever did.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    747
    If Chapman restores some of Lady Antebellum's polish, he still keeps the group moving too fast with zippy pop-country arrangements that rarely allow Charles Kelley and Hillary Scott to harmonize as sumptuously as they're able.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's Modern Boxes
    For almost 10 years, Yorke has carved a determined, idiosyncratic path as electronic singer-songwriter. It’s just a bit disappointing that that path seems short on new directions.
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