Drowned In Sound's Scores

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For 4,812 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 It Won't Be Like This All the Time
Lowest review score: 0 BE
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,477 out of 4812
  2. Mixed: 1,220 out of 4812
  3. Negative: 115 out of 4812
4812 music reviews
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    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ram [Deluxe Edition]
    This album has five more absolutely brilliant tracks.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is PiL
    Both as an album opener after a ten year absence and a spiritual partner to Public Image, This is PiL is pretty much perfect.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Wild Everywhere
    It's fine. It's well-rounded. It's cosy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What We Saw from the Cheap Seats
    Parts of ...Cheap Seats feel either disposable or a revisiting of old ground.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magic Hour
    A record light on substance but packed to the rafters with melody - there are plenty of cheap thrills to get jiggy with.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ufabulum
    It's something that can be quite brilliant: to paraphrase Special Agent Dale Cooper--Squarepusher's path is a strange and difficult one.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cancer4Cure
    When you combine this teeth-gritting lyrical intensity with El-P's boundary-pushing production and stupefyingly capable poetics, it's little wonder that, for all its darkness, paranoia and rage, Cancer For Cure emerges as one of the year's most endlessly re-playable records.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Passage
    Like many such films (they exist, right?), Passage is endearing, with unforgettable peaks; it looks beautiful at first glance, and has no shortage of beautiful moments, but don't delve too deeply lest the mirage of a grandiose masterpiece dissolve.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Predict a Graceful Expulsion
    Boasting the talents and a depth of spirit of an artist twice her age, I Predict A Graceful Expulsion is a majestic powerhouse of a career starter.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Presents...Here Come the Bombs
    Ultimately the riffs and hooks aren't up to the standard of previous Coombes-led outings, and whilst the textured soundscapes can help disguise this slightly the reality is that the majority of this record, whilst occasionally interesting and certainly surprising, is just ... a little boring.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Joyful Noise
    A Joyful Noise is a femme-power event album too shallow to achieve the import its creators intended.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Urban Turban: The Singhles Club
    After 21 years, it's hard to believe Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres are still capable of producing moments as vivid and relevant as these.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Neck of the Woods
    Neck of the Woods on its own is a good album, sure, but sabotages itself by giving us less to latch on to.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Better Living
    In sticking two fingers up at both their detractors and Dalston, they've crafted one of the most viscerally engaging British rock albums in years.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bloom
    Whilst good still, with Bloom comes the first seeds of doubt that maybe there isn't actually much below the surface--albeit it for many that's probably the source of their allure.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Different Ship
    At times full of nervous vigour, at others letting itself fall blindly backwards into honeyed daydream, A Different Ship has a life and character all of its own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Europe
    Throughout Europe, they manage to make that sound like a pretty nice place to be, and also serve a timely reminder that there's life in such a simple but effective style of music.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Unpatterns
    Unpatterns feels like less of a discrete instalment in a collection and more an accomplished blend of the two things James Ford and Jas Shaw do best--gigantic, open-armed, open-air pop, and femur-fracturing analogue techno.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Not Your Kind of People
    As you'd likely expect, they're still as confused as ever.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Loveless [Reissue]
    A bittersweet symphony that remains unparalleled.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Galaxy Garden
    Lone has delivered a Nineties attack that even Neil Buchanan would be proud of.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Only Place
    It's the sound of a group ably treading water while its scars are glossed over with a Golden State tan.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    MMXII
    The sound of a band still in their creative prime, MMXII is everything Killing Joke have proclaimed themselves to be these past three-and-a-half decades, and 15 albums on is just as incisive and coarse as their debut.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oh Holy Molar
    Their songcraft proves singularly remarkable once more.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mondo
    Mondo is that rare case of judge by cover, or what you see is exactly what you get.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dr. Dee
    If it's not a masterwork it's an evocative accompaniment to a summer's day, a sporadic but persuasive reminder of how spine-tingling Albarn's voice can be, and yet another musical genre ticked off his list with studious accomplishment and loving care.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Born Villain
    This record has been hailed by some as a return to form, but it's every inch as pointless as his last couple of records and a contender for dullest album of the year.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Aufheben
    Maybe at some points the eastern influences are more prominent, on tracks like 'Panic In Babylon', but on the whole it's classic BJM.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Time Team
    Smart, fast and visceral, debut LP Time Team is unpretentious and unfuckwithable; inviting, evasive and very occasionally serene, like a cosmic kaleidoscope peering beneath the totality of existence.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One
    Although the album shows impressive range - toggling back and forth between insidious ambient ('Dome Horizon') circuit-bending noise ('2T(fru)T') and a kind of stroboscopic speed-drone (the aforementioned 'chase sequences'), much of the textures and tech you could find in commision across the Captured Tracks and Wierd Records catalogues.
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