Dusted Magazine's Scores

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For 3,270 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Ys
Lowest review score: 0 Rain In England
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,654 out of 3270
  2. Mixed: 581 out of 3270
  3. Negative: 35 out of 3270
3270 music reviews
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fake Surfers
    Gone is all the nervous tension that crisscrossed most of Finberg’s twitchy, dystopian vignettes, replaced instead with carefully plotted fuzz and a general hazy ambience that suggests calculated late-1960s ennui more than anything else. Overall, that’s a really good thing, especially when accompanied with the band’s seemingly newfound ability to ply their songs with unexpected twists and subtle new details.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Glass Bead Game
    Parts of Litany were pretty but kind of dull, and The Glass Bead Game is similarly afflicted. Blackshaw’s easy development seems to have reached a plateau.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    City Center
    Every song in the first half of the album tries so hard to get somewhere, but just ends up breaking down when it becomes obvious there’s no end in sight.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1
    The music offers plenty of reasons to feel good about feeling bad; too bad that the lyrics, which suggest these feelings in the first place, evacuate themselves moments after they surface, making for a curiously glossy listening experience.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Polly Scattergood
    A bit melodramatic, but undeniably compelling, Scattergood’s work has already drawn comparisons to Tori Amos and Kate Bush.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Around The Well
    Over its 23 songs, Iron & Wine’s sound changes, from scratchy sparseness to well-appointed sparseness and through to the jittery clamor that marked The Shepherd’s Dog, but the underlying world doesn’t.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yesterday And Today
    The songs/pieces/tracks are too long. They take too long getting where they’re going. Everyone loses. But it’s a good record. Hang onto it.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Romanian Names
    This is a “nice” album, not a great one. It pleases with clean, intelligent production, thoughtful arrangements, clever, elliptical words.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    'Em Are I
    Lewis' strengths are primarily lyrical. The musical arrangements, though good enough not to distract, tend to disappear into the songs.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Espoi
    Espoir is an unusual release, part interesting artifact of aesthetic oddities, part field recording of a talented man with a smooth voice who knows his way around a guitar. Not the ideal introduction to Burkina Faso, but worthwhile nonetheless.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    We Be Xuxa
    Here, as elsewhere, there may be subtext and hidden allusions but the important stuff is bouncing around on the surface.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Magnolia
    It’s hard to criticize the Wooden Birds at any length, because their music is so harmless, so unashamedly pretty and honest.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mind The Drift
    There’s something Spinal Tap-ish about the reach for grandeur here--not that it’s bad exactly, more that it seems not fully justified by the material.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bricolage
    The band clearly understands what their strengths are, and the decision to continuously return to them, keeping the songs simple, short, and straightforward, staves off boredom while covering very little territory.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Spoils
    Though it doesn’t hit the peaks of No Earthly Man, his 2005 foray into the pure history of the ballad, Spoils easily holds its own.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free
    Set ‘Em Wild, more so than many albums like this, at least has the quasi-coherence of forming out of the above-mentioned process, and if anything, that makes it more interesting than just a collection a songs.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Outside Love
    Outside Love, two years later, is another solid effort with a handful of quite good songs--and only a few embarrassing ones.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wavering Radiant
    Wavering Radiant is strong enough on musical merit that decade-strong devotees deservedly ought to join new converts in welcoming the latest Isis album into the world.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Enter The Vaselines
    Now, 17 years removed from the original stateside release of the band’s music, this expanded reissue (buttressed with an additional disc of decent live tracks and a few cool demos) gives an entirely new generation of pop fans an excuse to dive into the group’s music.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Balf Quarry
    One of the best things about Balf Quarry is the way it builds on the game-changing craftsmanship that Magik Markers brought to Boss.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Replica Sun Machine
    If anything, it’s the failure to rise above its component parts and create a unique and recognizable sound that keeps Replica Sun Machine from being the breakthrough album this promising trio deserves.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Ways Away
    She succeeds in a rare feat here, making a mood-sustaining record comprised of songs that only improve when listened to in sequence.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Summer Of Hate
    Summer of Hate is fairly diverse, with bits of punk, pop, shoegaze and space-rock woven into nine distinct tracks. What unites all these elements is a fascination with tone, rather than song structure or lyrical content.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Help
    On Help, bits of digital noise have worked their way into the sound, like the band is absorbing the textures of Dwyer’s more avant projects. Or maybe it’s just a crunchy topping to contrast with the creamy icing, because this is one cake of a record, as approachable as Dwyer has ever been.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Bright Mississippi
    The applause will only grow louder with the release of The Bright Mississippi. It’s quite simply one of the best albums we’ll hear in 2009.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mythomania
    When their sound tends towards the more coherent and homogeneous (even on the excellent title track) they risk falling victim to an imitativeness, or perhaps simply a lack of aesthetic ambitiousness, that threatens to overwhelm the originality that they bring to the table.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
    It’s that prickliness that makes this record intriguing, and durable enough to reward repeat listens.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Future Will Come
    While MacLean isn’t a self-conscious wit, he’s never seemed too invested in trying to not sound silly, and it doesn’t cost him. Sometimes, when the darkness gets heavy, his limitations add a much-appreciated levity. As Brody Stevens might say, “Enjoy it.”
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian
    His latest LP, Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian is another sinuous but seamless blend of the organic and synthetic, embodying the hand-in-everything spirit of hip hop.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Two Fingers
    In a vacuum, it’s a captivating and well-designed experiment. But in this real world where hip-hop is history, where it owns that history, wears it, references it, reflects it, bounces it around, Two Fingers’ record comes off overcooked and overflowing.
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