Splendid's Scores

  • Music
For 793 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 65% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 75
Highest review score: 100 Humming By The Flowered Vine
Lowest review score: 10 Fire
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 20 out of 793
793 music reviews
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Stills have always shown promise, but Logic Will Break Your Heart ascends far beyond anyone's wildest expectations.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Every track on Hate surpasses the high standards set by its predecessor. Go buy it right now.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Totally brilliant, mind-meltingly good, and as different from Secret Wars as possible, except that both of these albums could change your life.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Absolutely essential!... It’s a coming-out party on the level of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A perfect synthesis of modern studio manipulation and old-time pop craftsmanship, shattering all notions of what pop music can, or for that matter, should be.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It's achingly beautiful without relying on maudlin sentimentality to win the listener over. Genius.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Welcome Interstate Managers is a watershed accomplishment, surpassing the band's debut in terms of whimsical pop songcraft, lyrical astuteness and blind melodic ambition.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Notwist can sculpt more emotional sounds and music into a compact and cutting four minutes than most can do in a career.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It is simple, winding, hypnotic and beautiful, and it makes being human bearable for a while -- without in any way detracting from its essential tragedy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Source Tags and Codes is phenomenal. It's one of those albums that starts the listener on a seeminlgly unsustainable high note, and uses that as a launching point.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dangerous Magical Noise is rock and roll at its pure, shaggy best. If you're tired of that, you're tired of life.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A powerful masterpiece of an album.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It's simply wonderful -- bristling with pop masterpieces large and small, and reassuringly unburdened by Smith's deep-seated malaise.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The sheer scope of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is so utterly breathtaking that repeat airings only reinforce its stunning songcraft and otherworldly sonic splendor.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A strong contender for album of the year, Shaking the Sheets is a masterpiece of fucked-up mod pop: political but not preachy, insistent yet never twitchy, respectful but never blatant.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    I defy you to find a more elegantly shambolic, soulfully homespun and, indeed, heartfelt album than this.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Separation Sunday stands a chance of being one of 2005's true classics.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This is a wonderful album, full of heart, skill and intelligence, and sure to be recognized as a classic.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    As perfect a brew as this is, it's Gelb's voice and lyrics that push the music into otherworldly territories.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Musically rich throughout, Everything and Nothing is a spotlight for Sylvian's stylish, Brian Ferry-inspired baritone, his fascination with eastern culture and spirituality and the beautiful orchestrations of songs like "God's Monkey", "I Surrender" and "Some Kind of Fool".
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    No one else is making literate, story-based pop this good.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Shine A Light is metallic, screamo-ing, ear-bursting, confused and chopping. And man, it's great.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It is completely different from either Akron/Family's or Angels of Light's work from earlier this year, and in Akron's case, represents a startling pace of artistic development.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    His vision appears to be his own, and just happens to coincide with both the director's and the author's visions also, resulting in one of the best soundtracks -- and albums -- I've heard in a long time.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    There's emotion, extraordinary technique, and a surprising, oh-so-welcome passion in the singing.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Like Madlib or MF DOOM, Four Tet is at the crest of the electronica/hip-hop wave, forcing the genre's evolution into new realms and making everyone else look like amateurs in the process.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mass Romantic more than repays any musical debt owed by the good people of Canada. In fact, it’s going to take some pretty strong efforts by America's best and brightest to match The New Pornographers' achievements here.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Though the covers on American III will attract the majority of listener attention, Cash’s own material steals the show.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It's another Merritt CD that's so good, it could radically alter the world if it was broadcast from the moon.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Killing Joke feels as fresh and exciting as 1981's album of the same name.