The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,511 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 Lives Outgrown
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,970 out of 5511
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5511
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5511
5511 music reviews
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    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Body Talk
    You could argue that Robyn does sexy, bolshy, catchy pop so effortlessly – as evidenced again by the new tracks, especially Call Your Girlfriend – that Body Talk should have been edited into a straightforward killer pop album.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides
    Despite software advances, so many electronic producers are content to lapse into nostalgia or a safe, compromised emotional range; Sophie has crafted a genuinely original sound and uses it to visit extremes of terror, sadness and pleasure.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Who Kill
    Whereas the musical and lyrical boldness of her 2009 debut, Bird-Brains, was a little muted by her homespun recording techniques, here every fragmenting note and confrontational idea is exhilaratingly crisp.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Comicopera
    If the album has a rough-around-the-edges, askew quality, that just makes it more fascinating: this isn't music that settles in the background.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Audio Vertigo
    He experiments with texture and even puts it through a vocoder but, for all Elbow’s adventures, the foundations are still classy songwriting, heart and soul.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Remind Me Tomorrow
    This ambitious, arresting album feels like the work of an artist wielding her considerable talents with newfound confidence and conviction.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    thank u, next
    As with Rihanna’s Anti, this feels like the work of a pop star previously happy to act as conduit for other people, finally working out who they are and what they want to say. Here, Grande finds her voice.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Complete Matrix Tapes [Box Set]
    It’s fascinating stuff, even for those for whom a 37-minute version of Sister Ray is pushing it a bit. It’s actually where the band stretch out that it becomes most fascinating.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Far from Over
    As a contemporary jazz set, Far from Over has just about everything.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Welcome To Mali
    This is Amadou and Mariam's album, and their Africa-pop crossover success continues.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Natalie Prass
    The touchstones here, such as Dusty in Memphis, are all records that revel in a particular kind of musicality, yet this is a record that never feels retro, just timeless.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Sailor's Guide to Earth
    It’s hardly a revolutionary album, but its melding of styles--pedal steel is draped across the songs like Spanish moss, and Estonian guitarist Laur Joamets takes solos off in deliciously unexpected directions, sometimes veering towards space--gives it a fresh, unsullied feeling. Simpson’s writing, too, is fantastic.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mirrored
    The way repeated listens allow its unobvious rhythmic and melodic logic to take root is fantastically rewarding.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Are We There
    Van Etten's melodies often feel as if they're not quite taking flight, and rarely cause you to catch your breath the way her lyrics do.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Compassion
    Stevie Wonder’s Overjoyed (a fittingly ecstatic Iyer homage to Chick Corea’s interpretation) is unfolded over a rocking left hand and Tyshawn Sorey’s crackling polyrhythms, sparking one of several breathtakingly headlong Iyer solos on the set, coolly placing fragments and twists of the original theme into the onrush despite its scorching pace.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bon Iver
    Bon Iver remains rooted in the emotional sincerity that made Vernon's debut so mesmerising.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    How I Got Over
    Their ninth album finds the Philadelphia veterans a unique voice in hip-hop.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love & Hate
    A beautiful melody, wrapped in gauzy textures, [Falling is] a fantastic song, exquisitely arranged, something Love & Hate is packed with: the work of an artist coming into his own.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Blackest Beautiful
    Throughout, bursts of radio interference, gentle guitars and even classical music make effective and sometimes welcome moments of calm before the storm.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mogoya
    The result is an impressive, attacking set, but then Sangaré has always been adventurous.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Singles 1978-2016 [Box Set]
    There’s a dip in overall quality in the last decade or so, but 2010’s Bury! is among their best.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fenfo
    Her voice is more soulful and expressive than on her debut, and the songs range from cool, melodic Afro-pop to the gently bluesy Mama, the stomping funk of Negue Negue, and the charming acoustic guitar and cello duet that ends the set. It may be aimed at the international crossover market, but even at its most commercial this is an album that succeeds.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Made in California [Box Set]
    Twenty years after the Beach Boys' exhaustive five-CD Good Vibrations box set comes this even more stunningly packaged collection.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hercules And Love Affair
    While it lasts, Hercules and Love Affair sound as original and exotic as their backgrounds.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Syro
    By sounding simply like a series of Aphex Twin tracks, Syro is still utterly engrossing and remains, somewhat unbelievably, on a completely different planet to almost anything else that’s been released over the last decade and a half.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    blackSUMMERS'night (2016)
    The Grammy-winning soul man is a subeditor’s nightmare, but confusion seems a small price to pay for such a classy comeback collection of anguished R&B.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Young Man In America
    Mitchell has done herself proud.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Life Is People
    It's not without a few syrupy moments, and it would be a push to recommend it over the old records, but there are some fine songs here.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Without a Net
    Without a Net is free to bursting point, but it's a triumph.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Separation Sunday
    It's a triumph of non-judgmental storytelling, delivered within purgative rock'n'roll.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Process
    While clearly not constructed with commercial ambition at the forefront of its mind, it’s certainly good enough to make an unlikely star of the man behind it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Decline Of British Sea Power
    British Sea Power's slightly camp, wholly menacing, startlingly audacious debut is unlike anything you'll hear this year.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Night Chancers
    Dury carries it off. His phrasemaking and delivery is immaculate: he plays with accents, albeit within a limited palette, and you listen to The Night Chancers believing it to be a real world.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Big Conspiracy
    Big Conspiracy leaves you wanting to hear even more.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Run the Jewels
    Run the Jewels is remarkably fun.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Minimum-Maximum [Live]
    Sound-wise, the music is reminiscent of the sleek electronic architecture of 1986's Electric Café, while the tracks differ from their previously known versions mainly in featuring cleaner, punchier digital sounds.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kaleidoscope Dream
    Miguel has pushed himself hard on his second album, and pulled it off.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Once I Was an Eagle
    There are a couple of moments where she still feels like the sum total of a very tasteful record collection, where she struggles to make herself heard over the echoes of Joni Mitchell and Dylan's thin wild mercury sound. More often, though, she cuts through her influences, and rings out loud and clear; when she does, it's a very diverting sound indeed.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heart's Ease
    Collins’ past, present and future come together to form a fascinating picture of her full, complex character.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    But Here We Are
    The tunes are noticeably more polished, the dynamic shifts punchier: it’s as if the desire to express something about Hawkins, or to make an album that stands as a worthy memorial has given them a fresh sense of purpose and momentum.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    50 Song Memoir
    It’s an album worthy of Merritt’s grand half-century.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heaven & Earth
    Washington continues to explore a sweet spot between artistry and approachability. Whether his success will lead audiences to further explore music that usually exists on the fringes is an interesting question. What is more certain is the quality and accessibility of his own music.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Halcyon Digest
    Deerhunter aren't just revivalists, though: in the main this is timeless music, seemingly made with the conviction that loveliness will always be lovely.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dark Energy
    As Burial is to dubstep, Jlin is an artist who belongs to her genre, but has an eye on where it could go next.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Floreat
    While musically it can get a bit precious, Carlyle gleefully delivers lyrics that jar wonderfully with their polite musical frames.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Other Side of Desire
    The real fruits of that 10-year break are reserved for songs in which the city’s bohemianism and spirituality mesh with hers--and there are some real delights among them.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beautifully Human: Words And Sounds Vol. 2
    Though it sags a bit over the course of 72 minutes, the effect is that of being sung to privately by a vocalist who has mastered the art of intimacy.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    'Sno Angel Like You
    The soulful harmonies complement Gelb's dry one-liners and restless guitar surprisingly well.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Midwest Farmer's Daughter
    It’s an album for whom “authenticity” is crucial, but it’s all the better for it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Space Is Only Noise
    An album to escape in.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    45:33
    You can hear an early, instrumental version of 'Someone Great' here, and it's pretty melody, twinkling xylophones and pulsing synths are mesmerising enough to take your mind off the pain of physical exertion.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Platinum
    Platinum, her fifth solo album, finds Lambert swaggering righteously like the Partonesque country superstar she is.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dogrel
    This is the kind of songwriting quality that bands can take years to reach, or never reach at all: brilliant, top to bottom.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    LCD Soundsystem
    Murphy lets the pace slacken - and as soon as it does, interest fades.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Kind Revolution
    It’s all robustly written and emotionally satisfying, particularly The Cranes Are Back, a jazz-gospel plea for global understanding that ranks as one of the most beautiful things Weller has ever done.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Double Negative
    This ranks alongside the likes of Anselm Kiefer and Cormac McCarthy as a document of contemporary social collapse, and as such is the most important, devastating album of the year.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is Where I Live
    Bell’s voice and the warm Stax sound are intact. But--as is clear from the first lines of opening track The Three of Me, in which the narrator looks at past, present and future versions of himself--his mastery of the craft of songwriting is also undimmed.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    First Farewell
    Her spry, lively vocals and her writing burrow into many territories: digital communication, environmental collapse, feminism, love and time, the latter nestling closest to the folksongs for which she became known.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Sheep Boy
    It could be a recipe for pretentious folly, but Sheff harnesses his intricate arrangements and barbed, literate lyrics to cracking tunes.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Every Bad
    Their skill lies in rearranging familiar elements into something that sounds fresh, largely down to their curious take on songwriting. Porridge Radio are melodically strongest when they seem to be trying the least hard.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Satin Doll
    His most fully formed yet and pushes this experimentation to its furthest extreme, his sax sounding like melting wax on his 13 cover versions of jazz standards.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cosmogramma
    Add in a dabbling in the spirit of free jazz and one might expect this album to be a wilfully discordant aural trial. But it turns out to be quite the opposite. The parts may be disparate but they are made to submit to an abiding mood of vivacity and sunniness.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shields
    It sounds as if Grizzly Bear have spent their time away digging out the emotions that sometimes get buried beneath the technical fireworks. Speak in Rounds builds to a climax that – to use a phrase not much associated with Grizzly Bear – rocks, and furthermore rocks in a viscerally thrilling manner.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Joy of Living: A Tribute to Ewan Maccoll
    On this remarkable double album, 21 artists rework his songs, ranging from poignant studies of working lives to political comment and love ballads.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    U Kin B The Sun
    An album that doesn’t grab your attention with pyrotechnic displays, opting instead for a slow-burning, unassuming kind of power: a low-key delight, but a delight all the same.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    LP1
    It has its flaws--as you might have intuited from the videos and press shots, they largely stem from trying a bit too hard--but you leave it convinced that FKA Twigs is an artist possessed of a genuinely strong and unique vision, one that doesn't need bolstering with an aura of mystique.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sound Ancestors
    Madlib channels a deep, intertwining lineage of Black music through Sound Ancestors like folklore oration, storytelling with the sorcery of a beatmaker who knows how to make an instrumental really sing.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Light for Attracting Attention
    Were A Light for Attracting Attention actually that day job’s long-awaited follow-up to A Moon Shaped Pool, you wouldn’t be crushed with disappointment, which is far from faint praise. Whatever the future holds for the Smile, their debut album feels like more than an indulgent diversion.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Belladonna
    These are new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Locked Down
    No one makes music like this: the Night Tripper rampages inimitably through swamp blues, voodoo funk and Afrobeat, with his trademark piano.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
    These are tunes that twinkle and thunder like exploding stars, and show that there are still infinite possibilities in two guitars, bass and drums.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chavez Ravine
    It's a very clever album, and at times easier to admire than to simply enjoy because there is so much going on.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harps And Angels
    Anyone who doesn't actually live for updates from Iowan caucuses can safely skip the whole ragtime politicking middle section and, instead, enjoy the work of a true master of popular song.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Present Tense
    Present Tense shows that their confidence has grown to match their ambition, and it is plainly their best album yet.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller
    Some Waller devotees will recoil, but this is a respectful tribute from a remarkable modern-music mind.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    DAYTONA
    Aside from the crisply brilliant drug poetry, the production, entirely by Kanye West, is another big draw. This is the roughshod style of cut-and-shut soul samples that characterised Bound 2 and much of Life of Pablo.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Data Lords
    The inner tensions behind this compelling session promise a revealing new phase in Schneider’s remarkable work.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    acts of rebellion
    The record shares messages of self-love and resistance which, integrated in its DIY approach, punch through with real resonance.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Boxer
    In the absence of specific moments of revelation, the general melancholy becomes wearing.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Some Rap Songs
    One of the best rap albums of the year, a smoky iceberg of great emotional depth.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scaring the Hoes
    Smart but chaotic, funny but disturbing – Scaring the Hoes is a confounding victory.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Candle and the Flame
    Flamboyant on stage, behind the scenes he sought out, and achieved, a quiet, stable life. If that sounds boring, you should hear him sing about it. It’s not very rock’n’roll. It’s a lot more interesting and enduring than that.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Popular Problems
    Nothing here feels laboured: he can deliver songs as beautifully wrought as Samson in New Orleans--a depiction of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina--with a gorgeous understatement that only magnifies its impact.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    American Dream
    Tonite and Call the Police are as good as anything they’ve done, while Oh, Baby miraculously manages to outshine their dazzling previous work--even if not every track keeps up with this exhilarating pace. The only thing able to overshadow American Dream is LCD’s own formidable past, suggesting that, yes, in fact they are.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cee-Lo Green Is The Soul Machine
    A gleefully non-conformist delight.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Punk
    A joyful revolution.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Far In
    The culmination is a collection of quietly shimmering songs that demand to be played loud.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    David Comes To Life
    The lyric sheet is essential to get any measure of the undoubtedly high-concept narrative, but the music is some of their most approachable and enjoyable yet, with extra depths to be plumbed if you so desire.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Surf
    His lyrics are consistently the most interesting, his flow the most original and here he sounds content, as if in the group setting he is completely comfortable with being (in his mind at least) just one of the guys. Clearly though, he’s much more than that.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
    The eighth treasure trove in Dylan's Bootleg Series of unreleased material and alternate takes further illustrates that there is no such thing as a definitive recording of a Dylan song, just a snapshot of the great man's prevailing mood.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lost In the Dream
    Acoustic guitar, harmonica and saxophone provide pools of warmth in the dusky depths.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Long Leg
    Shaw is the magic ingredient. Her lyrics – snippets of found text, but mostly her own writing – leap out, and have more impact from being delivered conversationally, freed from the rhythms and meter of the music. ... This is a debut to be excited about.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    L'Enfant Sauvage
    This is metal taken to a higher plane of brilliance.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Happier than Ever
    The melodies and vocals are uniformly great; writing about the pressure of fame in a way that elicits a response other than a yawn is an extremely tough trick to pull off, and Happier Than Ever does it with aplomb.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Way Out Weather
    The melodies seemed soaked in a timeless well of American music: the album feels both new and familiar at the same time, every song a clever layering of Gunn’s guitars--acoustic, electric, steel, and assorted effects pedals, but all separated clearly, so there’s no hint of sonic mush. Gunn’s voice is perfect, too.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    There is No Other
    For an album recorded in only five days, it wallops with impact. Giddens is going supernova, and it’s a blistering thing.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Weird and Wonderful
    Best of all, though, is the dynamism of the music: although songs flit around from riff to riff, as if Marmozets were bursting to fill each song with ideas, they are never too full, never just exercises in technique.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    When the Heart Emerges Glistening
    Akinmusire's arresting sound and the collective strength of his band of long-time friends--the dry-toned, Wayne Shorter-like saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Justin Brown--power it all.
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