The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 4,544 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 The Life Of Pablo
Lowest review score: 0 Graffiti
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,663 out of 4544
  2. Mixed: 771 out of 4544
  3. Negative: 110 out of 4544
4544 music reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Always Ascending
    Always Ascending has its moments, even if it’s not the musical rebirth Franz Ferdinand sought.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Here Come the Runts
    The variety of genres here impresses the most.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Criminal
    While that poetry-journal melodrama grows a tad exhausting by album’s end, there are plenty of deliciously bitter pleasures here for anyone who similarly loves brooding in that blacked-out, candlelit bedroom of the mind.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Microshift
    Overall, Microshift is the sound of a band pulling itself out of the abyss on the back of its most buoyant music yet.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Blood
    It’s more minimal than The xx, more romantic than the most heartsick R&B, with drums pulled straight from ’70s studio sessions. In other words, it’s a lot of things, while still sounding like nothing else out there.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Man of the Woods
    Unfortunately, Man Of The Woods’ thematic depth hasn’t quite caught up to the rest of his ambition. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it does make for a record that’s not quite as transcendent as it was built up to be.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Down Below
    The title and lyrics suggest an inferno worthy of Dante, but music this simultaneously hooky and heavy could only have been concocted north of hell.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shape the Future
    With so much New Age nattering, here more than ever your enjoyment will depend on your own zeal for enlightenment and/or bong rips.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    All Melody
    A vibrant, exploratory album born from Frahm’s newly constructed Berlin studio and the freedom to experiment it allowed.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Snares Like a Haircut
    Snares Like A Haircut finds Dean Spunt and Randy Randall making a warm, self-assured reunion, with each other and that scene-leading musical style.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mania
    Since around 2007’s Infinity On High, the key to enjoying Fall Out Boy has been letting go of their pop-punk past and embracing the pop band that always hid in plain sight. That was a chore on American Beauty/American Psycho, but less so on Mania. As endorsements go, that’s pretty qualified.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Semicircle
    It’s a rousing party record, but when the music stops and the lights come on, it all blurs together into a fun but forgettable time.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I Like Fun
    “Lake Monsters” gives rocking sci-fi tribute to mysterious beasts that should please longtime fans, “The Bright Side” borrows from the ’60s British Invasion, and “Push Back The Hands” also turns sweetly nostalgic—though there’s no need for looking backward just yet, as the TMBG song machine is still operating at full force.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Official Body
    The Official Body proves why it’s remained durable over so many iterations and, for the London trio, across three albums. There’s a directness to its pleasures that’s unflagging for all 10 tracks here.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life
    It may lack the punch of Nikki Nack, but for those willing to hang around and appreciate its jammier approach, it’s a cathartic, worthwhile stop along the Tune-Yards catalog.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The House
    Maine turns in some of his best songs yet, with “Country,” “Now The Water,” and “Find Me” all showcasing his skill as a crooner, but around its midpoint, the album starts to sag. The House’s three interludes feel less like connective tissue and more like unfinished filler, and the album’s back half ends up seeming rote.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ruins
    It’s a very familiar take on Americana, full of heartbreak and yearning, but a damn reliable one.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    POST-
    While that sounds incredibly daunting--and like a really tiring listen--the album’s most impressive trait is that it makes all that vital work feel joyous and communal.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    No One Ever Really Dies
    It’s a weird fucking album, in other words, neither as crowd-pleasing as it should be nor as experimental as it wants to be. The drums sound great, though, and the Rihanna track is as good as N.E.R.D. gets.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Saturation III
    Like its predecessors, the album is hit or miss, but the batting average remains uncommonly high for a project like this.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Revival
    Revival isn’t even interesting enough to warrant all of the critical beatdowns it’s taken in its short time in the world. Instead, it’s boring and predictable, which are greater threats to the Eminem legacy than anything else.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Finding Shore
    If the actual product doesn’t always measure up to that quirky ingenuity--or if it is, on the whole, just a touch too chamber-music stately to reach the mind-expanding heights of Eno’s ’70s and ’80s team-ups with Robert Fripp, Cluster, Harold Budd, et al.--Finding Shore still contains moments that are plenty interesting, even downright beautiful. In those, it doesn’t really matter how they were created.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    How to Solve Our Human Problems, Pt. 1 [EP]
    What stands out about the first entry in Belle & Sebastian’s three-part EP series How To Solve Our Human Problems is how much it, like 2015’s Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, sounds like the work of an out-and-out band.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Visitor
    Young and the youngsters he’s playing with here sound like they wrote and jammed these songs out in a few days, relying on the strength of his sentiment to carry them through. But a jam session with some cranky speak-singing on it doesn’t make for a great album, and it’s not going to make any new converts, unfortunately--either to Neil Young’s politics or his music.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    From a Room, Vol. 2
    Stapleton’s gravelly vocals sell his own openly emotive songs like no one else could, the poetic imagery in tracks like “Scarecrow In The Garden” transcending typical beer-and-babes fodder.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    War & Leisure
    Miguel wears War & Leisure’s looseness well, and even if he doesn’t reveal much of himself, he still has the charisma to pull the whole ensemble off.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Songs of Experience
    Songs Of Experience, U2’s 14th studio album, revs up the ambition, to embarrassing results. It finds the group desperately searching for a radio hit while pontificating on American exceptionalism, shoehorning the Syrian refugee crisis into not one but two love songs--and on consecutive tracks, no less.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Who Built the Moon?
    It’s like an extremely amped-up version of Oasis, but the excesses sway from impressive to taxing. Often the effort to be interesting just comes off as nonsensical cacophony.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Greatest Gift
    “Wallowa” is a harrowing, metaphor-packed epic about her battle with depression and eventual death. And honestly, everything else here is kind of icing after that one.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Utopia
    It is musically heady and rawly autobiographical, translating the most intimate moments into towering, skywritten love notes. It’s ruled by a divine feminine energy that interrogates toxic masculinity and, more subliminally, environmental issues. ... In other words, it’s a journey that’s easy to want to take with her.
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