Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 4,071 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: 3,635 out of 4071
  2. Mixed: 400 out of 4071
  3. Negative: 36 out of 4071
4071 music reviews
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    • 73 Metascore
    • 53 Critic Score
    Love Me
    Barfod has more faith in his electronics, and when he’s playing something he trusts, he permits the songs to venture out and reach greater emotional heights. But that comfort doesn’t extend to his human players, and his hesitation to let go and explore permeates the album.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    NOW + 4EVA
    The result is one of the more confidently presented, mostly inoffensive and ultimately inconsequential albums in recent memory.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Himalayan
    The bottom line is, these guys have always just wanted to rock, and Himalayan is the first album that doesn’t let them.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mess
    Its coda features a lone, breathy synth that unfurls like a tattered flag planted high atop a snow-covered peak, and, like the band’s best work, the song is comparable to little else in the pop/indie landscape—a far cry from the tepid feel that permeates too much of this Mess.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Supermodel
    The crux is the album’s smothering, reverb-heavy, more-is-more production style, which smooths over some of the off-kilter quirks that made Torches’ sprawl so alluring.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tough Age
    Tough Age’s self-titled debut has its moments, most of them falling in the album’s front third.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Corsicana Lemonade
    On the heels of 2011’s critically hailed D, Corsicana Lemonade is a plain, uninspiring disappointment.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lightning Bolt
    Essentially, the cruise control is running onward with disregard for all the maintenance and repairs that an engine needs, and the result is the worst album of their career.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Glow & Behold
    Glow & Behold is never shrill or musically obnoxious, but it’s obnoxious how dull it is.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Event II
    just as the sequel-ness inherently implies, faithfulness to their past work sinks Event II, as just the sound and goals of the album seem out of place in 2013 and overly nostalgic, without adding much to the conversation that seemed long finished.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fly by Wire
    Even if the whole thing isn’t world-upheaving. Those standalone tracks make it worth a whirl.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    Mechanical Bull
    Unfortunately, they miss and it lands in the five-day-old dregs of a keg in an Anytown, USA backyard.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    MGMT
    MGMT chokes on its own forced sense of whimsy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nobody Knows
    On Beal’s first album, he moved between child-like ambience, songs suitable for weird film scores and stomping blues.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Permanent Signal
    It wants to be The Antlers as a singer/songwriter, but even The Antlers walk dangerously close to the edge of good taste. Remiddi’s voice is no help, either, often times too delicate and dainty to extract much emotion from, and only convincing when it flaunts imperfections.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    BE
    [The] familiarity brings you to the cereal, the soap and the market, and some people will be drawn to Be, okay with seeing the imitation. The rest are better holding off for Oasis’ inevitable reformation.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    The Weight of Your Love
    The ideas behind Weight have some potential, but Editors can’t seem to pull them off successfully.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Pythons
    On Astro Coast Pitts stared at the bright, unwritten future in front of him, but on Pythons he’s locked in place, rendered motionless by the oppressive chip on his shoulder.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    IV Play
    Even Dream’s production, which was voluptuously orchestrated, has turned static; there’s an ashen militarism to be heard in these slow, sad songs.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tales of a Grass Widow
    There’s a genuinely evocative album buried under the obnoxiousness.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    English Little League
    English Little League, like most of Pollard’s crop from the past decade, holds a few really great tracks, but is mostly missable.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bankrupt!
    Little is bad, but little is memorable or exciting or even interesting.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dad Country
    The man formerly known as Jonny Corndawg paints a richly redneck milieu--a greasy truck stop, a married woman’s disheveled bed, a backyard littered with post-debauchery debris--but something about the way he wallows in that white-trash decadence is offputting, even a little ugly.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wonderful, Glorious
    These are lifeless non-revelations married to engrossing tunes.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Run for Cover [EP]
    In its song choices, if not necessarily in its treatments, Run for Cover is more ambitious than it needs to be--than it should be, in fact.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Expecting Company? [EP]
    What we're left with is an EP full of hollow gestures. But at least it's an EP instead of an LP.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wolf's Law
    All but a few tracks could be touted as a single, though in the same breath, it is hard to pick a standout from them, their defining moments tied to a choice on their pedal board.
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