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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    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Recession
    The Recession's singles are exceptional, but the filler suffers from a detached and dispirited sound.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    How To Walk Away
    The album has its moments but suffers from fussy production.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Donkey
    CSS is stripped of the qualities that made it the charmingly objectionable crush of two summers ago. And note, this is not the sexy kind of stripped this time around.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Untitled
    Unfortunately, no amount of slick beats and swagger can camouflage Untitled’s defects.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Forgiven
    Forgiven has bits and pieces, like a bunch of base hits, but not even one song possessing homer status, much less a grand slam like “Heaven.”
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fire Songs
    The Twins aren’t so compelling as songwriters, and too many of these fire songs sound merely serviceable, with mellow hooks and humdrum sentiments.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    O
    Now mature pop songwriters, the Omaha quintet sounds more like a conventional band on O, favoring rousing sing-along choruses, richly layered pianos and trumpets, and even standard drum kits.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Viva La Vida
    Given Eno’s quarter-century of Bono-fides, this isn’t surprising. Martin’s interests are frequently vague--on 'Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love' he sings about soldiers who must soldier on and runners who must run until the race is won. Seriously?
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flavors Of Entanglement
    On some tracks, Morissette’s voice channels Björk (with whom Sigsworth has also worked), but the mood ultimately switches to watered-down Evanescence.
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