New Musical Express (NME)'s Scores

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For 6,298 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Lowest review score: 0 Maroon
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4,465 out of 6298
  2. Mixed: 1,680 out of 6298
  3. Negative: 153 out of 6298
6298 music reviews
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's Frightening
    Twin drummers Matthew Clark and Jamie Levinson are oustanding, but it’s Patterson who’s the real star – an all-American frontman whose honey-coated voice is practically begging for adoration.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hotel Shampoo
    Gruff's skills as a songwriter married up with his gentle, accommodating tones can, at their best, elicit the fuzzy feeling one gets listening to a Burt Bacharach classic, but this falls short of such lofty comparisons.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Summer 08
    Downsides? There really aren’t any. Mount has done it again. He could write music about the impact of Brexit on the UK’s trade with China and make it sound amazing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Encore
    Encore essentially mingles mellowed ska and reggae with funk disco, Latin hints and spoken-word pieces.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    When the Night Comes
    This is UK bass music at its best.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strangers
    Harcourt... has done the unthinkable: fallen in love with a laydee and made his "happy" album. Luckily for us, it's the best of his career. [11 Sep 2004, p.55]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mines
    Each track on their fourth boasting a captivating blend of experimentalism and depth.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cults
    Musically it's the cream of nostalgic pop, and the lyrics exhibit a wafty elan; but in purely conceptual terms, Cults is too busy flying on clouds of giddy adolescent wonder to plunder the depths of its pretensions with conviction.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wondrous Bughouse
    Tiptoeing through the dark fairytale forests of ‘Sleep Paralysis’ can be fun, but this is so woozy-sounding it should come with a warning not to operate heavy machinery while listening.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Motion Sickness [Live]
    This is a rare and wonderful joy: a live album that even non-obsessives should embrace. [12 Nov 2005, p.45
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let's Wrestle
    It’s their finest collection of songs to date.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love Sux
    A majority of the songs on ‘Love Sux’ clock in at under three minutes, giving the record a fiery sense of purpose. From the fraught emotion behind the vulnerable, delicate ballad ‘Dare To Love Me’ to the snarling guitars of ‘Déjà Vu’, every moment on the album is deliberately melodramatic.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    On My Way To Absence
    Ineffectual hippy grumblings that will make you want to sleep. [4 Jun 2005, p.58]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    We Have Sound
    A good debut, if strangely restrained. [2 Apr 2005, p.50]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wrath
    It’s still a lot like getting hammered in the skull for an hour, but Wrath allows enough range between the power-chug of ‘Grace’ and the forbidding rumblings of ‘Reclamation’ to lift them a long way out of the pits of hell.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    As If
    It’s a shame the editing isn’t as tight all the way through, but these grooves sure are deep.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What Chaos Is Imaginary
    Highlight ‘Swamp And Bay’ offers a rare hook-laden respite with a country-ish radio jangle and scuzz-rock climax, but everything stays consistently true to the core of the record: a very human and honest partnership, in a universe all of their own.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Down in Heaven
    The album was recorded in close friend Ben Kramer's house in leafy Massachusetts and is plush with piano, trumpet (from Will Miller of fellow Chicagoans Whitney) and a more mature take on their Rolling Stones obsession. The five-piece have added consideration and restraint to their usual wheezing approach.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Telicatessen
    This Bronx rapper-producer makes genuine party bangers out of dustbin scraps. [18 Sep 2004, p.65]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Touchdown
    There’s no better soundtrack to getting by and falling in love as the world wobbles unsteadily about us.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Around The Well
    Resplendent with Beam’s raw, whispered tones and snatched memories wrapped in the warmth and emotional calamity Iron And Wine are known for, it’s vintage stuff.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Steal Your Face
    In the fury of these cool-crushing rushes Mi Ami are exhilarating, roaring forwards, chasing risk like Can tied to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged across the surface of the sun.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gimme Some
    Perhaps it's the introduction of an outside producer (Per Sunding) for the first time, but they're sounding like a band with something to prove.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fever Dream
    The results are lush, psychedelic, often funky and always immaculately produced. But compared to, say, Cosmogramma, it sounds unadventurous and polite, as if Alias has grasped the sound of Fly-Lo et al rather than the spirit.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rispah
    Adventurous, forward-looking and luxurious, all at the same time.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Good Morning to the Night
    The results range from danceable ('Phoenix', 'Sad') to unnerving ('Telegraph To The Afterlife', 'Sixty') and give off an atmosphere of ghostly melancholy that subtly subverts Elton's reputation as a cosy British institution.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rat Farm
    More laidback than their most feted, punk-derived early albums, this nevertheless compares favourably with the new 'un by Meat Puppets fans Milk Music.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Get There
    As Minor Alps, Hatfield and Caws have made a gorgeous debut that sounds as if they’ve recorded it in each other’s pockets, their tones exquisitely matched, the songs intimate.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chiaroscuro
    Her 2011 debut 'Hearts' had the drift and shimmer of shoegaze, but Chiaroscuro is sharper, even flirting with techno on the densely layered 'Faith' and handclapping electro on 'Denial' as Lindén tries out all the electronic styles of the 1980s.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ∞ (Infinity)
    Tiersen never loses touch with his innate sense of melody, but the lack of edge means that Infinity's charms are, in fact, finite.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gnarwolves
    From the frantic 'Smoking Kills' to the joyously frank drinking song 'Bottle To Bottle', there's more than enough evidence to suggest the Brighton trio are the caustic blast of honesty and character the UK punk scene's been lacking recently.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    How to Be a Human Being
    It may sound a little high-concept, but its ultimate themes of empathy and diversity are subtly communicated. Glass Animals’ melodies have an immediacy that diffuses any hint of chin-strokiness.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Anteroom
    The follow up sees How To Dress Well stepping into a more experimental world. The results sounds a little like American ambient producer Grouper on a 5am nightbus, and suits Krell well.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Life Is Yours
    There are no meaty rockers like ‘Inhaler’ or ‘What Went Down’, or slow and sprawling mini epics like ‘Spanish Sahara’, ‘Late Night’ or ‘Neptune’, but we need something else right now. ... Foals are still peaking.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    MADRA
    While NewDad might not be as structurally inventive as the power-pop-indebted Hotline TNT or as heavy as the nu-gaze-leaning Fleshwater, they are perhaps more streamlined and together, which counts for plenty. ‘Madra’ is the sound of a band who have reckoned with where they come from and used it to map out where they’re going.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ruby
    She asserts herself not just as a global star, but as a fully realised artist, shaping her sound and vision with an intentionality that signals real growth.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fancy Some More?
    Some contributors slip seamlessly into her world, amplifying her playful spirit, while others feel more like drive-by cameos, impressive in name but disconnected in vibe. The result is a sonic joyride through the world of dance that dazzles in flashes, even if it never quite eclipses the original.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Almanac
    Lashings of reverb and experimentation with acoustic instruments draw the music into something much more evocative.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Evolve or Be Extinct
    It takes a pretty special type of artist to release 11 zip files of music for free, follow that up with three albums within a year and still pique your interest when a new release crosses the doorstep. But such is the way of Wiley.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    God Help The Girl
    Ireton’s voice has an unschooled grace which elevates ‘Hiding Neath My Umbrella’ to the status of an interesting, if flimsy, curio in Murdoch’s canon. It’s just a shame the rest of the record, and the new recruits, are so fucking woeful.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang
    So, you're a founding member of the legendary hip-hip combo Wu Tang Clan. And your fans are extremely pissed because you went and done a track with that Justin Bieber.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hardwired...To Self-Destruct
    While Hardwired... To Self-Destruct isn’t dissimilar in delivery to their last record, 2008’s ‘Death Magnetic’, Metallica still--in their fifties--remain both vital and innovative.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sound Mirror
    Sound Mirror’s mix of jazz rhythms and psychedelic funk cuts a distinctive, if unfashionable, path.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Negrophilia: The Album
    Reek[s] of overt smugness and wilful obliqueness. [16 Apr 2005, p.51]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Road To Rouen
    'Road To Rouen' is the sound of a band at last hitting their stride, finding out who they are and sounding like it's finally making them happy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Caracal
    Caracal is about Disclosure maturing, moving on and showing the listener how to rave respectably. This is dance music for grown-ups.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strange Weekend
    Strange Weekend's gauzy dream-pop is almost incapable of provoking anything but love.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wild World
    Wild World is a triumphant pop record: unflinching in its ability to rouse listeners and unapologetic in its quest for a Number One.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Music
    From underground hero to untouchable force, Playboi Carti cements his spot as rap’s feral frontrunner.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    180
    180 doesn’t contain too many weak moments; only the tacked-on-at-the-end ‘Brand New Song’ feels properly superfluous, an in-joke they’ve run a little too far with. Otherwise, you’re struck by the strength of the songs, and the roguish, self-assured charm with which they’re delivered.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Long Way Home
    At 47 minutes, Long Way Home may seem lengthy for a debut, but it feels cohesive without boxing Låpsley into a limited sound.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aufheben
    Mainman Anton Newcombe is now sober, and here has made his best album since 2003's '…And This Is Our Music'.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The B.Coming
    As defiant as ever. [23 Apr 2005, p.51]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Escapades
    It would have been a major disappointment had ‘Escapades’ just been a rehash of leftover Justice cuts. Thankfully Augé’s thirst for the strange makes this album an odd but interesting solo proposition, which still makes some room for dancefloor slayers.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anti
    It’s not quite the revelatory departure we might have hoped for, and has the rich but unfocused feel of something worked on perhaps too long with obsessive fervour, but it’s also subtle and interesting; an intriguing soundtrack to an era of change.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Time Travel
    Her second, now with indie Bella Union, is a precious mix of childlike insouciance and adolescent anxiety.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Inheaven
    It’s the sound of all your messiest student rock nights packed into 39 breathless minutes.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    W
    Luckily Planningtorock, alias Janine Rostron, has delivered 'W', a masterpiece of art-pop experimentalism that gleefully expands on her debut.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Making a New World
    Unfortunately, as a musical portrayal of the long-lasting echoes of WWI, its ideas are far more interesting than their execution.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Let's Rock
    Overthinking might be the enemy of rock’n’rollers everywhere, turning their instinctive licks into convoluted nightmares. But, in the case of Let’s Rock, a little more time fleshing things out from fine to thunderous could have made a world of difference.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Weezer [2001]
    The 11 tracks trundle along in a generally inoffensive slipstream of occasionally admirable but mainly dull AOR silliness.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Diary
    Nothing here totally confounds the suspicion that Yancey was a brilliant producer, but merely an able rapper. Still, as a respectable cap on a great body of work, The Diary will do nicely.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Folk Set Apart
    It’s nowhere near his best work--it’s clear why tracks like ‘Oatmeal’ and 'Catacombs Cow Cow Boogie’ didn’t make his albums--but Cass McCombs' cutting room floor is grimier than most, and this record is a consistently intriguing portrait of the odds and sods of a fascinating career. Listen to it, then buy his entire back catalogue.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crazy Itch Radio
    It's easy enough to ignore until a real stinker passes by. [2 Sep 2006, p.21]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Rolling Blackouts
    Rolling Blackouts sees them doing what The Go! Team do: flailing and yelping like meth-addicted Energiser bunnies, which, as you may have figured, is not a compliment.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Life Among the Savages
    It all sounds immaculate, but lacks the memorable lyrics and direct hooks of Papercuts’ pop forbears.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Parcels
    Parcels have taken control of their destiny with a project that’s well-thought out and engaging from start-to-finish. It feels both timely and from a different era--a very rare feat.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Texis
    Touches of experimental ambience (‘Rosary’) and ‘80s fog-pop (‘True Seekers’) work well as light relief and ‘Texis’, as an exercise in full-throttle revitalisation, is dynamite indeed.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cloud Nothings
    There are moments when Cloud Nothings sounds like your average punk-pop record, but Baldi is willing to render outside the lines with his own idiosyncratic noodlings and daubs of C86-era colour.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    You Were Right
    You Were Right pretty much fulfills all the criteria for being a successful radio rock record, apart from the one about having a chorus you can actually remember 12 hours after hearing it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Grand Tour
    ‘Flatlands And The Flemish Roads’ evokes feelings of motion, ‘Ode To Viennese Streets’ a sense of relaxation, but strip away their titles and the concept evaporates, leaving a warm but undemanding album.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ellipsis
    The whole feel of the album is fun, shackle-free, uninhibited, but still masterfully crafted. In fact, by opening themselves up Biffy Clyro have captured the spirit of a brand-new band again.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Spell
    Again finds them excelling in the art of morbidity. [27 May 2006, p.33]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Light the Dead See
    Initially it's strange to hear that instantly identifiable baritone clashing with organic, rough-edged guitars, dirty Hammond organ, and delicate strings rather than the cold electronics of the day job, but it soon reveals itself to be a perfect pairing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Turbines
    Their fifth album (strung together by a loose concept about an imagined village you needn’t worry about) is as softly satisfying as a bobbly old jumper. One with thumbholes.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Unknown Mortal Orchestra
    Nielson probably didn't know what he was getting into when he started UMO and is probably still figuring it out now. If that means more sleepless nights for him, all the better for us.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    WE
    Philosophically, they haven’t been so focussed since 2010’s ‘The Suburbs’, nor so musically dramatic since 2007’s ‘Neon Bible’. Subscribe.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stuff Like That There
    They’ve honed their approach to a point where they can’t really sound like anyone except themselves. Mostly, though, this is the key to the deep likeability of Stuff Like That There.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Highway Companion
    Contains... some of his finest ever songs. [5 Aug 2006, p.29]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vapor City
    An overly soft mid-section ('Center Your Love', 'Vizion') reveals that chillout-esque pleasantness isn't Stewart's forte, but that's not to say this album's only good when the whipcrack snare madness takes hold.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good Bad Not Evil
    American flower-punks Black Lips are purists when it comes to scuzz, and Good Bad, Not Evil is a perfect tapestry of sordid pleasure.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Wack Album
    It’s not Flight Of The Conchords quality but, hey, at least it’s not The Midnight Beast.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    KOD
    Cole’s incisive, mic-dropping end to KOD reiterates his importance to the rap game in 2018 and, if you’re the speculating type, could even serve as a taster for an imminent full-length follow-up.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Astronomy For Dogs
    As melody-ripe as anything from [Brian] Wilson's brain.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rated O
    The fact that this mad man’s breakfast is actually nothing short of jaw-dropping should be the cause of spontaneous mass copulation in the streets.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Superorganism
    It often feels like an in-joke that we’re allowed in on.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stadium Arcadium
    Somewhere along the line the Chilis got sophisticated on our asses.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Summer In Abaddon
    The stuff of jagged, ornate artistes living in a weird pop monsterland with defiantly anti-wacky lyrics. [13 Nov 2004, p.57]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cosmos
    Occasionally brilliant ear food for when you’re just drifting off.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    We'll Be the Moon
    The only problem is they always just come up short when trying to make their own version of FTP's 'Pumped Up Kicks'.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Filthy [EP]
    Only four tracks, but enough firepower to blow up the dancefloor.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Adrenalin Baby: Live
    If tracks like ‘New Town Velocity’ or ’Easy Money’ passed you by, this is an opportunity to reacquaint yourself. The Smiths songs, of course, will be of particular interest.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Simple Math
    This, their third album, continues the Atlantans' slow but upward career trajectory to date, almost akin to an American Elbow in that they're grandiose, utterly lovely, but unlikely to sell any records for at least another couple of releases down the line.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fishing for Fishies
    Fishing For Fishies is their most accessible and immediate album to date.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magic
    Six years on he sounds like a man not getting nearly enough cuddles.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    St. Catherine
    St Catherine’s surface may be polished to perfection, but much of what’s underneath feels hollow.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Trial Of The Century
    Has them concealing Duran Duran, Tears For Fears, Wire and U2 under a thick pea-soup of organ and rolling bass. [30 Oct 2004, p.65]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rain On Lens
    There have been dark records by Chicagoan Bill Callahan. There have been wilfully obscure ones too, but there has never been one as single-mindedly dour as this.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    OST
    While it's unlikely that he'll pursue anything as historically precise as this for a solo career, 'Cold Mountain' proves what most of us have long suspected: when The White Stripes end, White will be far from finished.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons
    It's as though all the contrariness of Blonde Redhead's angular past has dissolved into a fascination with pop ('This Is Not'), '60s soundtracks ('Melody Of Certain Three') and naked piano ballads ('For The Damaged', featuring one of The Black Heart Procession on the ivories) without sacrificing any of the heart-stopping dynamics or confessional psychodramas.
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