New York Magazine (Vulture)'s Scores

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For 158 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 45% higher than the average critic
  • 0% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 8.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 God's Son
Lowest review score: 10 18
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 96 out of 158
  2. Mixed: 40 out of 158
  3. Negative: 22 out of 158
158 music reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nuclear Daydream
    It is a tutorial in finely textured songwriting.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    FutureSex / LoveSounds
    If he hasn’t yet invented a persona intriguing enough to live up to his music, give him credit for being one of the few white men still brave enough to make black music.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Idlewild
    Entertaining and surprisingly consistent.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    What Are You On?
    A deeply satisfying work of storytelling through pop.... What Are You On? is emotionally complex in a way that few of the more prosperous songwriters of Cornog’s generation are capable of producing at this point in their careers.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Confessions On A Dance Floor
    The first half, in particular, has irresistible momentum... The second half drags a little, and you wish Madonna would strip the synths back to work a bass line every now and then.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Aerial
    Too much of Aerial fades into a soft-focus background of soothing synthesizers, murmuring bass, and twittering birdsong.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Broken Social Scene
    Broken Social Scene has pulled off the rare feat of making a heavily produced record sound instinctive and spontaneous.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bright Ideas
    The best record of his career, a collision of the idiosyncratic charms of Portastatic with the exuberant rock power of Superchunk.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Made In China
    Her songs still revolve mostly around the adolescent hell of looking right and pleasing jerky guys, a shtick that would be old if Hatfield, well into her thirties, didn’t genuinely sound as if she were still living through it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Body Of Song
    Marrying his sturdy rock-guitar talents to lively beats, he’s found a comfort zone.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Honeycomb
    It is a noble effort, modeled on Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, but the results are underwhelming.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    X&Y
    Your level of interest in their music probably correlates with your willingness to be bored.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Face The Truth
    The songs, which have the choppy angles and elegant dissonance of Pavement’s, are painstakingly layered with keyboards and all manner of funky blurps and beeps. It all sounds very labor-intensive—and pretty smart, too.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Make Believe
    Many of these songs are thin schematics for “perfect” pop songs. They’re impressive in their commitment to formula--deploying catchy, whiny hooks, taut structure, loud-soft interplay, and well-timed guitar peals. Yet for all their nakedness, they offer little in the way of revelation.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Devils & Dust
    Stands somewhere between Nebraska and Joad in terms of impact and quality.... But this album doesn’t merely find the middle ground between those two earlier releases: Its best songs break new ground for Springsteen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Guero
    Beck integrates his personae into a fairly seamless whole, and his knack for synthesizing disparate musical elements (hip-hop, robot funk, blues, country, jazz, garage rock, etc.) extends beyond samples and individual tracks. The songs migrate smoothly from one to the next; there aren’t any throwaway numbers to sabotage the album’s momentum; the whole thing coheres.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Massacre
    The Massacre is as frustratingly uneven as Get Rich or Die Tryin’, but it’s longer and messier.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aha Shake Heartbreak
    While Aha Shake Heartbreak showcases four feckless stoners speaking in their own shop-class patois, it also captures them playing alarmingly sophisticated pop.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Awake Is The New Sleep
    The songs, engaging as they are, sound cursory, as though Lee wrote them while riding the bus on his way to the studio, staring at his watch and an empty notebook.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I Am A Bird Now
    A profoundly emotional, uncynical brand of songwriting that showcases Antony’s obsession with nature.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    With The Lights Out
    Manages, despite an excess of throwaway material, to be an appropriately eccentric testament to Cobain’s talent.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ray Ray
    Despite its faults--and there are many--Ray Ray is a startlingly inventive record.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Antics
    It’s a lot less monotone than its predecessor.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Delivery Man
    [It] doesn’t help in pinpointing the moment Costello veered into self-parody, but it does catalogue nearly everything that’s become impossible to take about him.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Showtime
    On Showtime, Dizzee doesn’t give up his sonic adventurousness, but he is a lot more disciplined about it.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Living Things
    It’s merely another nice try, charmingly forgettable.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Medulla
    Especially when heard on headphones, Medulla is an overwhelming sonic bliss-out, Phil Spector’s wall of sound channeled through the voice box.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    She Loves You
    Cover albums tend to be self-indulgent stunts, but not for Dulli. She Loves You comes across as the most natural expression of him as an artist.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bubblegum
    Bubblegum is a blues record, a powerfully original reinterpretation of the genre.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blueberry Boat
    The band take their experimental ethos even further without sacrificing the emotional power of their debut.
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