Blender's Scores
- Music
For 1,854 reviews, this publication has graded:
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39% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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58% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 65
| Highest review score: | Together Through Life | |
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| Lowest review score: | Folker |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 957 out of 1854
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Mixed: 862 out of 1854
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Negative: 35 out of 1854
1854
music
reviews
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Despite its epic ambitions, this is a more streamlined, less colorful statement than TSOOL's 2001 Behind The Music, and only occasionally attains earth-moving power. [Apr 2005, p.125]- Blender
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Baker... somehow makes them sound more outrageous--and more convincing. [Dec 2005, p.148]- Blender
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Her hits are underrepresented, more recent songs are overrepresented, and [Vince] Mendoza's overly ornate orchestrations are dull, self-absorbed affairs, frequently swamping the great songs and Mitchell's vocals. [#12, p.147]- Blender
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Finding new targets for their thrashing contempt, Slipknot make ugliness sound just a little bit pretty.- Blender
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You can find kids playing harder and faster in the cut-out bins at Hot Topic, but if you're lookin' for trouble, you came to the right place. [Apr 2005, p.119]- Blender
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The album is crisper than the band’s early-’08 EP, thanks to Spoon producer Mike McCarthy, who let the fury bounce around every inch of a cinder-block space in Austin--where, appropriately, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" sound effects were recorded.- Blender
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He's screaming louder than ever on his solo CD, but what's notable is how all the titanium riffs and loud-soft-loud dynamics now feel personalized, a little cozier and multihued than on SOAD record. [Nov 2007, p.157]- Blender
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Pete Doherty remains the British tabloids' pinata of choice--but at least his music is looking up.- Blender
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An excellent debut.... Derivative, but irresistibly infectious. [Sep 2003, p.129]- Blender
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Filter adhere to the blueprint laid down by the breakthrough power ballad "Take a Picture"... with such anguished arena sing-alongs as "The Missing" and "The Only Way Is the Wrong Way." [#9, p.146]- Blender
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They follow measured guitar burn with bone-rattling explosions, and roll mesmerizing tension into colossal release. [#14, p.138]- Blender
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It presumably adds up to Something Important, but good luck deciphering what. [Jul 2006, p.103]- Blender
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The melodies are well-shaped and the lyrics twist their knives elegantly. [Dec 2006, p.174]- Blender
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Kweli expends most of his considerable lyrical talent touting his considerable lyrical talent. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.94]- Blender
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With music that evokes cheesy early-’70s MOR and the modern Hollywood-hipster songbook invented by Beck, this is pop that gets out and moves, and has you rooting for the wallflower with the yawny voice to do the same.- Blender
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[The instrumentals are] a curious bonus for his fans, but not much more. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.113]- Blender
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A strangely dispassionate exercise in record-collection rock. [#17, p.133]- Blender
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And just as 1992's Connected served as an antidote to grunge in its day, Dirty hopes to deliver more nuanced dance music to its fans. Too little, too late, though. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.116]- Blender
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The result is more than nostalgia: Carrabba imbues all 12 tracks with welcome new tricks--layers of cascading harmonies, a startling falsetto and even a dash of subtlety.- Blender
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The sonics beneath Buck's deadpan rhymes are too often more subdued than the dense collages he started out in the late 90s, but jazz keyboards and conga poly-rhythms keep the backing from sinking into mere soundtrack. [Nov 2007, p.146]- Blender
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Bare might impress someone who thinks there should be more Cutting Crew records. Others should beware. [#17, p.136]- Blender
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His guitar reinvigorates age-old lines on neat and tidy arrangements, but he's even busier exploring the limited expressive range of his singing voice. [May 2004, p.119]- Blender
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Let It Be... Naked offers an experience its predecessor never could. [Dec 2003, p.154]- Blender
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Face Control is a small triumph of intoxicating claustrophobia, full of crumbling, poignant melodies spurred along by thecold, unfeeling whip-crack of a cheap drum machine.- Blender
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Again, the results are a mutant virus of gorgeous and bland, grainy and slick. [Mar 2007, p.135]- Blender
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She's a poised pop queen, ready to be worshiped once again. [Nov 2004, p.141]- Blender
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On Traffic and Weather, their lyrical touch slips. [Apr 2007, p.114]- Blender
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Despite all the players, these lush songs are transitory, not bombastic or cluttered. [Dec 08/Jan 09, p.78]- Blender
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It's the group's continued synchronicity that makes puns like "Kissing Asphalt" both chat-room hip and roller-rink authentic. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.110]- Blender
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Lavigne splices the angst of Alanis Morissette and the snarl of Courtney Love into a debut full of sunny guitar pop. [#8, p.115]- Blender
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While Eyeball is essentially a breezy gloss on the blend of idiosyncratic pop chops and exotica that characterizes much of the Luaka roster, it's buoyantly lightweight nonetheless. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.106]- Blender
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Moves seamlessly from ironic cock-rock and steel guitar-kissed hymns to crisply melodic pop and full-on hippie freakouts. [Oct 2004, p.116]- Blender
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An utterly competent album that's devoid of politics, not to mention any genuinely exciting studio ideas. [#11, p.136]- Blender
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Gummere’s voice is no one’s idea of pretty, and his lyrics are sometimes hard to decipher over the squall. But they’re both secondary to the nose-bloodying sonic punch.- Blender
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The sound matches lyrics about isolation and despair, achieving a freeze-dried catchiness in the opening songs. But by the end of the album, cleverness gives way to the bleak and the drab.- Blender
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Punch line for punch line, Luda is still the best in the business (e.g., promising to get ladies “wetter than Michael Phelps”), but these sex jams and hater disses feel too flat and perfunctory for his thousand-watt personality.- Blender
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Making good on the promise of two nervously explosive EPs, Tokyo Police Club indulge in plenty of echoey atmospherics but also add Foo Fighters-esque blasts of guitar, as if leaping into action and kicking over their chairs. [May 2008, p.79]- Blender
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Sadly, while some will still be humming the hypnotic "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" come judgment day, the rest of Fever is more forgettable. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.114]- Blender
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Classicism yields all the right stuff: alert sound with a lived-in feel, finely detailed tunes that shoot straight. [Aug 2004, p.140]- Blender
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Unlike some other singers, Timberlake never seems a puppet of his hot producers. [#12, p.154]- Blender
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The music is dominated by the same pounding pop-disco beats and thick textures that have defined all her record. But now Lennox sounds like she's been rubbed raw by life. [Oct 2007, p.111]- Blender
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Their sixth album enlists Michael Bay levels of volume and grandeur in the service of alarmingly generic, hookless power ballads and plodding prog etudes.- Blender
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The clarity of her frustration gives the songs an unsparing honesty, but it's also frustrating to witness. [Oct 2007, p.112]- Blender
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This time around, both Air's jokes and their grooves have lost their grace... [Jun/Jul 2001, p.104]- Blender
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Slower into its stride, with tune-free twittering and dull homages to FX-pedal rock making up the first half. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.123]- Blender
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It's better written than her previous CDs... But this new old style is far less suited to her talents. [Jun 2007, p.110]- Blender
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The beat-programming is crystalline, the feeling is frozen, the soul is northern if it's there at all. [Sep 2005, p.136]- Blender
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McGrath sounds both sexier and more gentle, sensitive and more irresponsible. [#17, p.143]- Blender
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In all, Eve achieves enough balance to continue reigning as hip-hop's most popular femme-fatale M.C. {#11, p.130]- Blender
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Marjorie Fair's plinky strums, orchestral swells and hummable lyrics are hard to dislike and impossible to love. [Aug 2005, p.111]- Blender
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He never quite rises to this lofty occasion, and without anything to prove other than that he can come back whenever he pleases, he reverts to gloating. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.81]- Blender
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The parade of midtempo soul-pop snoozers and funk-lite fluff is no more memorable than Soul Asylum's last record. Which is to say, not very. [#9, p.153]- Blender
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Not everything is as heart-stopping as the velvety, elegiac "Bitter Apple," but there's enough quality to suggest that Depeche Mode could use a few Dave Gahan songs. [#17, p.135]- Blender
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At several points... the duo belatedly attempts to revivie its peak period formula, but... it's as old-fashioned as a Lollapalooza 1992 T-shirt. Fortunately, Jourgenson and Barker's new ideas are better. [#14, p.140]- Blender
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They're old-fashioned ballads, all very tasteful, but few hooks poke through the froth. [Jun 2006, p.139]- Blender
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Too often, though, Pebble is like a falsely vintage digital photo with specks, grain and worn edges Photoshopped in--it’s convincing on the surface but crumbles under close inspection.- Blender
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This orderly collection of messy leftovers suits his disheveled talents. [Nov 2006, p.137]- Blender
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No, it ain't rocket science. But when they're headlining arenas, it's gonna look fairly brilliant. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.98]- Blender
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Unexpectedly clean-cut... the time-signature shifts and feedback swirls that earned them minor adulation are sidelined in favor of pushy, arena-sized choruses. [Mar 2005, p.136]- Blender
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This is music for the well-read rock fan and the would-be scoundrel. [Mar 2007, p.134]- Blender
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Anyone expecting Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons to torch their formula--multiple vocalists drop by and trip the light fantastic--will be disappointed; but their best record since the '90s proves they don’t have to.- Blender
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He's self-mocking enough to earn his laddish hell-raising. [May 2006, p.107]- Blender
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After 25 minutes, they close with five worthy remixes instead of the typical filler—a startup rarity, knowing how to quit while you’re ahead.- Blender
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Where his earlier music was a parade of bright primary colors, these plaintive melodies come in delicious shades of gray. [Oct 2006, p.138]- Blender
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Even though there's nothing new, the album offers enough in the way of big-beat guitar and sing-along choruses to keep Smash Mouth on the charts for another two years. [#4, p.123]- Blender
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Though the drones drift into Enya-like ambience on "Slip Away" more often, as on "Pieces and Parts" and the keening "Broken," Anderson dresses up her hard-won koans of personal wisdom just enough to make them alluring. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.120]- Blender
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Like [Norah] Jones, Mayer never lets his personality talk over his elegant melodies, but unlike her, he has range. [Oct 2003, p.112]- Blender
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Less hook-a-minute than its predecessor, 1998's Powertrip, but with a more heavily articulated wallop. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.114]- Blender
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Their Fire Songs can seem a little thin-boned--the twins’ intertwined voices are lovely but ethereal, the steel guitars melting into the horizon like a mirage.- Blender
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It does what it's supposed to, giving Usher a grown-up R&B sound without reducing his boyish charm. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.131]- Blender
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Prince made sexual audacity a trademark ages ago, but Legend is just too cautious to put it over--he sounds like a CPA on his first trip to the Hustler Club.- Blender
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It's great fun, but Come Feel Me Tremble has more ballast. [Nov 2003, p.123]- Blender
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Donelly shows more confidence in her dreaminess than ever. [Apr/May 2002, p.113]- Blender
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Filling the shoes of Jay-Z and R. Kelly--collaborators on two albums--is no easy feat, but thanks to slick production and stay-in-your-head melodies, the duo nearly rises to the challenge.- Blender
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So easygoing they're like going nowhere, his voyages to the beaches, beers and frathouse memories are easier journeys than the saccharine mountaineering that occupies the rest of the disc. [May 2004, p.119]- Blender
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The ballads, which are copious, are dull. [Mar 2006, p.115]- Blender
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The melodies are often limp, the rhythm section disappointingly friction-free, and Cumming’s main lyrical M.O. is to name-drop coke constantly, like the doofus at a party who mistakes a key bump for a badge of cool.- Blender
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It trades the epic scope of their more established countrymen for a stab at pop accessibility. [Nov 2003, p.116]- Blender
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Merritt's lyrics are typically playful, and Claudia Gonson coos them with dreamy detachment. [#9, p.146]- Blender
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Full of standard-issue street rhymes and treacly R&B hooks, Back Again makes you want to shout "Cut!" halfway through. [#15, p.125]- Blender
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These dozen R&B songs boast all the verve and sex appeal of a busines plan. [Apr 2009, p.61]- Blender
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Her wispily aspirational singing tugs hardest on 'Fall,' cowritten with Natasha Bedingfield, where escapism and realism do battle and her pretty pony of love rides a beautiful rainbow that may or may not lead to the glue factory of hobbled dreams. Stay tuned.- Blender
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