PopMatters' Scores
- TV
- Music
For 11,082 reviews, this publication has graded:
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43% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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53% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 69
Highest review score: | Funeral for Justice | |
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Lowest review score: | Travistan |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 7,425 out of 11082
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Mixed: 3,399 out of 11082
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Negative: 258 out of 11082
11082
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
There’s a joyful element to Rhumba Country that may be found in the Lord’s spirit, the pleasure of bouncy rhythms, or the magic of making music. Pokey LaFarge presents us with the evidence. We are left to decide what it means. He keeps the preaching to a minimum and implores us to dance.- PopMatters
- Posted May 9, 2024
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Their twee tone and lighthearted energy, which persist despite the album’s often pensive and wistful lyrical content, mask serious craft and scholarly mastery of the complex techniques the Lemon Twigs’ forbears invented. Riches abound.- PopMatters
- Posted May 9, 2024
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In tandem with Danny L. Harle, known for inventing the new personal genre called harlecore, and collaborations with Caroline Polachek and Charli XCX, Dua Lipa and Parker made Radical Optimism sound extremely lush and slick but raw and fresh.- PopMatters
- Posted May 7, 2024
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With a running time of 86 minutes, Fearless Movement demands commitment from the listener through its stylistic twists and turns. The first half, emphasizing vocals and choral hooks, is likely more accessible to general listeners than the second half. But fans of contemporary jazz will find plenty to enjoy throughout.- PopMatters
- Posted May 6, 2024
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Pull the Rope is a refreshing new chapter for a perpetually vibrant group.- PopMatters
- Posted May 3, 2024
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This album may not replace fans’ favorites at the top of the Vampire Weekend rankings, but it shows this band has much more to offer as it approaches its third decade of existence.- PopMatters
- Posted May 2, 2024
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One’s appreciation of Look to the East, Look to the West depends mostly on their appreciation of Campbell’s voice and artistry. Times have changed, but some things remain the same.- PopMatters
- Posted May 2, 2024
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Tacking back and forth in this way, Time is Glass builds momentum as it advances. There is a subtle Dantesque feel to the album’s sequencing, with the tracks seemingly occupying a space of increasing darkness followed by light.- PopMatters
- Posted May 1, 2024
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Even by Mdou Moctar’s high standards, Funeral for Justice is extraordinary. It is searing in music and lyrics, with messages that are essential in a world on fire and whose sounds can carry those messages far and wide. More than any previous Mdou Moctar album, it feels alive.- PopMatters
- Posted May 1, 2024
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After spending a record ruminating about the past, Old 97’s are back and “better than brand-new”. More than anything else, American Primitive‘s simple gift of new music that confronts the present moment and all its apparent contradictions is what Old 97’s fans should be most grateful for.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 30, 2024
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Hyperdrama, while possibly their best effort since, doesn’t quite capture that same energy, though it does come close. Whereas Cross felt like the essential festival season soundtrack, Hyperdrama is more akin to a messy night out on the tiles with an old friend who’s picked up some new party tricks.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 30, 2024
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This is not the perfect record with a lot of unevenness, but they found the right approach which means that to master it and finally reach a perfect match, they need to do another one with the same settings.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 23, 2024
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The Black Keys, get in, rock you, and get out. If song quality seems to falter toward the end, it is only by the slightest of degrees, making Ohio Players one of those records that can be enjoyed in one satisfying sitting.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 24, 2024
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Despite their garage rock machismo, Neil Young and Crazy Horse are ultimately old-school romantics. They deliver hard-won life lessons amidst their squalling guitars and Molina’s insistent drumbeat.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 24, 2024
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In this most recent work, she continues cultivating an expansive and complex sense of roots and relative self. It’s a joy to witness.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 23, 2024
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There will always be a welcome space for groups who take a signature sound and continue to perfect it, and when it all comes together as effortlessly as it does on Final Summer, it is worth calling attention.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 18, 2024
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Hey Panda is a bold update of the group’s sound—layered, complex, day-glow-colored with decidedly modern R&B and hip-hop influences. Here is a band that’s not done evolving.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 18, 2024
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The record is more acoustic than any of Rogers’ previous work in a way that feels welcome and refreshing rather than an erasure of her first two albums as inauthentic. Rogers’ vocal and performance abilities may recall musicians of decades past, but she is still very much a product of her time.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 18, 2024
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The result is a series of songs that have the expansiveness of improvisational music, disciplined into the taut power of rock.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 17, 2024
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It is clear that Exotic Birds of Prey is in part about transformation through music and eluding the oppressive modern impulse to profile and categorize, racially and otherwise. These themes speak to a broader ethos of Shabazz Palaces across their catalog. Yet, it is also apparent that this tactic of resistance and subversion can equally elude the understanding of listeners.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 16, 2024
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This has been a particularly strong year for heavy, guitar-forward music, and Up on Gravity Hill is sure to turn up again on some end-of-the-year lists.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 15, 2024
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The singer doesn’t stray too far from the soft indie-folk sounds that made her a cult-favorite indie darling in the first place, but her attempts at infusing her lyrics with the sonic properties also heard on a mid-aughts Tegan and Sara ballad remind us that McAlpine is the most darling when she’s just being herself.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 11, 2024
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Rather than relying on flashy gimmicks and studio trickery, Lenker lets good old-fashioned song craftsmanship carry the album through its 12 tunes.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 10, 2024
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Phosphorescent’s Revelator is less melodically charged than Muchacho and C’est La Vie (or even parts of Here’s to Taking It Easy). Also, Houck’s vocals sometimes flounder in woozy, loungey, soft-pillow mixes. That said, Revelator is a transitional album for Houck, as he turns his attention more unwaveringly to interior dynamics, less preoccupied with the vagaries of the external world.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 8, 2024
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She is constantly connected, consciously or not, with more rooted folk forms, from Ghanaian Ewe drumming and dance to Haitian funereal brass bands. Her results sound like none of that, but somewhere, underneath the layers of beats and snippets of melody, she tosses off like corn husks, dwells fossils, and bones with stories to tell us.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 8, 2024
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For all of Weaver’s experimental spirit, there isn’t a vast distance between some of the new songs and the soulful pop of, say, Sade or Dido. Weaver has always been keen on strong melodies and layered harmony vocals, so when “Perfect Storm” delivers its New Wave analogue groove or “Romantic Worlds” evokes chilled-out dancefloors, the music sits in a dynamic middle ground between alternative and mainstream.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 4, 2024
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The Collective is hard to pin down, but that is part of what makes it so compelling.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 3, 2024
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Across its ten tracks and 47-minute runtime, Moran collaborates with herself, instead, using a Disklavier – a modified Synclavier similar to an updated player piano – to create poignant, evocative, soul-searching post-minimalist piano sketches.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 3, 2024
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Overall, Interplay is a record for fans of Ride—recommended on that basis. Newcomers to the group may want to dip their feet earlier in Ride’s catalogue, at least for starters.- PopMatters
- Posted Apr 1, 2024
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- PopMatters
- Posted Mar 14, 2024
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