Dot Music's Scores

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For 1,511 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 Untitled
Lowest review score: 10 United Nations of Sound
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,005 out of 1511
  2. Mixed: 449 out of 1511
  3. Negative: 57 out of 1511
1511 music reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Begin To Hope
    It's an easier listen than its wildly imaginative predecessor.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Further
    This is dance music for dance music's sake.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Return To Cookie Mountain
    Take the time to squeeze inside, and you'll discover a startling, significant, endlessly inspiring album.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scars
    Scars is the strongest Basement Jaxx album since 2001's "Rooty".
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Good, The Bad & The Queen
    While unlikely to ignite the zeitgeist as "Parklife" once did, "The Good, The Bad & The Queen" probably says just as much about Britain 13 years on.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sheath
    LFO's gift is an ability to strip Detroit's electronic music of its soul, punishing any soft southern edges with a brutal attack of noise, while still managing moments of subtlety and consistently adventurous beat programming.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pole
    'Pole' is so minimal it's almost naked. But, by only including the things that matter, it's deceptively atmospheric.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Datsuns
    You've heard this album before then, but it's never sounded quite this crazed and pressed for time.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Hundred Days Off
    The thundering beats, subdued vocals of indecipherable lyrics, and power packed riffs are all still there, but they've mellowed and everything is a bit softer around the edges.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Smoke
    Smoke pulls off the neat trick of seeming weightless and disassociated but never slight, playful, yet neither inconsequential nor silly.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Campfire Headphase
    The pair have opted for unfiltered analogue over cleaned-up digital, too, achieving a lush density with loops and textures and a warm wooziness overall that's a million miles removed from their last effort, 2002's dark and almost mathematically complex "Geogaddi".
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
    All in, this is probably their best work.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Garden
    A quirky lo-fi wonder or the best album the '70s never had, "The Garden" feels like a lost gem, discovered in a box in the attic; a forgotten masterpiece full of tantalising sounds, odd voices and tingling ideas.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    From Every Sphere
    Unlike his obvious contemporaries - David Gray and Tom McRae - Harcourt has produced an album that reaches out beyond the boundaries of the traditional songwriter, yet still comes packed with memorable melodies and robust songs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    See Mystery Lights
    YACHT don't aim to solve the puzzle of life; they just want you to know you're welcome to party round their house anytime you like.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Getting Away With Murder
    This is a determined little bastard of a record by a band in a bug-eyed, rhythmic sweat, who know it’s time to come out with their guns blazing.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Maritime
    Think Giorgio Moroder, The Art of Noise and Michael Nyman with - if you like your reference points with less padded shoulders - a touch of New Order and Boards of Canada.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grace/Wastelands
    It's an intelligent, beguiling and charming record, from a man who has often seemed to lack all but the first of these qualities, and the first thing he's done since The Libertines' debut to make you feel genuine hope for his future.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Late Registration
    "Late Registration" feels more comfortable in its own skin than its predecessor.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Favourite Worst Nightmare
    At every turn this record astonishes with its accomplishment.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Join With Us
    A whole album as hyperactive would be exhausting, of course, but unlike the majority of indie plodders, The Feeling have real range.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Art Official Intelligence (Mosaic Thump)
    This, like the last joint 'Stakes Is High', sees the crew making even more stylistic space between themselves and their very own creation of the late eighties, 'the daisy age'.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Midnight Boom
    Not only have The Kills delivered a rock'n'roll album of note, it's one that achieves the rare trick of weaving timelines and timelessness with indecent ease.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Colonia
    A proper, fully formed record rather than a side-project doodle, Colonia is where artistic integrity meets pop conviction in a curious, deranged yet compelling sing-along.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ten
    A thoroughly engaging exercise in uneasy listening.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Neon Bible
    If "Neon Bible" doesn't quite dazzle as "Funeral" did, that's more a measure of the latter album's benchmark brilliance, rather than the inferiority of the former.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    So-Called Chaos
    While there's nothing as irresistibly catchy as "Under Rug Swept"'s magnificent "Hands Clean", the overall impression, musically speaking, is one of freshness, optimism and energy. But better still, it's smart, and sussed, and frequently funny as hell.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strangers
    If relationships were straightforward they’d be no need for albums like this. Thank god they aren’t.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dark Days/Light Years
    On Dark Days/Light Years, their ninth album, The Furries consolidate their best ideas--electro leanings, hypnotic motorik excursions, catchy, hook-driven riffs and layers of vocal melodies.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Phrenology
    What is different about the overall feel of this messy and ambitious album is that it marks The Roots' liberation from genre, the neo-soul meanderings of 'Things Fall Apart' only appear when they're wanted and never outstay their welcome.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beware
    Beware is a 40-odd minute work that ebbs, flows and carries you along perfectly.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sleeping With Ghosts
    Sound-wise, 'Sleeping With Ghosts' is pretty much flawless.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let Me Introduce My Friends
    Depending on your temperament, this translates to either the Feelgood Band Of 2006 or a horrific saccharine overdose.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Magic & Medicine
    The Coral have refined their influences, dropping some of the more incongruous blasts and revelations for a more concise, controlled dervish of Northern guitar colour and shade, West Coast psychedelic fever and Spaghetti Western landscapes and atmospherics.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Walk It Off
    Walk it Off is certainly not for everyone; but if you tire of quick fix indie and are craving something a little more cerebral to get your teeth into, it requires immediate investigation.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Something Else
    He's got an exceptionally stylish and more importantly, sellable album to back it up.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Two Suns
    While her second album is frequently more drama than action, over the long haul, the magical world she creates is one worth being immersed it.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Drum's Not Dead
    Through the course of "Drums Not Dead", you'll endure an unsettling, slightly terrifying experience, the likes of which is rarely committed to record.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Tipping Point
    It's a smart, self-aware and consciously direct album.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gulag Orkestar
    An emotive, atmospheric dreamworld that sounds like an echo from history.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Evil Heat
    In many ways, 'Evil Heat' comes across as something of an amalgam of the Scream's many phases and, because of that, it doesn't necessarily take them forward as their work in the past has done.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tasty
    It's not as far out wild as 'Kaleidoscope' but it is a consistently inventive and brilliant record.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Songs For Christmas
    "Songs For Christmas" is a(nother) labour of love, gently glowing with hope and humanity and is thus guaranteed to prize cynicism's barnacles from the heart of even the most dedicated Scrooge.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stillmatic
    'Stillmatic', as ever, is far from flawless but, at its best, it addresses the hip-hop landscape of 2002 as lucidly as 'Illmatic' did that of '94.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey Venus!
    Hey Venus! is conspicuously short and sweet, and as a result among the greatest things they've ever done.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rain On Lens
    A harsh, almost hollow collection of songs, that are as darkly unsettling and violently disaffected as anything our rather self-absorbed Chicago-based outcast has committed to tape thus far.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Happy Songs For Happy People
    What really makes this record engaging is that the simmering tension often chooses not to explode, yet somehow it works.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Year Of The Gentleman
    It's Shaffer's writing, rather than Ne-Yo's singing (and the distinction between the personas is one he's made himself), which elevates this collection beyond those of his peers.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Temporary Pleasure
    Underpinning all these is a formidable talent for beats and synths most audible on glacial instrumental '10,000 Horses Can't Be Wrong.' It's this that makes Temporary Pleasure so strong and tightly knit and it's the reason it has enough minor-key disco stomps to keep us dancing all through autumn.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Back To Basics
    With a distinct lack of pretension, some wholly infectious hooks and an insouciant sense of humour, this is the kind of project that will ultimately serve to keep Beenie’s rep as a professional entertainer and maestro of the dance deeply intact.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    To Survive
    An uncompromising work from an uncompromising artist, To Survive doesn't zip or sizzle. But yield to its gentle undulations and its hypnotic, brooding and utterly original genius becomes clear.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Regeneration
    Nearly everything that was once infuriating and irritating about The Divine Comedy has now been eradicated in favour of a new honesty and depth to their sound complete with some genuinely touching moments.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Remedy
    It might not be the dance album of the year - but it's certainly pushing musical boundaries and deserves to be in your record collection.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Source Tags & Codes
    They don't make a better sound than your average bunch of Sonic Youth fanatics, but they make it feel better, make it seem more important, more romantic almost.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Employment
    They develop, mutate, and swell in confidence until you’re faced with the last thing you expected - finally, a worthy successor to Blur.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ten Silver Drops
    It is a qualified success, at times brilliant, at others rather vague and off target.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Candylion
    Indisputably one of the best projects Gruff Rhys has ever been involved with.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Robyn
    A record to throw yourself into with the same glee Robyn clearly has.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Microcastle
    That rare thing in modern music, you feel Deerhunter grow with each second of song that passes, a band who delight in running under their own graceful steam rather than gasping at the airs of others.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fly Yellow Moon
    He is unrepentantly romantic throughout the album, though never quite twee or overbearing, which is quite a balancing act.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wincing The Night Away
    "Wincing The Night Away" shows The Shins as fleet-footed and supremely confident, their slightly off-beat sensibility happily uncompromised by its (newly) gleaming production and overall panoramic bigness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Reminder
    An elemental tour-de-force, "The Reminder" could be her Eureka record - an album where almost everything turns to gold.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Back To Basics
    No doubt the album of her career.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Book Of Bad Breaks
    Thee More Shallows' pop fans might yearn for more mellifluous melodies - their hip hop heads for more doctored beats - but in this "Book Of Bad Breaks", they're clearly on the same page.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Velocifero
    But the failures are the exception, and what's remarkable about Velocifero is how convincing and cohesive it is.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Third
    Exquisitely detailed, you can well believe that this is an album many years in the making and one with twice those years of pain inscribed in its emotionally wracked songs.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Franz Ferdinand
    It won't usher in a bold new era where boys are boys and bands play guitars, but there is more than enough here to chew over and enjoy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Reformation Post T.L.C.
    Tender and loving it might not be, but one of the albums of the year? Definitely.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Highly Evolved
    As a debut album, 'Highly Evolved', for all its faults, can be an energising proposition.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Who Killed The Zutons
    Underpinning the entire record is a delightful pop sensibility that holds this rag-bag of ideas together.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Popular Songs
    While Popular Songs may contain few surprises for long-term admirers, it is nonetheless a contrary beast in that it demands to be heard in a single, complete sitting.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No More Idols
    It would be interesting to see Chase & Status explore this extra dimension further, but--for now--this is a thrilling case of cum on feel the noize.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Rainbows
    Happily, In Rainbows is pretty, pretty good.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Standards
    The influence of recent collaborators like Autechre and Spring Heel Jack is prevalent throughout much of the album as tracks like 'Eros' fuse jazzy, organic instrumentation like marimbas and guitar to colder cut-up beats.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mighty Rearranger
    It is only when he tries to really rock-out that goldilocks falters a little.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?
    If Avril Lavigne dealt with her 'issues' by adding whiskey to her skinny latté, bummed about on a Californian beach at sunset and listened to The Go-Gos, this is what she'd sound-like.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Modern Times
    "Modern Times" offers further evidence that this man remains more than capable of greatness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Maudlin Career
    My Maudlin Career offers soul and sophistication in abundance.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    City
    They're one of those rare propositions in British Pop - A Great Idea On Paper.... Often, it works, leaping off the page and becoming something you'd actually want to slip into your state of the art entertainment hub at the end of a hard day shredding documents.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Need To Be Downhearted
    For the most part "No Need To Be Downhearted" is a gorgeous record - big music full of small touches.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twoism [EP]
    Like all of Boards Of Canada's wonderful records, the whole seems to add up to far more than the sum of its parts.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skeletal Lamping
    There is much to enjoy on this consistently rewarding album; brazen, bonkers and really quite brilliant.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sea Change
    An emotive, often sorrowful work that features his most personal lyrics to date.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Mouse And The Mask
    Proof once more, that you can be experimental, extreme and eccentric but be excellently hip hop all at the same time.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cansei De Ser Sexy
    Crucially, CSS skilfully weave references not only to our OK magazine neurosis but the last few decades of music too, with a sophisticated mash of indie, '80s pop, disco and electro.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    De-Loused In The Comatorium
    This is not an album to listen to casually. It insists on taking over your life for an hour, demands a level of concentration rare in rock, amply repays multiple plays.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Weezer [2001]
    An album of two halves, 'Green' has its pop, counterbalanced with its noise-outs but above all, it's a very traditional, straightforward tunesome half hour which slots in effortlessly with its predecessors. A welcome return? Oh yes.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stripped
    Forget all you know about Christina Aguilera. She's discovered sex, rebellion, rock'n'roll and, at one amazing instant, drum'n'bass.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    5:55
    How does such a rich soup of chromosomes and hired help come together? In a tinkly, whispery trinket that deserves a place on the stereo of every right-thinking beatnik.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
    Tonight is a resounding success, and the first essential pop record of 2009.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is Happening
    He's perhaps not very hopeful that 'This Is Happening' will capture the same number of ears and hearts as 2007's terrific 'Sound Of Silver' did, but it's a fine and thrilling epitaph nonetheless.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Declaration
    Nelly and Akon do a reasonable job of making 'Body On Me' sound almost like a single, but it's not enough to change the fact that what could well be the best album of Ashanti's career is almost certain to be her most overlooked.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ether Song
    A real step forward - a challenging and melodic record.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Whoa, Nelly!
    Okay, so it suffers from repetition in places and the last pair of songs are arguably disposable, but this collection shines and sparkles as an impressive debut.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Boy In Da Corner
    Delivering his lyrics in a breathless barrage, 'Boy In Da Corner' packs the energy flash of London MCing into its grooves and for that alone it deserves attention.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
    As they expose the fragility of love and ultimately humanity, and mourn evolution's victims, they pitch themselves somewhere between Neil Young's heart-rending "Needle And The Damage Done" and a hard-bitten Dylan going electric, all the while retracing traditional folk's footsteps with a wonderfully homespun flourish.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Primary Colours
    While it'd be ridiculously premature to cast The Horrors as the future of anything, this is a bold and often brilliant step in that direction.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Them Crooked Vultures
    Actually, closer to the truth is that it sounds like a QOTSA record with the kind of solid rhythm-section money couldn't buy. And if that's the case then this is the best QOTSA record since 2002's "Songs For The Deaf".
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Complete B-Sides
    Fortunately, the depth of great songs written by Francis results in something that feels more like a proper album of still-dynamic psycho-rock than a shoddy cash-in.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Greatest Hits: The Evidence
    A fine writer, possessed of a honeyed, deep, richly expressive voice, Ice-T may have been the rapper of choice for white suburban teens in big shorts, but that doesn't mean he or his music have ever been anything less than grippingly authentic. He might not have always walked hip hop's artistic frontline, but 'The Evidence' proves he should always be ranked among the music's great practitioners.
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