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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    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    There's a Riot Going On
    For the most part, There’s A Riot Going On succeeds in finding strength in the stillness. Two of its best tracks are also its quietest.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Automata I
    The first half of Automata (part two arrives in June) is almost too straightforward, offering plenty of what we’ve heard before from these Raleigh space cadets: the folkish plucking and mad noodling, the burps of intergalactic synth, the way a song like “House Organ” closes the safe distance separating Pink Floyd from Cannibal Corpse.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood
    The album (nominally a concept record about the “the death of whiteness”) has six long tracks that stretch over 42 minutes, and within them are evocative stretches of ominous early synth pop, noodling synth funk, and dreamy dance music in the vein of A.R. Kane. Barnes’ voice and coy, over-accentuated phrasing remain the band’s love-it-or-leave-it factor.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    AmeriKKKant
    AmeriKKKant is cathartically enjoyable, but it ultimately feels as inspiring--and effective--as tweeting Trump-Putin memes at Fox News.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    All That Must Be
    It’s agreeably pleasant stuff, yet ultimately as modest and forgettable as the name might suggest.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Cocoa Sugar
    Ultimately, though, this is another dispatch from the post-genre space Young Fathers have claimed for their own, blasting out triumphant, sincere, and deeply humanistic sound collages that beg for you to join them there.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Still Trippin'
    Still Trippin’ showcases Taye’s ability to structure an album so that it has a genuine sense of dynamics, even if individual songs mainly consist of stuttering beats and vocals.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    American Utopia
    The music is a hodgepodge of styles, techniques, and voices, but there’s a steady hand holding the needle, guided by a singular and seasoned vision--the curiosity and the enthusiasm that have long been his trademarks.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Black Times
    For the most part, the music backs up his mood. It’s faster, tougher, and more blood-boiling than usual, but it’s still malleable, growing to a furious peak on “Corporate Public Control Department” or slowing to a mournful groove on “African Dreams.”
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Drift
    Where other records by The Men showed they could pull from someone else’s playbook and make something their own, Drift’s hodgepodge of styles ultimately makes The Men sound like they couldn’t settle on what they wanted to do.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    All Nerve
    On the whole, All Nerve is a strong, clear-eyed return for Dayton, Ohio’s ’90s alt-rock icons.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Historian
    Historian stumbles occasionally, with some songs taking a while to get up the hill, but it’s rewarding because it carries such weight and commands such attention.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    A Productive Cough
    The songs find charm in their universality, energy, and wit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    You're Not Alone
    In addition to a pack of his best songs since I Get Wet, he brings with him a trio of spoken-word interludes that further expand on his philosophy, and as stupid as that might sound on paper--and even on first listen--it makes sense in the world of Andrew W.K. ... His confidence is unassailable and contagious.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fever
    Like all of his albums, it’s good but not great, a consummate professional continuing to perfect his craft.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Pasar de las Luces
    There’s nothing amateurish about their album, which is as thoughtful in its track order as it is in its composition.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Basic Behaviour
    Basic Behaviour’s greatest strength [is] rawness. On the other hand, the album’s dramatic shifts in tone can make it feel unfocused, and as a whole, it burns off quickly. Still, it leaves a hell of an impression.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    All at Once
    Although not every song is essential in its own right, as a whole, All At Once congeals beautifully; in the era of the single, this is a real album, touching on themes of autonomy and control both in a personal and a wider political context.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Music For The Long Emergency
    There’s a strange but rewarding matching of talents that takes place on Music For The Long Emergency.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Sir
    Sir updates Fischerspooner’s old cocaine throb to surprisingly modern, still sleazily enjoyable, then inevitably exhausting results. It’s enough to think it might stick around this time.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Onion
    Some tracks land in an odd middleground between the grandiosity Onion seemingly wants to achieve and the shambolic charm that made The Clams one of the most unique bands to come out of the Bay Area garage-rock scene. Luckily, that scrappy spirit lives on in the album’s many moments of glorious abandon.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    By the Way I Forgive You
    As the title implies, Brandi Carlile’s sixth studio album is about deriving strength from forgiveness and gratitude. But the lovely, languid folk songs on By The Way, I Forgive You also offer nuanced looks at life’s everyday complications.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What a Time to Be Alive
    What A Time To Be Alive is the rawest Superchunk album since the band’s 1990 debut and undoubtedly its most ferocious.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Make Way for Love
    Williams’ emotive baritone, as ever, commands center stage, but it’s the album’s experimental elements (the Suicide-ish drum machine on “Party Boy,” the strange synth accompaniments throughout) and subtle psychedelia (as on the spellbinding “Can I Call You”) that push Williams’ sound to a more interesting and promising place.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Room Inside the World
    Though it’s hard not to miss the old energy, ultimately, the band’s newfound sense of stability turns out to be a good look for them--and one that suggests the milk of human kindness does a body good.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Twin Fantasy
    With the new Twin Fantasy, Toledo has done the unimaginable: created a reboot that matches its original in tone, passion, and excitement.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Black Panther: The Album
    It all works, really. The tracks play it safe, but the project itself does not, an audacious exertion of energy from one of the planet’s most universally revered musicians.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crooked Shadows
    Of all his very short albums, this is his shortest, and where he once packed his songs with knotty chord changes and shout-along confessions, here he tends toward conventional structures and lowest-common-denominator couplets.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sleepwalkers
    It’s just Fallon and his microphone, crooning and crowing over these rhythm and blues-focused rave-ups, holding court over an old-school rock revival to match his restless mood.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Brighter Wounds
    Brighter Wounds poses more questions than answers--but that uncertainty only makes the record more absorbing.
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