Playlouder's Scores

  • Music
For 823 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 An End Has A Start
Lowest review score: 0 D12 World
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 56 out of 823
823 music reviews
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This is so good it makes us want to do one of those superlative deploying pull quote things that journalists often stick at the end of their reviews: this fantastic piece of work is already a strong contender for album of the year.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Gleeful, glorious, and utterly unique.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Polly Harvey’s contradictory sure, but the complexities of her character and where she is right now are expressed with an honesty and intensity few artists can ever even begin to think about mustering.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Minimal and huge at the same time, desperately sad in places, thought-provoking and ethereal in others, this is an incredible milestone of a record.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Their most contemporarily relevant and best album since 'Fox Base Alpha.'
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    'One Bedroom' is an infinitely pleasurable listen, and one that (very gently) blows away any post-rock preconceptions.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Of course, if you've never particularly liked rickety, no frills, folk albums complete with twanging country guitar solos, banjos, the odd duff note and gloriously lo-fi percussion, then 'Where The Humans Eat' really isn't the record for you.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There are several duff tracks, certainly. And, sure, as a whole 'American Idiot' can easily be criticised for its simplistic, occasionally naïve sixth form lyrics, all round pomposity and general adherence to the group's tried and tested formula of punchy three-chord pogo-pop. But it's still a wonderfully entertaining, polemical punk rock record.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
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    Underpinning this wry melancholy are the winsome languor of Stephin Merritt's voice and the generous stash of tunes.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    'Walking With Thee' is a smoothed-over cacophony where the surreal meets the jovial and declares it an octagonal fish - deadly seriousness with a hint of smirk.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It is that love, devotion, and unfaltering belief that makes 'Permission To Land' such an essential listen, and such a joy to behold. It is the sound of triumph.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The overall mood (so spot-on is the title that the whole thing feels like a big chilled-out dance doughnut with stardust for sugar, heh heh) saves it, along with the occasional staggering moment of beauty.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This is a record stuffed with fun and joy and magic for all the family.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Daring, inventive and groundbreaking.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    '...Broken Seas', though understated and pretty, tingles with furtive sexual chemistry.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    'Want Two' is simply in a league of its own.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quite simply, 'Bows + Arrows' is a Great American Record, taking the qualities most admired in the last 35 years of US rock and barbecuing them together.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where Ladytron's first two albums might have felt to some to be alienating and monochrome, like a shallow bender on champers and very nice drugs, but a shallow bender nonetheless; 'The Witching Hour' is blessed with a far greater palette of sound and sensation, and is as fine a spell as you'll succumb to all year.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is a densely structured journey through intense pummelling and dervishes of electronic noise.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's not just the vocals that captivate. The sheer busyness of the whole production and all the sounds are to be marvelled at, and though it would be easy to over-egg, they never allow any of the tracks to be cluttered or overblown.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    So yeah, he's moved on a little but no, he hasn't gone soft on our perilously-leaping arses, and his personal holy trinity still seems to be the deeply unfashionable but unironically ace Van Halen, Meat Loaf and Billy Idol.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Well as befits such a completely uncompromising visionary/awkward pain in the arse (delete one if you can be bothered) it veers between the preposterously awful 'Genuine Lullabelle' with its bewildering spoken word passages and the awesome wire taut assault of 'Be Prepared'.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Malkmus seems to be firing on all cylinders for the first time as a solo artist.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A gloriously accomplished and very rewarding listen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    In ‘Real Gone’s fearsome complexity of rhythm, lyric and device, Tom Waits appropriates like a shoplifter without much time, and creates something entirely his own. A new music.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    They're simply repainting comfortable territories with even subtler strokes than ever.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lamb's most rounded and complete collection yet.... Even if they've lost something special in the process.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The results are almost painfully fashionable, f'sure, but utterly essential nonetheless.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s good fun, it’s a scream, and it stands up well to the likes of '...Do Dallas'.