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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    • 74 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Egypt Station
    This is very much a Paul McCartney solo album: the uneven product of compulsive songwriting that includes several delightful songs, several terrible ones, and a lot in between. It wouldn’t be fair to say he sounds out of ideas, because this formula describes a whole lot of his non-Beatles albums going back decades.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fixed Ideals
    The only downside is a sense of fussiness that suffuses some of the more heavily produced tracks, a slightly stultifying vibe that saps a bit of urgency and vitality from the songs, making them feel too precious, as though the music was hermetically sealed to prevent anything too loose or raw from breaking free. Still, it’s another set of engaging and mostly excellent songs from one of the U.K.’s most compelling rock trios, and well worth the time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Magus
    It’s frontman Bryan Funck’s bilious self-reflection that rescues Magus from its occasionally oppressive, repetitive crunch—even if his own introspection, delivered in a swamp-thing rasp, is a little harder to decipher than Cobain’s ever was.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Indigo
    Emotionally rich and full of depth, Indigo is easily Wild Nothing’s best album to date.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Bloom
    Appropriately, Bloom’s beauty and gifts reveal themselves gradually over time.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Big Red Machine
    With much to toy with, Vernon and Dessner create an unhurried warmth that makes a song like “Forest Green” so moving and gives Big Red Machine the feeling of a soft rainbow light cast from a crystal in the sun.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hunter
    More than just grafting on its politics and themes of liberation, Hunter embodies them by capturing a freer, more complex--and queerer--view of its creator. Anna Calvi is on the loose.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Negro Swan
    He’s given us not just a great album, but a piece of himself that stands as a whole truth that need not be escaped, but rather, treasured.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    KIN [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    With its songs that loom like smoldering towers and enveloping hazes of electronic programming, KIN, the band’s score for Jonathan and Josh Baker’s apocalyptic pursuit film of the same name, splits the difference between the average late-period Mogwai record and its previous film work, and when it dodges the temptation toward the histrionic.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Go to School
    It’s the kind of complicated release that rewards repeated listens, as the story of a disaffected chimp translates into songs about the loneliness and longing for acceptance that linger even as high school fades away.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dance on the Blacktop
    While much of the album intermixes the gritty and the gorgeous with all the economy of an Anton Corbijn photo, there are moments of open-hearted purity, too. But unlike just about every other band on earth, NOTHING is at its best when it closes itself off and spins into oblivion.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Marauder
    Like a wild party, the album gets looser and less coherent as it goes along. Still, fans should be pleased to hear that Marauder shifts the group’s focus while still remaining recognizably Interpol.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Sweetener
    Confident and empowered, Sweetener illustrates once again that Grande is an unparalleled pop chameleon.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Queen
    It’s a lot of fun, but not quite the instant classic for which Minaj seems to have been aiming.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tangerine Reef
    The record captures all the noodling self-indulgence that makes the psych-poppers such a maddeningly inconsistent live act. But Tangerine Reef is an incomplete object in this form: It’s accompaniment, not feature presentation, the drowsy soundtrack to the iridescent undersea visuals of Australian filmmakers Coral Morphologic.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Smote Reverser
    Smote Reverser, the group’s 21st album, picks up the proggy, kraut-flavored vibes of 2017’s Orc and pushes even further into the cosmos. ... The longer Oh Sees go, the more wicked they get.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Thank You for Today
    “Summer Years” is the band’s earnest indie-rock sound distilled to its purest essence, and “When We Drive” is an elegiac look at long-term relationships through the metaphor of a road trip--but there’s no “Doors Unlocked And Open” or “Ghosts Of Beverly Drive” to shake things up. It’s another solid Death Cab For Cutie album, but it lacks vitality.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Be the Cowboy
    Although Be The Cowboy sees Mitski fully transformed from her lo-fi beginnings in terms of production, her post-Pixies guitar-rock tendencies still come through strong, albeit now more lush and kaleidoscopic than buzzing and raucous.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Shooter
    Sometimes, it’s a bit too much polish, though, as in the glossy, horns-drenched kickoff, “Bound Ta Git Down.” Things thankfully get a little rowdier in the anthemic “Do You Love Texas?” complete with slide guitar and a “hell yeah” chorus, and a song succinctly titled “D.R.U.N.K.”
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Future Me Hates Me
    It can tend toward the simplistic--the title track apes early Weezer, for example--but the middle of the album (particularly “Not Running”) shows that when the band embraces its more rambunctious and harder-edged sound, it captures something powerful.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Nearer My God
    It’s as impressive as it is expansive, a perfect showcase for modern emo’s elasticity.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Stay Dangerous
    It pretty much all works, in the way that all of YG’s music works, anchored by superlative taste and a flow as versatile and reliable as T.I. in his prime.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Nature of Imitation
    For all its synthetic parts, Imitation is beautifully alive. It’s fussy and whimsical, with most tracks holding onto just a handful of elements as they transform their palettes and dynamics several times over.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Qualm
    Like all of Hauff’s work, Qualm offers a lot to chew on while also resisting overanalyzing. You let it lure and lash you, let it move you or just move on.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Basic Volume
    Basic Volume is noisy and abrasive, but it’s also frequently beautiful, and it speaks as loudly as it takes to be heard.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Swimming
    Miller sounds great when he’s whining, croaking, stretching syllables like warm mozzarella. Swimming’s spare, dreamy production allows him to do a lot of that.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Devouring Radiant Light
    The 46-minute Devouring Radiant Light lets the band breathe. It sounds like they needed it--the record’s longest songs are its best.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Joy
    It’s barely over 30 minutes long but brims with musical ideas, including several sets of interconnected songs that push Segall and Presley to their weirdest and most tuneless.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hive Mind
    For all of Hive Mind’s merits, it still has a tendency to get lost in its own grooves and retread some of the same territory, particularly in its slower, more intimate cuts. But this is still a step forward for this young, talented crew, housing nothing but scintillating performances from Syd and, in the rare moments when the group cuts loose, some seriously intoxicating funk.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Across the Meridian
    It makes for a generally more approachable version of Pram’s eclectic electronic cabaret--one that would make a fine soundtrack to a fever-dream matinee of B-movie sci-fi and gumshoe thrillers. Although, that also means that, more so than Pram’s previous work, it often slips innocuously into the background.
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