The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,072 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Live in Europe 1967: Best of the Bootleg, Vol. 1
Lowest review score: 0 Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,594 out of 2072
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2072
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2072
2072 music reviews
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    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lookaftering
    Pastoral doesn't quite describe it; this seems to come from some place more eco-protected than any in existence. [24 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Before Today
    There are still the bursts of ’60s and ’80s melodies, astral synths and slashing guitars, but this record, crisp and unhesitant, leaps beyond his previous inconsistency and preciousness.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Made Possible
    The band is tinkering here, and it says something that the album still feels traceable to no other source.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams
    It’s a more countrified album, with the two singers, partners by marriage, often harmonizing in a rough blend. Things work best when Ms. Williams takes the lead.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wind's Poem
    Mount Eerie’s third album, is deeply homemade and crazily dynamic, running from quiet harmonium-and-voice drones to black-metal cataclysm.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kaputt
    The record as a whole can seem to disappear or evaporate almost as you're listening to it. But that's its charm; that's why you might want to hear it again.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Yonder Is The Clock
    On Yonder Is the Clock, the Felice Brothers loosen up, making room for absurdity as well as the travails they sing about.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mental Illness
    Mental Illness wallows in its troubles, and it’s an exquisite wallow.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    X 100PRE
    The music is rich with low end, serving as ballast for ethereal, sometimes claustrophobic synths. There’s little breathing room on these songs--both Bad Bunny and his music seep into all the available space.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Little Oblivions
    Magnificent. ... Although she played all the instruments on “Little Oblivions” herself, she built out most of its arrangements so they could be performed with a full band onstage. This choice brings a new, sweeping dynamism to Baker’s music, and keeps “Little Oblivions” from feeling sonically repetitive.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Light Up Gold
    The singing and songwriting mostly split between Austin Brown and Mr. Savage, who are astute enough to write taut, smart lyrics, and self-aware enough to arch an eyebrow while maintaining the pose.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Medulla
    While the album might seem to be a conceptual stunt, it finds gorgeous and startling new ways to extend Bjork's longtime mission: merging the earthy and the ethereal. [29 Aug 2004]
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Emily's D+Evolution
    She still favors too many Wayne Shorterish chord progressions to truly suit the easily impressed. It’s precisely when she stretches--as on “Rest in Pleasure,” which has a melody you wouldn’t wish on a less acrobatic singer--that Ms. Spalding seems most ingenuous and unbound.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is Happening
    This music sounds fantastic, as usual--clean, tight and separated in the mix--but songwriting inspiration is in short supply.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Treats
    Even after wide Internet exposure of their demos, and brief yet clamorous live sets, the album versions of the songs maintain or increase the impact. The tracks don't just rock--they detonate.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Trouble Will Find Me
    This time, the National utterly refuses to buttonhole listeners; the music calmly awaits attention, but amply repays it.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mr. Misunderstood
    The album, a love letter to his influences, is the gentlest of Mr. Church’s releases, the one that least wears his rowdy tendencies on its sleeve.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hell On Heels
    The songs have the feeling of rejuvenative writing, small experiments in genre and style for artists versed in country's classic modes but who rarely get to fiddle around with them.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Shape
    With Mr. Hadreas’s aching, androgynous voice at their center, the songs deploy cinematic orchestral arrangements, spooky electronics and instruments that can sound vividly natural or treated and surreal.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    ONoffON
    Tense, febrile and messy, but tuneful and cohesive at the same time. [2 May 2004]
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Feels
    If it isn't as formally shocking as "Sung Tongs," it's still a strong record. [17 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue World
    There’s something alluring about this odd little gift of a session, which for Coltrane must have landed somewhere between “just a gig” and “just a favor.”
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Western Stars
    On Western Stars, a few songs — “Tucson Train,” “Sundown,” “Stones” — sound like the E Street Band could be swapped in for the orchestra. But Springsteen strives to meet his chosen idiom more than halfway. He wrote songs that thrive on the swells and undulations of orchestral drama, and he sings with long-breathed phrases that aren’t exactly crooning — he’s not built for that — but that set out to sustain more than they exhort.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bird Songs
    The elastic interplay of Us Five is in fact the main point of Bird Songs, which approaches its Parker-centric repertory as a springboard rather than an altar.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yeezus
    No one is expecting Mr. West to turn into a latter-day Public Enemy, making political statements as a full-time mission. He, and we, are rightly fascinated by the limelight, by the culture of consumption and by Mr. West’s endlessly contradictory reactions to all that attention. But now that he’s transfigured his music, his words await an upgrade to match.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wildheart
    He doesn’t always try to play the good guy or the heartthrob, either. The music, meanwhile, places sinuous tunes, pushy guitars and lush vocals against uneasy backdrops--seductive, but never without second thoughts.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
    The result is an indie-rock album that sounds mysterious without being diffident or difficult, without piling on the noise or retreating into whimsy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In My Mind
    The best parts of In My Mind, BJ’s strong major-label debut album, come when this young singer tasks himself with ethical responsibility.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Takk...
    On past albums, Sigur Ros has forged songs into hermetic sanctuaries, but on "Takk..." it expands its music toward both the abstract and the corporeal. [13 Sep 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nomad
    [Dan Auerbach] helped Bombino make a spacious, centered record, one that stretches to appeal to Western listeners--like the nomads, known for their circular dancing, who temporarily inhabit the fields of Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tenn., every June--without strain or clutter or hipness overload.
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