AllMusic's Scores

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For 18,293 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 32% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 The Marshall Mathers LP
Lowest review score: 20 Graffiti
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15,342 out of 18293
  2. Mixed: 2,925 out of 18293
  3. Negative: 26 out of 18293
18293 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sex And Gasoline
    The wisdom, humor, and literate, biting world view, is all balanced with the wisdom of tenderness, and a poetic sense of the heart's own aspirations and disappointments.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fantasy Black Channel
    Truth be told, it's still a bit of a mess, but it's a glorious and galvanizing one: a convoluted construction crammed with so many immediately gratifying moments that it takes multiple listens to extricate them all--in other words, enough instant pleasures to easily outweigh its occasional grating, overreaching, and faltering.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Invisible Cinema
    Invisible Cinema is as fine a debut as one is likely to hear in 2008.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Day After Tomorrow
    At 67, Baez betrays some vocal aging, but she uses it wisely to impart extra feeling into what is often a downbeat collection of quality songs, and Earle has succeeded in his attempt not to reinvent her, but to re-create her sound and message in contemporary terms.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lightbulbs
    Airy synths and breathy vocals render the songs too dreamy to dance to, and the funky basslines and mechanical beats render them too dancey to dream to. That's the sweet spot of F&M.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brotherhood
    Brotherhood's track listing could easily be quarreled with, but it includes most of the approved highlights from each album, early or old, innovative or orthodox.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Death Magnetic
    Metallica is still vitally violent and on this terrific album--a de facto comeback, even if they never have really went away--they're finally acting like they enjoy being a great rock band.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sleepless Nights
    Loveless treats these songs without even a trace of nostalgia, but as the living embodiment of stories that not only transfer emotion, but reveal the hidden truths of love, life, sadness, grief, and wisdom gained by experience.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Entanglements
    As dazzling as Entanglements can be, its polish and uniqueness makes it more polarizing than anything Parenthetical Girls have done before.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Year Of The Gentleman
    'Why Does She Stay,' forms the front end of a two-track patch of glorious gloom--the album's center, both literally and figuratively--complemented by 'Fade into the Background,' where he watches the one who got away get married.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey Ma
    James do have more quirks in their sound and plenty of quirks in Booth, who is always willing to act like a fool if it is in service of the greater good. These are the things that make Hey Ma a welcome comeback even for those listeners who may never have been big James fans.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Hawk Is Howling
    At first, it's tempting to want all of The Hawk Is Howling to be as obviously powerful as its biggest tracks, but with time it reveals itself as one of Mogwai's most masterful blends of delicacy and strength.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything Is Borrowed
    Everything Is Borrowed is a neat about-face, a record that couldn't be more different from its predecessor. Sincere, considered, and poignant, Everything Is Borrowed finds Skinner remaining one of the foremost lyricists in pop music, and so much the better when the focus of his sharp writing is the struggle of weighty concepts instead of flimsy celebrity.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gift Of Screws
    Gift of Screws is a standout even in his catalog.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Way I See It
    Here's where a modern master, backed by living and breathing session musicians (including Funk Brother Jack Ashford), masters the masters with startling accuracy.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ladyhawke
    Ladyhawke is unlikely to win any awards for originality but you'd be hard pressed to find a more consistent and hook-laden debut all year.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Los Angeles
    Loaded with 17 tracks, it's an entertaining and fitting addition to the Warp catalog that makes for some highly hypnotic video arcade/coffee parlor mood music.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skeleton
    Skeleton is one of the more interesting releases of the summer, and proves that Abe Vigoda are more than worthy of joining their peers in the spotlight.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Exit
    Ambitious as some of that may seem, Exit never feels like a show-off record--just a thoughtfully put-together one.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Resurgam
    Alias has created his most welcoming and positive dream world on Resurgam, an album where the creaks comfort and the low cloud cover comes off as heavenly.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Uglysuit
    Alternately blissed-out and ragingly psychedelic, this debut is one of 2008's most promising records.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    High Places
    High Places' debut lives up to the promise of their singles (and then some) and is hopefully the first of many impressive and inspiring records to come from the duo.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Furr
    Blitzen Trapper's first release for Sub Pop doesn't just improve upon the promise of WMN, it expands its sonic horizons as well, narrowing the mixtape glee that fueled its predecessor with just enough maturity to lend it considerable weight.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue Lambency Downward
    It will take a minimum of several spins all the way through to even try to grasp all that's going on here. It's fair to say that perhaps you shouldn't have to work that hard, yet there is no real work involved; there is only delight, amusement, humor, and sometimes awe.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Me And Armini
    Me and Armini emerges as an album suitable for bookworms and beach bunnies, homebodies and world travelers, dancers and wallflowers. Highly recommended.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Laulu Laakson Kukista
    Other songs like the sea-shanty-goes-Jacques Brel 'Italialaisella Laivalla' and the more openly indie-pop 'Tytto Tanssii,' with its guitar lope and synth-horn break floating over a softly rumbling cloud of melancholic, echoing textures, further add to the understated but enjoyable variety of a fine album.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    4
    Ejstes' fiddle playing is certainly missed, but that's a minor complaint from an otherwise top-notch effort.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Something Else
    Though his sources remain numerous, this is his most focused, least scattered, and least dilettantish set, and it benefits greatly from its brevity relative to "The Evolution."
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Red Letter Year
    It is among DiFranco's best records, and along with Sam Phillips' "Don't Do Anything," one of the only singer/songwriter albums to really push the envelope in new directions in 2008.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Fabled City
    With The Fabled City, Morello's growth as a topical songwriter is enormous; he's brought the singer/songwriter into a cultural discussion, a dialogue, where we can dialogue not only about characters (who are treated with dignity as speaking subjects, not merely as objects to hang a tune on) and their struggles, but also with popular music again, as a ready tool for awareness of the world around us.
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