Exclaim's Scores

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For 5,096 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 57% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 38% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 75
Highest review score: 100 Vol.II
Lowest review score: 10 California Son
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4,315 out of 5096
  2. Mixed: 753 out of 5096
  3. Negative: 28 out of 5096
5096 music reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Three Bells
    The music is as diverse as ever — from psych folk to hard rock to prog-jazz to post-punk to stoner metal ― but Segall’s songwriting feels streamlined and clear-eyed, a welcome respite from the storm that surrounds it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I Am Easy to Find
    I Am Easy To Find feels like a restart for a band in its 20th year. It might challenge some fans and may not ever grow on others, but more than anything, it proves that the National are not the band you thought they were. They're way more than that.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rainbow
    Kesha shines brightest on "Woman," an undeniably funky number whose soulful beat is driven by the Dap-Kings' legendary horns. Unedited takes of giddy laughter shared between Kesha and her co-writers in the vocal booth pepper the song, demonstrating an artist who refuses to be stripped of her joy.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mercy
    A compelling album that will more than reward your attention.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New View
    New View is a lush and beautiful record that stands comfortably in such heady company.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghosts V: Together
    While these haunting mood-pieces aren't exactly uplifting, they have a melancholic beauty that's comforting in this troubling times. Even if we're lonely, we're in it together.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweetener
    Ultimately, beatmaker Tommy "TBHits" Brown outshines the veterans, co-producing two of the record's more engaging tracks--"Better Off" and "Goodnight n Go"--which are inexplicably relegated to the end of the record. Those songs manage to accomplish what the rest of the album attempts: bringing a new fire to pop-R&B's familiar formulas.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sweet Heart Sweet Light
    In many ways, Sweet Heart is the most complete Spiritualized album yet.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Villains
    Cool and calculated, it's sure to rub listeners who are anything but the wrong way.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Victim of Love
    Victim of Love is meant to be taken literally; it's a rare and continued opportunity for a sexagenarian to finally get his chance in the soulful sun. Something the album proves that he's both appreciative of and not taking lightly.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    III
    III is fuzzy, fast-paced and ferocious in all of the ways we would expect from FUZZ. Ty Segall, Charles Moothart, and Chad Ubovich have carefully conjured cacophony once again, in what might be at once their most spontaneous and their most down-to-earth record to date.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Based On The Best Seller
    For the most part, Based on the Best Seller feels like a revitalized bunch of friends cutting loose and having a blast. The wheel hasn't been reinvented, but you get all the inside jokes because they're your friends — and you're just happy to have been invited along for the ride.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Omnichord Real Book
    Condensing her struggles into meditative lyrics and singing from the perspective of fictional characters, this is a jazz project in its purest and most unadulterated form, and a very solid start to Ndegeocello's tenure at Blue Note.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    We're Not Talking
    The Goon Sax are able to balance melancholy with the excitement of shedding adolescence through the perfect conduit: pop songs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kveikur
    The payoffs on Kveikur aren't immediate, but they're no less orchestrated than previous work, coming across like a more focused and fleshed out Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra with sweeter vocals.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Caprisongs [Mixtape]
    "pamplemousse" and "which way" serve as the purest evidence of the freedom achieved on this mixtape. These experimental sketches are delightful in their rejection of seriousness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pure Music
    Pure Music is Strange Ranger's most alluring and most impressive effort yet. Fans of the band's beginnings will probably remain averse to this affirmed sonic shift, but it's hard not to respect an outfit brazenly evolving by throwing everything familiar out the window and going buck wild with their vision.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tranquilizer
    A saviour of lost noise, it's plunderphonics at its finest and most process-oriented, data and the digital transmogrified to something warm, nostalgic, tense — and, above all, timely.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twelve Nudes
    He's has created a blistering and often beautiful protest album. Let's hope his fever catches; it'd do us all some good.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Devotion
    For all the internal nuance of the record, Devotion is primarily an album built on the invisible ties between us, shifting between shades of love, rupture and unsteady silence. In the sparseness of its haze, Devotion feels ephemeral.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bravest Man in the Universe
    The lack of development and subtlety is a frequent problem for the album.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Weather
    Even after seven albums, the fun and excitement is still there, albeit in a new and changing way.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Blind Hole
    The result is distinctly Dead in the Dirt. Subtlety is not in the cards, so the faint of heart, or those craving even the most inconspicuous of melodies, should look elsewhere.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Muscle Shoals Recordings
    While The Muscle Shoals Recordings reaffirms the SteelDrivers' deserved prominence in the bluegrass world, it does little to transcend the genre's current boundaries.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    E-MO-TION Side B [EP]
    Unlike many B-side collections, much of E•MO•TION: Side B has single potential to the point where it's crazy that high-energy synth-pop gems like "First Time," "Higher" and "Body Language" were left off of E•MO•TION for mid-tempo bonus cuts like "Black Heart."
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Transit Blues
    Marginally more "mature" in composition and content than the band's previous records, Transit Blues is another solid release from a band that audibly continue to give their all.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hermitage
    Perhaps this is not Sexsmith's most lyrically accomplished work, but it is difficult to dislike any of these lovely, breezy, genuinely heartfelt songs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Howl
    Howl is a well-crafted structure, built on the foundation laid by its predecessors. It's certainly the pinnacle of West's career so far, and up there for electronic album highlight of year.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Flux
    FLUX situates itself in and around the broad category of rock and its derivatives, but what it really does is encapsulate Poppy's desire to evolve through genres. ... With this album, Poppy very clearly says that her new niche is to not have a niche.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Wilderness
    Though wholly pleasant to listen to, The Wilderness occasionally dips into background music territory. And while it features some of Explosions' most exploratory music to date, the record is dragged down by passages that, despite the astro-nautical theme of the track titles, occasionally fail to reach the stratospheric heights Explosions are known for.
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