Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 4,085 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 67% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 30% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 76
Highest review score: 100 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [50th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Version]
Lowest review score: 10 Songs From Black Mountain
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,649 out of 4085
  2. Mixed: 400 out of 4085
  3. Negative: 36 out of 4085
4085 music reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fate
    So instantly pleasing, the trickery is transparent, a hook to keep listening until the content of Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken’s songs makes itself known.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    How To Walk Away
    The album has its moments but suffers from fussy production.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Visitations
    Visitations is a return to Internal Wrangler's more straightforward form. It's not as revelatory the second time around, but it plays to Clinic's main strength. [Feb 2007, p.57]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 72 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors
    Everything about this record is a shame: it explores new creative territory, the rhyming is solid and syntactically delightful (Big Boi's pronunciations are always more quotable than his lines), and it's a deserving outcast trying to make good as one-record-every-two-years lifer. And it simply does not work.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jim
    U.K. upstart Jamie Lidell’s latest is trapped squarely in this box, but the quality of his vocal performance generally keeps things from being stifling.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In Our Nature
    In Our Nature’s fingerpicked reveries, sonic gentility and lugubrious vibe might tug at your eyelids, but be warned: Its heavy-hearted sentiments are hardly the stuff of dreams.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Several Arrows Later
    Another nice-enough album of sweetly sighing chamber pop that marks yet another incremental step forward. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.109]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 72 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    The Majestic Silver Strings
    And yet, given the promise of their combined talents, Strings turns out to be seriously frayed, as these guitarists sound like they're going to another job instead of hanging around to jam.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP 2
    Technical proficiency is overrated. Taste has to account for something, which means Eminem isn’t the Jimi Hendrix of hip hop. Instead, he’s in danger of becoming Yngwie Malmsteen: incredibly agile yet musically soulless. He says a lot of nothing on MMLP2, but I guess you can admire the way he says it.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Flower Lane
    The record feels akin to 40 minutes of stoned stargazing in a college dorm room. And the kid down the hall has yet to add substance to the conversation.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Return The Gift
    It's disappointing to find Gang of Four recycling the past so bluntly, trafficking in a nostalgia industry they should be well above. [Dec 2005, p.122]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 72 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    Piano
    While intimate and personal in nature, Piano combines minimalistic instrumentation with simplistic lyrics and makes for an album that turns lackluster as a whole.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 53 Critic Score
    Enemy Mine
    There are moments when the synths, pianos and strings coalesce to form something resembling the urgency and poignance Swan Lake is capable of, but these spare highlights are only barely worth looking for.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Micah P. Hinson And The Opera Circuit
    A record enveloping enough to be therapeutic but vital enough to be inspiring. [Dec 2006, p.89]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 72 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Life Is Sweet! Nice To Meet You
    But the overproduction and studio gimmickry haunts the halls of this collegiate rock, constraining Hynes’ squeaky-clean instrumentation between alternating tedium and banality.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Untitled
    Unfortunately, no amount of slick beats and swagger can camouflage Untitled’s defects.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Young For Eternity
    Swings from rapid-fire rockers to acoustic-inspired melodic pieces. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.97]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ta-Dah
    Unfortunately songs that aren't immediately danceable... tend to dull the excitement. [Dec 2006, p.94]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 71 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Outside
    They're so determined to conjure a gothic America and its black-and-white morality that they fail to acknowledge the grace and sophistication of their source material.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bankrupt!
    Little is bad, but little is memorable or exciting or even interesting.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    From A Compound Eye
    Entrenched fans will be pleased to have another wing to explore in his ever-expanding mansion of song. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.110]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 71 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    It's Not Me, It's You
    Heavy production, heavy hooks and heavy club-friendly beats are the status quo, everything coming across like someone else’s tampering rather than Allen’s creative doing.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Another Day On Earth
    Invisible melodies--sometimes too invisible--give shape to songs like wind billowing through curtains. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.143]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 71 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    The Open Road
    Hiatt puts these thoughts to paper in his signature cerebral style, but it isn’t enough to make these played-out themes feel fresh.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    News And Tributes
    The band is now displaying an elevated gift for arrangement. [Aug 2006, p.87]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 71 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    The Next Logical Progression
    Progression doesn't make a convincing argument for rap's return to the golden era. Instead, it feels a bit too grumpy and too reliant upon the good ol' days.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Finally Free
    Sometimes Romano manages to pull off an unexpected success: a repeating thinly strummed acoustic guitar chord and quavering vocals at the start of “Empty Husk” eventually build to a catharsis of overdriven electric guitars and a vibrant melody. More often, though, these tunes just idle.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blazing Gentlemen
    That’s the case overall for Blazing Gentlemen, which too often comes off like a rote exercise instead of an inspired undertaking.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Or Give Me Death
    It's hardly perfect, but it's bolder, more complex, and ultimately a more fulfilling release for this band. [May 2007, p.65]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rockferry
    Unfortunately, its during these rather naked moments where the album falters, mostly because Duffy’s robust voice often overmatches the music that surrounds it.
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