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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    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You
    The melodies are forthright, the arrangements are hand played, and Ms. Case’s voice is open and robust, with the richness of prime Linda Ronstadt and Patsy Cline.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness
    Her band’s arrangements are deliberately scrappy, but keyboards or guitars surge in whenever she needs them.... She has stripped away both sweetness and protection so that her songs grow even spookier.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Invasion of Privacy
    What’s most promising about the exuberant and impressive Invasion of Privacy--an album full of thoughtful gestures, few of them wasteful--is that it’s a catalog of directions Cardi, 25, might go in, slots she might fill, or even invent. ... A hip-hop album that doesn’t sound like any of its temporal peers.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran
    With this album Mr. Johnson proves not only that he plays well with others (especially Ray Price, Lee Ann Womack, Willie Nelson and George Strait) but also that his cantankerous charm flows out of a sentimental continuum.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    ANIMA
    The songs teeter on a psychological divide between intellectually informed glumness and the physical pleasures of rhythm.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Crane Wife
    As a sustained effort, it represents the band’s sharpest and most satisfying work, and one of the most accomplished albums of its kind this year.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Extraordinary Machine
    There's a new layer of perspective on her magnificent third album. [3 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sometimes, Forever
    Throughout the album, Soccer Mommy staves off despair with musical craftsmanship.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rips
    Rips is a feel-good gut-punch of a debut album, working a sound that dates back to the Runaways, but also can hold its own right up against current practitioners like Dum Dum Girls.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Seven Psalms
    “Seven Psalms” stays true to Simon’s own instincts: observant, elliptical, perpetually questioning and quietly encompassing. ... It has places of lingering contemplation and it has sudden, startling changes; its informality is exactingly planned.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Pretty Toney Album
    "Pretty Toney" doesn't match the high standard of Ghostface's first two, "Ironman" and "Supreme Clientele," but it's a strong album nonetheless, packed with dense narratives and weird conceits.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sweet Warrior
    Even when Mr. Thompson uses his caustic wit for laughs, the songs on “Sweet Warrior” hold a tension and vehemence that make their bitterness linger.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Currents
    Currents is a tour de force for the songwriter and his gizmos. But it’s also decidedly hermetic, nearly airless.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Off On The Pain
    Get Off on the Pain is the year’s best country album so far, almost as brilliantly anguished as Mr. Allan’s 2003 masterpiece, “See if I Care.”
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sling
    At times, “Sling” sounds like Steely Dan’s “Pretzel Logic” had it been released on the D.I.Y. label K Records. ... “Sling” makes the case that her most direct vocal precursor is either Elliott Smith or Phil Elverum. ... There was always more depth to Clairo’s sadness and songcraft than could be conveyed by the three-minute synth-pop ditty that made her famous. It also demonstrates that her music is at its most lucid and effective when an extended hand — or paw — is drawing her back up to the surface.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Shepherd's Dog
    The Shepherd’s Dog is the brilliant culmination of his experiments.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take Me Apart
    The songs are intricately plotted to give the illusion of being impulsive and obsessive, buffeted by shifting emotions: by turns sensual and wary, vulnerable and guarded, leisurely and urgent.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eternal Atake
    It is part old-fashioned bluster, part flamboyant style exercise, all rowdy thrill.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Second Hand Heart
    The album is a reckoning with grown-up love, a battle against disillusionment and a big brash stomp..... He’s still pushing, still sure of what makes a song alive and durable.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eternal Sunshine
    Unsurprisingly, this is one of Grande’s most meticulously crafted and texturally consistent releases — it sounds as expensive as the gleaming treasures she sang about on “7 Rings” — though it lacks the whispered asides, rough edges and irreverent humor that made those last two albums so fun. Still, “Eternal Sunshine” is awash in lavish atmosphere, adventurous melodies and an emotional weight that brings a new sophistication to Grande’s songcraft.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beauty & Crime
    Thanks to a keen sense of proportion and concision--and the unmannered integrity of Ms. Vega’s singing style--the album isn’t ponderous.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dream River
    You sense that he’s walked past those doors, revising his ideas, waiting, looking for something. He’s found it. Listen through his astonishing new album, Dream River, and you will hear, lined up neatly, his trademarks.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hold the Girl
    “Hold the Girl” continues to mine deep material — “Imagining” addresses a mental health crisis; the opener, “Minor Feelings,” takes its title from a Cathy Park Hong essay collection — but the protruding eccentricities that once made Sawayama’s music so distinct often sound sanded down. ... There is, however, a bold and satisfyingly angry stretch across the middle of the album with some of its strongest material.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything's Fine
    This is an album that takes familiar hip-hop starting points and denatures them, resulting in a compelling collage that feels structurally untethered to hip-hop then or now. The results alternate between tragic and comic, but the ambition is steadily high throughout.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mar Dulce
    Bajofondo brings in guest vocalists as wild cards: singers including Nelly Furtado, Elvis Costello, the Argentine rockers Gustavo Cerati and Juan Subirá, the Mexican rocker Julieta Venegas and the octogenarian Uruguayan tango singer Lágrima Ríos, in her last recording, as well as rapping by Mala Rodriguez (from Spain) and Santullo (from Uruguay). They tip the balance toward imperfect, immediate humanity, and their drama rubs off on the instrumentals too.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Folk Art
    It’s a bit out of focus, perhaps intentionally. Made with his new band, Us Five, it’s sketchy, groovy and a little burdensome.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wondervisions
    Delicate Steve flaunts every loose end, every unfinished seam. It might be testing to find the threshold of musical coherence; it might just be having a well-plotted lark. But if Delicate Steve's music were any more polished, it wouldn't be half as intriguing or anywhere near as much fun.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Mosaic Project
    The caliber of these artists speaks for itself; there's no sense of compromise here, or of an agenda limiting the options. And Ms. Carrington, who produced the album, brings accessibility and continuity to the listening experience.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    She
    The songs ponder affection and honesty, desire and independence, rightly confident that their modesty makes them all the more approachable.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    American Middle Class
    American Middle Class, her debut album, comes fully formed, clear about its purpose.
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