New Musical Express (NME)'s Scores

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For 6,302 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: 4,469 out of 6302
  2. Mixed: 1,680 out of 6302
  3. Negative: 153 out of 6302
6302 music reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    SOPHIE
    Amid the admirable artistic confrontation in this record, there’s a gnawing impersonality that plagues many of the tracks here. There’s enough diamond material shining in the dirt to make this one of the most inventive posthumous albums that’s been released in recent times – it’s just a shame that the album doesn’t fully execute SOPHIE’s unique vision.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Will To Death
    Zooming sheets of spacious wind-tunnel prog and raw, solo-spattered soul. Commercially, it's suicide. [26 Jun 2004, p.55]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stripped
    It looks like a Mariah Carey album, it sounds like a Mariah Carey album.
    • 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.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Press The Spacebar
    A horrible, hysterical splurge of splenetic punk rock, processed beats and whimsical experimental chaos. Which is no bad thing. [5 Feb 2005, p.51]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Girl With Fish
    It’s another tension that helps to define ‘Girl With Fish’ — a sense that nothing holds so much weight that it can’t be taken elsewhere in the next moment. While that idea perhaps keeps these songs from being as memorable as they could be, it does occasionally work, shaping the album into a really nice cut of slacker-noise.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stateless
    Stateless is impeccably executed, but also unsettling to the point of off-putting.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black Foliage: Animation Music
    Teasing the limits of pleasure and agony, 'Black Foliage' is a messy, irritating listen. But it's worth persevering just for those odd moments of gorgeousness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Quakers
    If you like your rap homespun, rich, physical and all 'summer-in-NYC '95', it's a dream. But considering he once reinvented the genre, it's disappointingly reactionary.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Ride
    As on their debut, the sound is slick and polished and the songs are snappy and unpretentious, but there’s a lack of wit or invention.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bon Voyage
    Yes, there’s joy to be found in hearing a musician so unshackled from expectation and finding catharsis in the experience. But Boy Voyage lacks a running thread, centrepiece or concept to build itself around. It’s a wild, space-age trip that could do with a return ticket back to Earth.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    FWA (Free Weezy Album)
    Free Weezy Album is one of those records you sift through for flashes of greatness, rather than sit back and let it wash over you.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Years Not Living
    All pleasant enough, but makes you wish he’d just let his songs explode into a euphoric mess every once in a while.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fragile Army
    There's plenty of interest here, then--but is anyone still listening?
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Internationally Unknown
    Rat Boy’s international profile might be growing, but he’s not ready to conquer the world just yet.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Heretic Pride
    This is business as usual: string-laced Americana that ranks alongside other literate types such as The Shins or Midlake.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fountain
    ‘Think I Need It Too’, the best thing they’ve done in ages. And yet, much as we want to love it, the rest is a pulled punch.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rituals
    While The 1975 don’t own radio-rock just yet, Rituals feels a little too much like Deaf Havana have lost sight of their own signature, while hammering at the heels of Healy’s.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Whoa, Nelly!
    Allowing bonus points for successfully merging personal lyrics and shuffling beats without once evoking lazy trip-hop, she still too often confuses blandness for adult sophistication.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lover Chanting [EP]
    The Lover Chanting EP is, admittedly, inoffensive and low-risk. However, it’s a solid enough attempt at breaking away from the ‘band that does collaborations’ tag.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    MUSIC: Songs from and Inspired by the Motion Picture
    The highlights aren’t enough to make this album feel as vital as top-notch Sia efforts – namely, 2014’s ‘1000 Forms Of Fear’ or 2016’s ‘This Is Acting’. For the most part, these are reasonably catchy pop songs that become forgettable after their last chorus.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    5:55
    Breathy, sophisticated and existentially troubled. [2 Sep 2006, p.19]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'm Having Fun Now
    Jenny 'Rilo Kiley' Lewis, and Jonathan 'Just Recorded Under His Own Name' Rice's brand of folk-indie-pop--jangly guitars, sweetly shared harmonies, echoes of the Deep South--isn't groundbreaking, but probably wasn't supposed to be.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Soft Pack
    They may be strutting right down the middle of the road, but they look pretty damn cool doing it. The Soft Pack make being A-OK into something to be proud of.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ultraviolence
    The line between self-aware irony and tragically conforming to type is thin, though, her knowing winks getting stuck in a tangle of false eyelashes, and ultimately undermining what had the potential to be a powerful artistic statement.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Skelethon
    Named after a fabulist, yes, but still not quite fabulous.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Yes, It's True
    As ever, their relentless chirpiness can grate, but the orchestral indulgence has been pared back, giving ringleader Tim DeLaughter’s songwriting room to breathe.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stories Don't End
    Stories Don’t End is smoother than a drive down to Malibu with the Eagles chilling in the back seat.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Once Upon A Little Time
    His molasses-coated cooing works well along his sparse arrangements. [17 Sep 2005, p.58]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
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