New Musical Express (NME)'s Scores

  • Music
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:
6298 music reviews
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sadly, The (I)NC have mistaken the ultra-safe sound of maximum R&B for the scream of revolution. [24 Jul 2004, p.49]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Too often, ¡Tré! falls back on a formula--fast, box-ticking choruses fashioned from chords you can count on the fingers of one hand--that Green Day have pretty much stretched to breaking point.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    If it’s your introduction to them, there’s likely just about enough to convince you to dig a little further. ... But if you’re a survivor of the ‘00s indie scene, there are no new tricks here that’ll stump you. The by-the-numbers feel of ‘Four Leaf Clover’ makes us feel like the unlucky ones, and ‘Tesco Disco’ should have been left in the reduced section.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It does little to either push Turner forward or tell these stories satisfactorily.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Gone are the fizzy sun-drenched hooks and pint-chucking riffs, and in their place are mawkish vocals, melodramatic breaks and dreary lyrics.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There are far too many children’s voices, snatches of birdsong, glissandi of saccharine strings, and always the half-heard, half-sensed thwack of Frisbee upon social media manager.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    'Plans' is produced within an inch of its shiny, whitebread life and the Cutie seem to have lost their faux-naive subtleties, becoming the non-thinking man's Coldplay along the way. [27 Aug 2005, p.74]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Their rootsy rattle'n'roll fails to connect with anything more grabbing than a vague lyrical nostalgia.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Their default position is to panel it: hard-driving Zep-worship so unvarying in its pace that Everyday Demons comes on like one long undead riff plus a lot of yawled guff about about being an ‘Evil Man’ with ‘Demon Eyes.'
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    An affectionate, fuzzy-felt melodic alt.country rocking affair with sugarcane barbed lyrics. [26 Jun 2004, p.54]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A slow slog through a murky alternate dimension, from a band who made their name on vibrancy and experimentation, Inside The Rose is frustratingly lacking in both.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    All we learn from these wispy solo offerings is that Lemonheads songs are not improved by persistent cassette hiss and background noise.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Radio-friendly insipidness.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's a bit of a mess.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Amid the smartly rendered pastiche of this debut, Bainbridge references Prince and Janet Jackson, yet turns those joyous sounds unpleasantly arch.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mostly it's just a heavily lacquered drone, an album so restrained as to sound almost calculated. [29 Jan 2005, p.58]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sounds like an even less energetic Alicia Keys. [24 Jun 2006, p.43]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It’s hard to see where Bugg goes from here: he’s either a man still in search of a niche or, more worryingly, locked into the wrong one.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tongue-in-cheek humour is Pump’s biggest selling point, but many of the album’s 16 songs (most of which have a running time of just over two minutes) feel like little more than regurgitated punchlines or uninspired variations on themes already set up and adequately executed on the rapper’s early tracks.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sure, 'J.Lo' is competent, but like Lopez's voice, it lacks sincerity and warmth.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Despite some positives, Gesaffelstein isn’t able to recreate past glories, nor advance on them--or even successfully reinvent himself. By the end of it, you’re mostly left feeling confused and underwhelmed.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Through this, In Plain Sight has a frustrating tendency to lean on cliché; there’s a nagging feeling of déjà vu in listening to a record that has been made thousands of times before.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A pleasant listen, but it's hardly fresh.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Honesty is often lost in overproduction, both in the music and in his lyricism. It is listenable, summery and occasionally thought-provoking, but tired in its laboured pushes for emotional sincerity.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Occasionally they hit an addictive groove, but you'd hope so given that the songs are each five to 10 minutes long. Messy, and not in the good way.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ant's famous sartorial attention to detail doesn't extend to the music here, as experimentalism meanders into the bizarre and unlistenable.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Many of the songs deal in wavy synths and trap beats, but a few tracks show an appetite for experimentation that reflects poorly on the rest of the album.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    With only three 'songs' to speak of here, 'All Watched Over...' smacks of another great British songwriter having their melodic nous chewed away by electro-moths. [7 Aug 2004, p.49]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 85 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    They peddle the same sort of fake-rustic rootsiness that seems to be colonising our era: all these flatpack off-the-peg dreams of Ruritania that iPad-stashing mid-lifes have taken up as a counterpoint to their rabid technophilia.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Even at best, though, something rings false about Better Than Heavy. It never sounds like a self-funded album made by angry people.