The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,074 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: 1,596 out of 2074
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2074
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2074
2074 music reviews
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2
    As the hip-hop mainstream shouts and booms its way into the 21st century, Beastie Boys are happy temporal outsiders, partying in their never-ending 1980s.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    High On Tulsa Heat
    At its best, High on Tulsa Heat is starkly elegant, addressing sadness with clarity and directness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An Evening with Silk Sonic
    [Mars and Paak] flaunt skill, effort and scholarship, like teacher’s pets winning a science-fair prize; they also sound like they’re having a great time. Silk Sonic comes across as a continuation for Mars and a playfully affectionate tangent for Paak.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Unflesh
    In her synthetic universe, nothing is stable and anything can be a threat, a condition she greets with matter-of-fact bravery even at her most fragile moments.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sour
    Nuanced and often exceptional debut album. ... Songwriting flourish is emblematic of what Rodrigo has learned from Taylor Swift on this album (which, in shorthand, is Swift’s debut refracted through “Red”): nailing the precise language for an imprecise, complex emotional situation; and working through private stories in public fashion.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Apocalypse
    Apocalypse is bolder and clearer, less blissed-out and more grippingly immediate than [2011's The Golden Age of Apocalypse].
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rival Dealer [EP]
    It’s the sound of something--or someone--rumbling to the surface, about to erupt.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Good News For People Who Love Bad News
    The best Modest Mouse album yet.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War)
    It stands to reason that there should be another album's worth of this material, which flickers back and forth between different kinds of sessions and ideas, some quite elegant, some deeply boring, none of it very well edited.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Uproot
    DJ/Rupture knowledgeably traverses a world of ominous meditations, complete with anxiety about his entitlement as a curator.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hidden
    Somber, arty and quintessentially British: that's Hidden the second album by These New Puritans.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey! Merry Christmas!
    The beginning of Hey! Merry Christmas!--the first holiday album by the country music interrogators the Mavericks--strolls along at a friendly pace, their original songs touching on Western swing, 1950s rock, traditional country and more. But midway through comes a bawdy new cabaret-esque number, “Santa Wants to Take You for a Ride,” that feels less like an apostate take on holiday good will and more like a lost Blowfly original.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wounded Rhymes
    Wounded Rhymes, her follow-up on the same label, has thumping drums, Farfisa organs, girl-group vocal harmonies and darkly pealing guitars. It also has songs of desolate stoicism and disconsolate fury.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Majesty Shredding
    Once the great indie hope of Chapel Hill, N.C., this band--Mr. McCaughan, the bassist Laura Ballance, the guitarist Jim Wilbur and the drummer Jon Wurster, who favors dense, thudding bass kicks--has recaptured its grasp on bright, puckish and punkish power pop with no apparent effort.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Be
    "Be" is certainly a triumph, but if it isn't quite the all-time classic Common was hoping for, that's because it sounds a bit too straightforward. [25 May 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue Water Road
    “Blue Water Road” instead radiates delicate warmth. In a creamy, full-throated voice, Kehlani exudes a tenderness not felt since their 2017 studio album, “SweetSexySavage.” ... But it’s Kehlani’s candid ruminations on queer desire and estrangement that resonate the deepest here.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Laurel Hell
    She’s constantly observing and interrogating herself. Her melodies are long-breathed and deliberate, sung with calm determination, while the arrangements, largely constructed by Mitski and her longtime producer Patrick Hyland, veer between austere, exposed meditations and perky, danceable propulsion.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brighter Than Creation's Dark
    This is a typically crowded Drive-By Truckers album; it doesn’t need all 19 songs. But the overload is part of the point.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blackjazz
    Blackjazz was produced by Sean Beavan, who has worked with Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, and its sound skews dark but a bit cartoonish.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wild Flag
    The meeting point for the songwriting is in structures that are pushier than Helium's and less knotty than Sleater-Kinney's - in other words, closer to the garage and to Patti Smith's kind of punk.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grinderman
    It sounds terrific, in a turbulent fashion. [9 Apr 2007]
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone
    She’s pithy and penetrating, bruised but steadfast, proud of the grain and drawl of her voice.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Noise
    Black Noise is slightly busier than Pantha du Prince’s sublime “This Bliss” (Dial) from 2007, a pensive, slender and tough album that remains his high-water mark.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    You Could Have It So Much Better
    Far more than a sequel. [3 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Under Color of Official Right
    Mr. Casey mopes mightily as the frontman of the Detroit postpunk band Protomartyr, which on its darkly romantic and droll second album Under Color of Official Right (Hardly Art) has honed its sound.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    SVIIB
    Minimalist repetition turns into pop certitude, and the arrangements--sorting out the many tracks Mr. Curtis recorded--set aside the buzzy, abrasive keyboard tones of the group’s 2012 album, “Ghostory,” for a sonic vocabulary of reverberation and depth, of optimistic promise.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We're New Here
    To its great credit it's high and low and all over the place. The dislocation works: the record has patience and breadth and almost zero pretension.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Boy Named If
    While the lyrics are convoluted, the music simply charges ahead. Like so many pandemic albums, “The Boy Named If” was pieced together remotely. ... Yet the Imposters sound gleefully, brutally unified, every bit as bristling as the Attractions on “This Year’s Model” or the Imposters on “When I Was Cruel” in 2002.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Sunset Tree
    It may be Mr. Darnielle's best album so far (which is saying a lot) and his most straightforwardly autobiographical (which isn't saying much). [25 Apr 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    High
    The standard narrative is that a band’s second record reflects experience, wisdom or moderation, and High has a bit of that in a larger and more managed sound.
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