Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 4,084 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: 3,648 out of 4084
  2. Mixed: 400 out of 4084
  3. Negative: 36 out of 4084
4084 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Haunted Man
    On The Haunted Man, Khan continues to pursue a similar approach to combining ambition and concision, but, unfortunately, the result is a disappointingly tepid album.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Glad All Over
    All told, Dylan and company don't leave you glad all over--but maybe half-way.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    As Above So Below [EP]
    As Above So Below is so soft, so painfully passive that at times that it's hard not to wander away.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Centipede Hz
    Centipede Hz is not their worst album as some will believe--or as its dense ugliness will first sound--and it may continue to reveal itself over time like TV on the Radio's Nine Types of Light or Spoon's Transference.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Anastasis
    Anastasis demands intense, patient listening, though it rarely rewards it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Falling Off the Sky
    They made a wholesome record without embarrassing themselves or their fans.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Tucson: A Country Rock Opera
    The record is good as background noise, with a few tracks strong enough to stand alone. As a complete story, though, it doesn't exactly deliver.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    This is PiL
    With none of the tension or electricity of the music PiL is best-remembered for, This is PiL is a disappointing return.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    The Temper Trap
    Unfortunately, the only thing that The Temper Trap's self-titled album proves is that they may have been a one-hit wonder all along.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    That's Why God Made the Radio
    While all members sound terrific behind the microphone, particularly when the harmonies are at their thickest, Love's lead turns on the god-awful "Daybreak Over the Ocean" and "Beaches in Mind" are excruciatingly over-played in their winky retro-ness and, quite frankly, an embarrassment.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What We Saw from the Cheap Seats
    Unfortunately, What We Saw is heavy on overlong ballads, and when she adds that trademark whimsy to the mix, it's nearly unbearable.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Here
    Here winds up an album of originals, sung by the people who wrote them, but somehow resembling more than anything else a campfire sing-along of someone else's songs.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Anxiety
    While Anxiety is not a trainwreck, it's a missed opportunity given the strength of her foundation.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 46 Critic Score
    Not Your Kind of People
    Everything from the stilted production to Manson's lyrics to that awful album cover seems hopelessly mired in 1998.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hoyas [EP]
    Hoyas sounds slick, monochromatic and even a bit stale.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Dr. Dee
    Unfortunately, an undertaking as complicated as Dr Dee needs all the accessibility that would-be fans can get. And instead it's nothing more than rabbit-hole music for Dr. Damon.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    A Wasteland Companion
    A Wasteland Companion is Ward's seventh proper solo album, and it certainly has it moments, even if many of them are fairly derivative.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    With Love
    Where lyrics are concerned, be prepared for plenty of eye rolling (or eye gouging).
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Plumb
    Unfortunately it feels mostly like an over-concentrated mess of misplaced ambitions.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Something
    Something is a generally enjoyable, but nonetheless generally unremarkable next step for the band.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crazy Clown Time
    Crazy Clown Time, recorded in Lynch's personal studio with engineer Big Dean Hurley, isn't exactly fart-blank, but this visual master shouldn't quit his day job.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Ambition
    It's just not very fun. Wale's conversion to Ross' braggy rap-excess didn't seem like a great idea in theory, and stretched out to an hour his updated, devolved craft starts to wear thin very, very quickly.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lulu
    It's not an especially good album, but its failures are noble rather than ignoble-byproducts of ambition rather than hubris.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Audio, Video, Disco
    While † threatened to alienate with its sheer abrasiveness, its long-awaited follow-up succeeds in boring with its sprawling and unfocused Queen-meets-Skrillex mashups.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mylo Xyloto
    It's a moment of stirring calm amid a sea of blaring showiness, and this well-intended mixed bag, despite its lovely surfaces, could have used more of that variety.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 47 Critic Score
    Enough Thunder [EP]
    There are flashes of the brilliance that made the youngster such a trendy buzzname, but it's hard work wading through the awkward muck.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Mockingbird Time
    Mockingbird Time suffers most in the songwriting, which too often relies on soft hooks and indistinct details that never quite add up to conflicts or characters.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dreams Come True
    Dreams Come True is nothing if not well-produced and lovingly assembled. Problem is: there ain't no soul.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blue Songs
    A lot of the miffed disappointment could come from the fact that Butler pulled the rug out from under his solidified, circa-2008 sound, but if nothing else the new incarnation is a lot harder to fall in love wit
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Demolished Thoughts
    Whereas that album [Several Shades of Why] revealed the Dinosaur Jr frontman's surprising musical and lyrical range, Demolished Thoughts only reveals Moore's particular limitations.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Rome
    Rome does sound like the result of five years of Very Serious Effort, except instead of honing a few rough spots, the hubris-driven tinkering ended up chipping away all the soul from what could have been a jaunty and lively homage to some of the best movie music ever made.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In Your Dreams
    In Your Dreams is an album about exorcising the demons of the past and moving forward toward the beauty lingering in our imaginations.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Death of a Decade
    It's a fine album that often lapses into anonymity, that never quite rocks as hard and as consistently as it should.
    • 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Rockpango
    The bad news: Los Lonely Boys are much better players than they are songwriters.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Share the Joy
    Combining swelling '60s throwback harmonies and the sweet, swift wit of '50s songwriting, they parlay clichéd notions into winning melodies.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lasers
    So the political nails are hidden deeply enough in the candy that sometimes it's hard to tell whether the juxtaposition is truly bracingly subversive or oddly self-defeating. Depending on your mood or disposition, maybe it's neither, either or both. A musical Rorschach test if there ever was one.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Live on I-5
    It's pretty much a greatest hits album, which conceptually blows an opportunity right off the bat.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Violet Cries
    Violet Cries is broadly, nebulously goth, with very little to distinguish the band from their peers and forebears.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Different Gear, Still Speeding
    Speaking of The Beatles, Different Gear continues the Gallagher quest for the perfect Lennon impression. It's yet to be found.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 46 Critic Score
    There Are Rules
    Here the Get Up Kids sound a bit confused and rusty, making There Are Rules a late career footnote of limited urgency.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Computers & Blues
    Overall, Skinner sounds bored and tired of himself-in short, ready to move on.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mission Bell
    "Violin," the lone track which seems to bare a hint of Calexico influence, is unsurprisingly the album's clear highlight: a swelling, sweeping slow-burner with wide-screen atmosphere, angelic harmonies and pedal steel aching over modest acoustic strums. More of this ilk and Mission Bell would have been a stunner.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Farmer's Daughter
    All in all, Farmer's Daughter is better than you might expect, which isn't to say it's great. Too many tracks aim straight for the middle.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    WYWH
    WYWH is all about atmosphere, but it's an atmosphere that doesn't always leave an impression, which makes this album a very tentative step in the right direction.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Phosphene Dream
    Phosphene Dream's real achievement is that it takes the band's earlier murderous attitude and makes it impossibly bland.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Penny Sparkle
    A nicely composed mix, no doubt, and one that's often gorgeous to boot, but Penny Sparkle mostly sounds like a band getting complacent with age.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tin Can Trust
    All of Tin Can's shifting tempos make you feel like you're getting a new song each time, but really, you've heard it all before.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    What Lasts
    Sadly, this album gets bogged down in hollow harmonies and filler songs that merely scrape the surface of emotion.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Further
    A few gems, sure, but Further doesn't fly far enough.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Are Born
    Sia's ostensible rebirth falls apart once We Are Born detours to bleak balladry with I'm In Here, a pale imitation of her big claim to fame.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Grace Potter & the Nocturnals
    There are hints of the band's previous life here--"Oasis" seems to strikes the roots-pop balance they're going for, and "Goodbye Kiss" is perfectly fine barroom reggae--and Potter rarely misses a chance to show off her killer voice, but The Nocturnals' crucial swagger has sadly been scrubbed clean away.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Forgiveness Rock Record
    Whereas BSS' two previous albums indulge the group's pop sensibilities while showcasing its knack for rock anthems, Forgiveness cremates and scatters these strengths over an intimidating and overwrought runtime.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Trans-Continental Hustle
    It seems Gogol Bordello is still stubbornly clutching for the inventiveness of earlier records like Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike and Super Taranta! without truly progressing, leaving us with a Rick Rubin-adorned imitation of their visionary past work.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Volume Two
    The smiling-through-tears undercurrent of ’60s pop is lost in Deschanel’s taffy-like vocals, and though the album evokes memories of a more pleasant time, they seem far too sweet to be real.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Tomorrow, In A Year
    The concept was ambitious but, unfortunately, in releasing Tomorrow as an album, the team divorces the music from the stage and leaves the songs stranded in a mire of effects and noise.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Hands
    Little Boots’ problem may be that there’s little left to add to her genre: The synth-pop revival has nearly exhausted itself, and Hands ends up sounding like a B-sides collection cherry-picked from the catalogs of Kylie Minogue and Girls Aloud.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Magic Chairs
    The album struggles at times to raise its head from the multi-instrumental pack; textured as it is, there’s a muted quality to this collection that inevitably leaves ears slightly cold. It’s pretty, but not always gripping.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Crows
    Crows isn’t without merit—Moorer’s voice is beautiful, and the themes are on an emotional canvas that anyone over 13 with a normal amount of chromosomes has experienced, making her album relatable if not particularly memorable.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ultraviolet
    The album is undeniably solid, so why does it feel faintly underwhelming? Context is key.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Midwinter Graces
    Amos fails to find an entryway into these songs that justifies her willingness to bury her personality inside them, ending up with a well-meaning but ultimately inessential vanity project.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Play On
    On Play On her approach results in a scattershot collection that too often mistakes bombast for sincerity ('Unapologize') and sap for sentiment ('Temporary Home').
    • 76 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Escape 2 Mars
    Even with Gab’s phonetic prowess and all that time to prepare for launch, Escape 2 Mars doesn’t reach the transcendent heights of its sublime, lushly orchestrated predecessor, ultimately feeling less like an epic interplanetary voyage and more like space camp.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cosmic Egg
    Much of Cosmic Egg is just that--not-quite-hatched, and in need of sharper claws.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 41 Critic Score
    I Told You I Was Freaky
    As much of Freaky wallows in the jokes, the record runs out of ideas astonishingly early.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Geneva
    Ultimately, Russian Circles pummel too politely.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wildlife
    The well-established indie-pop tricks get results, but are too unerringly calculated to have much distinct personality. Some big, billowy production would have helped.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Revolution
    On songs like these, she resists the temptation to play the spurned frontierswoman out for revenge. She’s a little wounded, a little scared, a little less of a caricature and a little more human.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Be Set Free
    These are mediocre, and sometimes painfully inept, approximations of classic lovelorn folk tunes. At a short 38 minutes, the times aren’t changin’ fast enough.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    The Boy Who Knew Too Much
    By the time the pop-induced sugar rush wears off you realize that, besides being done before, these songs have definitely been done better. Worse yet, all you've got to show for it is a headache.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 53 Critic Score
    Draw The Line
    British singer/songwriter David Gray last released a proper studio album in 2005. It was called "Life in Slow Motion," and it was lovely. It was also a complete waste of that title, which could be far more accurately applied to his syrupy new LP Draw the Line.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Backspacer
    Outside of a filmic context and stamped with the name Pearl Jam, several of the songs fall flat, dragging down an otherwise upbeat and enjoyable release.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    The Blueprint 3
    Jay overreaches, leaning too heavily on by-the-numbers production from Kanye West and Timbaland, and muffling his own voice in favor of a guest-heavy tracklist.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Heartbeat Radio
    Prodigiously talented but frustratingly inconsistent, Lerche gives Heartbeat Radio an unsteady pulse.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    After Robots
    Track after track is slathered in layers of horns and guitars and synths until the songs underneath are no longer discernible.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Blood From Stars
    Levon coaxes an intricately textured tone from his saxophone on 'Over Her Shoulder,' but generally, Joe’s erudition gets the better of him on this strangely dim and twinkleless album.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 46 Critic Score
    Armistice
    The result is an awkward balancing act between a premature lust for accessibility and an obvious knack for the avant-garde, shirking traces of the latter in an ill-fated attempt at evolution.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Josephine
    With the title character appearing in several songs amid frequent descriptions of desert landscape, Josephine sounds like a concept album, at times tedious or academic....The Co. redeem these songs by creating beautiful scenery for Molina’s long, hard drive.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Farm
    At times, Mascis and Co. sound perfectly at home amidst a wall of distortion (see the bouncy, hook-driven 'I Want You to Know'). But for the most part, they sound exhausted.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Octahedron
    Octahedron is the sound of a band treading water.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Far
    No less than four producers--Mike Elizondo, David Kahne, Jeff Lynne and Garret “Jacknife” Lee--contributed to the album, and their collective efforts have resulted in a mid-tempo muddle of pseudo-lovely tracks plagued by a hovering cloud of meddling strings, slappy drums and perfunctory triangle chimes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Preliminaires
    Préliminaires applies an interesting--if not wholly successful--Aznavour twist to Iggy’s latter-day repertoire.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Roadhouse Sun
    The bulk of Roadhouse Sun, however, hews too closely to bland bar rock, as if they’re drinking Bud Lights instead of Shiner Bocks.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free
    What emerges from Set ’em Wild, Set ’em Free is the realization that Akron/Family is maddeningly unknowable and, essentially, a product of all these influences rolled up into one gigantic, take-it-or-leave-it stringball.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Welcome To Mali
    If the album is frustratingly uneven--if, despite moments of exuberance, it can also feel like a mundane grind--well, I suspect that also mirrors life in Mali. And almost everywhere else, too.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Never Going Back
    She has the potential to be the next Ann Peebles, a real superstar in the blues world. But first she needs to snap that leash.
    • 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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Changing Horses
    He’s nodded to his Texas roots before, but on this collection meant to play up his twangy side, he seems scared of edging too far into the darkness of country music’s long, rich tradition. And what a shame.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 53 Critic Score
    Universal Mind Control
    Common’s inability to sound sincere about a man he spent two years championing is the most telling part of this consciously shallow caricature of hip-hop’s dregs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Cross Of My Calling
    Mall-punk aesthetes might be convinced, but even before Cross of My Calling’s ponderous title-track closer comes around (with its near nine-minutes of lead-footed epilogue), most listeners owning a copy of Sandinista! will have put it on instead.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    Chinese Democracy
    Too bad the epitaph’s already scrawled in Chinese Democracy’s anachronistic margins: a bottomless pit dug by disposable income, a persecution complex and egomania.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Sycamore Meadows
    It’s an ideal time to simultaneously start over and glance back, which Walker does on Sycamore Meadows, trading the glammy style of his prior solo work for competent, traditional radio rock....Then again, you’ll need a high threshold for boorishness to enjoy his frequent autobiographical nostalgia for substance abuse, pubescent defloration and venereal disease.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Car Alarm
    Maybe all of Car Alarm is about conflict, but Prekop glides and sighs over every vowel, making it difficult to hear what he’s saying or to detect a hint of tension beneath the gloss.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Morning Tide
    Creating a musical theme that stretches across the album isn’t a bad idea, but The Little Ones fail to pull it off, and the songs suffer from a frothy sameness.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 44 Critic Score
    Little Wild One
    The album comes off as polished, tasteful and static, like a still-life, beset with predictable melodies and proficient but less than electrifying vocal performances.
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