The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,509 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,968 out of 5509
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5509
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5509
5509 music reviews
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    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Secret Life
    It’s horribly revealing of both men’s weaknesses. Eno’s contributions are witlessly unimaginative.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Live at Bush Hall
    Releasing this material as a live album is a virtue – the audience’s roar after the absurdly pretty Turbines/Pigs has a thrilling note of disbelief.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good Lies
    A consistent album rather than a collection of tracks – or worse, a handful of big tunes padded out to album length with filler – Good Lies is filled with moments like that: you can spot the influences, but they’re always passed though a filter, presented in an original way.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Everything Harmony
    The songwriting never dips below classic.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    - (Subtract)
    Subtract is easily his best album. But it’s also the first Ed Sheeran album since his debut for which you can’t confidently predict eye-watering commercial success.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blómi
    The songwriting here is often very good, even timelessly classic.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ceremony
    This is her fullest and most colourful release to date, but it’s still a dense work that takes time to reveal itself. Casual listeners are unlikely to be rewarded.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    That! Feels Good!
    By and large, this is pop music made by people who really know what they’re doing. The songs have bulletproof melodies and killer choruses, while snappy lyrics abound.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Variables
    It all hits just the right note between accessible and experimental: idiosyncratic and intricate yet straightforwardly enjoyable, Variables is unwavering in its brilliance.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fuse
    It’s an album that manages to be different from anything they’ve recorded before yet perfectly in keeping with their past: a comeback worth waiting for.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Came from Love
    Always soulful and forever in the groove, Okumu’s seamless genre switch-ups ensure I Came from Love finds strength in its multiplicity.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    72 Seasons
    There’s enough worthwhile stuff to ensure that fans will be happy – you can overlook its shortcomings while the title track rages – and that touring won’t seem entirely like an exercise in running through the back catalogue. Equally, no one hoping to convince a non-believer of Metallica’s greatness will reach for it over the classics.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Highs
    Hecker seems to want you on guard, braced for cataclysm. Nerves fray, discords linger, that sense of panic accumulates and draws you helplessly in. And this allusive, wordless album starts to feel eerily modern and big.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fawn/Brute
    You will find little robust melody or Piano Man finesse in these strange symphonies. But rummaging through Gately’s mazy, beautiful disorder is a beguiling adventure in its own right.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blondshell
    Blondshell, rich with bitter experience and untrammelled honesty, offers a robust shelter where listeners might start to find it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sundown
    Soothing, moving, occasionally disquieting and utterly immersive, Sundown suggests its predecessor was something else entirely: merely the first step of an entirely unlikely and entirely delightful career renaissance.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Les Égarés
    Parisien’s Dou is a dreamy sax melody with the composer at his most Bechet-like, while Peirani’s Nomad’s Sky often suggests an imploring voice, with softly whooping soprano sounds rising over long arco-cello chords. If ever there was a powerful argument for jazz being an attitude to music-making rather than a genre, it’s this rare gem.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scaring the Hoes
    Smart but chaotic, funny but disturbing – Scaring the Hoes is a confounding victory.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    False Lankum
    There is so much to revel in here. ... They remain a radical band while making music that is reaching out to the mainstream – while also giving off the thrilling sense that there is so much more to come.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love in Exile
    There is scope for flashes of greater dynamism but in their consistency, Aftab, Iyer and Ismaily reveal the beauty in quietude.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
    It is her quietest, most wilfully inscrutable record in a long time, perhaps since 2015’s glacially paced, rebelliously quiet Honeymoon. ... Instead, many songs here are subtle, vaporous, but potent all the same.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
    Whether they’re running away from or towards something is anybody’s guess, but crucially, Tumor remains one step ahead of the rest.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Songs of Surrender
    Neither a disaster on the level of their iTunes launch, nor a triumph to match Zoo TV, Songs of Surrender sits somewhere in the middle of that sliding scale of success.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Endless Summer Vacation
    There’s a naturalness and a flow in evidence, and charm, too. You can’t imagine anyone who rushed to the download sites was disappointed with what they found.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Manzanita
    It’s utterly transfixing – not just for the gorgeousness of the tone, but for the absolute wondrousness of the melodies.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Past // Present // Future
    Past//Present//Future suffers from a sense of sameness – compact or not, the songs eventually blur into one mass of pop hooks and distorted guitars.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mañana Será Bonito
    Karol’s skill is in evocative melodies that transcend any language barrier.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Red Moon in Venus
    Here Uchis couches her velveteen mood pieces in pillow-soft R&B, creating a suite of songs luxuriant enough to bathe in.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    UGLY
    Ugly is an album that carves out its own space: messy but vital, it deserves to be huge.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles
    This will be too much of a standards-like set for some, maybe – but even if Mehldau the solo pianist has had to trade rock’s muscularity for a chamber-musical delicacy, his power isn’t far beneath the surface.
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