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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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) [Box Set]
    Toy features Bowie revisiting a bunch of songs he wrote in the '60s, most written and recorded prior to "Space Oddity." Hearing Bowie apply Hours aesthetics to swinging, mod-ish material is odd but mildly appealing; it's a slight record but it's nice to have it as part of the official discography. The rest of the box follows a familiar and comforting pattern, confirming that the '90s were a bit of a creative resurgence for Bowie.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Superache
    It's that balance Gray strikes on Superache between plumbing his own candidly intimate fears and simultaneously pulling together all of his musical influences into his own distinctive sound that lends the album such magnetic, transformative power.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind
    Ultimately, Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind is stellar; it offers fresh, wildly creative terrain for the Amory Wars saga to mine going forward.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Charlie
    Charlie offers hope to both the singer and to sympathetic listeners, closing this very relatable chapter of his life with optimism hard-won through this catchy pop package.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Me/and/Dad
    Three albums into a burgeoning career, Strings could go anywhere at this point, but the mix of time-honored songs, heartfelt nature, and great playing really anchors this return-to-roots set.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's Fire
    Tomorrow's Fire may be the most melancholic of Squirrel Flower's albums, but its sense of drama is captivating.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    McCartney III
    Individually, these moments may not seem particularly eccentric yet when they're collected as an album, they add up to a charmingly off-kilter record, an album that benefits from its modest origins and McCartney's willingness to not polish too many of his rough edges.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Learned The Hard Way
    All this would be surface charm if the group didn’t deliver songs, and they do--songs that swagger and stir the soul, fitting within tradition without being beholden to it, songs that prove that Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings are the real deal.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mutant
    Mutant may be some of his most challenging work yet, but as Arca's music becomes more abstract, the viewpoint behind it comes into focus in ways that embrace strangeness, ugliness, and beauty equally.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shed
    Many bands get more sophisticated, or at least tighter, as they become more technically accomplished, thereby losing some of their punk edge. That hasn't happened to Title Fight yet... [They] continue to be fresh, if somewhat semi-professional.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strike a Match
    Strike a Match is a brilliant debut album with a solid emotional core that gives the instantly memorable songs gravity and keeps them from lifting off and floating away, instead anchoring them deep in listeners' hearts and minds.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Late Night Tales
    Even without any previous background information, there's lots to enjoy about being immersed in this warm, optimistic sound bath. Presented with a deft talent for flow and transition, Floating Points' Late Night Tales captures the feeling of after-hours reflection brilliantly.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All the Young Droogs: 60 Juvenile Delinquent Wrecks, Rock'N'Glam (And a Flavour of Bubblegum) from the 70's
    Aan invaluable resource for aficionados of this very weird, very exciting period of music. The set is certainly the equal of the essential junk shop glam collections that have come before it, and the care and thought put into it might even make it better. Either way, fans of the sound and era should be glad that this sound is being dug up again.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Big Swimmer
    While Big Swimmer isn't especially hooky or melodic or cathartic, it is mesmerizing, and performed with an actor's command of an audience, a playwright's turn of phrase, and an expert sense of guitar tones -- as well as an enviable, intangible coolness.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    hooke’s law
    On an artistic level, at least, she is flourishing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
    Given the discipline and experimentation in the short pieces, and in the creative imagination displayed in rearranging the longer ones to accommodate a larger band, 'Allelujah! Don't Bend Ascend proves, that GY!BE still has plenty of captivating things to say.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Key Markets
    While that [Divide And Exit] was the album Sleaford Mods needed to make to gain a wide audience, Key Markets is the one that tells their listeners that they'll never stop raging against stupidity.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prequelle
    On Prequelle, Ghost deliver fully on the promises of earlier records. Their strengths--including one for imitation--are fully assembled and focused in an exercise of irresistible arena rock excess without sounding like a pastiche.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Palo Santo
    With Palo Santo, Years & Years have crafted an album that pulses with that richness.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everybody Scream
    While nothing can compete with catalog classics Lungs or Ceremonials, Everybody Scream does come close, channeling the same energy and offering similar delights and thrills for the first time in a while.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Room Inside the World
    For an album whose lyrics often feel despondent, this record feels like a gracefully administered tonic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Figure 8
    Even if it is a very impressive statement overall, Figure 8 isn't quite the masterpiece it wants to be -- there's something about the pacing that just makes the record feel long...
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Boca Negra
    Boca Negra is the most sophisticated and improvisationally complex recording CUD has ever recorded, while easily being its most accessible.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Here's The Tender Coming
    Musically, there's much greater richness and variety in the arrangements now, heightening the shadings that have always been there, and bringing them to the fore, while also making it easier for a wider audience.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Maraqopa
    It results in his most adventurous and fulfilling work to date.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Extralife
    Bucolic, pastoral, and often willfully impressionistic, Extralife imagines a future that's not bereft of suffering or hardship, but tempered with hope and brimming with life.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Boy from Michigan
    Despite its occasional uneven moments, Boy from Michigan is a frequently brilliant album from a gifted stylist and songwriter who never stops challenging himself or his audience.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Barbarism
    Greer's vision of barbed future pop isn't easy to immediately understand, but Barbarism is as thrilling as it is challenging, and a rare example of art truly existing on its own terms despite how difficult it might be for an audience to digest.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hovvdy
    Throughout the album, otherworldly touches -- loops, processed acoustic instruments, imperfect multi-tracked vocals, echo -- work effectively alongside sighed deliveries and fingerpaint-like lyrics that capture the emotions of otherwise fragmented memories.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    James Blake
    The rest of the tracks are more like exercises in sound manipulation and reduction than songs. The approach is no-fault, but Blake pares it down to such an extent that the material occasionally sounds not just tentative but feeble, fatigued, even.
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