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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    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good at Falling
    People may have been wondering who Bain was when she first released music, but on her debut album she’s made damn sure you won’t forget her.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Chloe and the Next 20th Century
    Besides its flirtations with big band-style instrumentals, ‘Chloë and the Next 20th Century’ serves as a gorgeously crafted highlight reel of the singer’s many previous styles and guises, rather than a complete reinvention.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Before Love Came To Kill Us
    For the most part, ‘Before Love Came To Kill Us’ is a beautiful, heart-wrenching debut that sees its creator come good on her early promise.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sketchy.
    ‘Sketchy’ takes the best, feral pulses from tUnE-yArDs’ DIY material and the richest sounds of later records in its doubling down on societal crises. If Garbus was worried about finding inspiration, she needn’t have been.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Words & Music by Saint Etienne
    While Saint Etienne will always sound like Saint Etienne, these songs are their sharpest in over a decade.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fade
    Save perhaps for an unusual dalliance with folk ('I'll Be Around'), little new personal ground is broken, but their songwriting chops and sound design remain cherishable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    England Is a Garden
    Cornershop’s cult is one you’ve either already signed over your seventh-born to or will watch pass you by with a fascinated bemusement.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Great Destroyer
    Anger has always been at the root of Low's modus operandi; the difference, ultimately, is that where once it lurked behind marble pillars, it now stomps and snorts like a pig on a griddle. [29 Jan 2005, p.59]
    • New Musical Express (NME)
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heavy is the Head
    Stormzy came out swinging for his second album – it’s big, it’s broad and it is mostly brilliant.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mas Amable
    The album sits at the intersection of ambient, house and dancehall crafting an intricate and comforting world to get lost in.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Car
    ‘The Car’ is almost overwhelming in terms of its ambition and scope, but provides ample motive to revisit this record over and over again.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    4:44
    These heartfelt, confessional apologies are delivered via Jay’s most concise, straightforward album in years. 10 tracks and 36 minutes long, this is a filler-free return to form after 2013’s patchy and bloated ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rooty
    The nerve of it all is breathtaking. Turbo-beats poke up a gospel-jazz revivalist meeting, a mariachi band wanders into the hazy disco sashay of 'Broken Dreams', a Gary Numan sample gets bludgeoned to credibility in the Van Helden-esque pogo of 'Where's Your Head At?'.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Confield
    Essentially more surgical sonic detritus, it is Autechre nuanced, minutely reprocessed and at the top of their game.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Noughty by Nature [Mixtape]
    He keeps growing musically, challenging what drill music can be. On ‘Noughty By Nature’, he confirms he’s a genre juggernaut, but in wearing his heart a little more on his sleeve, he’s also evolving right in front of us.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Versions of Modern Performance
    Compelling from its first note to its very last, the record presents a band who, yes, are still in their infancy, but clearly know who they are and what that sounds like.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    WeirdOs
    There is little room to breathe and you will practically be beaten into submission by Keary’s snare by the time you reach closer ‘Slap Juice’. But this is a confident, assured debut from O., two instrumentalists at the height of their craft – with a real sense of humour to boot.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Infinite Granite
    The risk here pays dividends. It’s their most ambitious and cohesive album to date and embracing their shoegaze selves brings renewal: for a band known for torment and chaos, it’s a joy to hear them sounding so hopeful.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Doris
    He doesn’t want to be a powerhouse rap star. Doris may alienate people looking for him to be that. For everyone else, this is a powerful record.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fearless Movement
    ‘Fearless Movement’ feels like more of a personal piece than ‘Heaven and Earth’, leaning more towards humanism than the spiritualism that has so enraptured Washington in the past. The key to his appeal, though, remains unchanged; he makes music that’s apparently limitless in scope and yet joyously immediate, even to the casual jazz listener.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Piñata
    Gibbs’ coarsely inventive flow works perfectly with Madlib’s imperfectly human beats.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Vampire Weekend
    Their strength is that, musically as well as sartorially, they’re unafraid to plunder and repurpose styles previously considered naffer than Bluetooth headsets.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cool It Down
    With ‘Cool It Down’ the trio disregard expectations with ease, bursting through conjectures with tracks that make the apocalypse sound fun.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Seldom Seen Kid
    The Seldom Seen Kid is a stunning record, a career-best from a band whose consistency has seldom been matched by any British indie band this decade.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Melt
    Bayston’s brilliant at producing these repetitive but nuanced melodies, most of which knot themselves inside your brain and won’t let go.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Other People's Lives
    Other People’s Lives has achieved a wonderful thing. It is both calm and collected, but wildly unhinged at its core, which bubbles away with insecurities and mysteries. Stats’ record belongs to Ed Seed and his band, but in reality, he’s telling all our stories just as much as his own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On Sunset
    It might not be quite the experimental opus you feel Weller’s still holding back, but that feels a churlish complaint when the songs are this well-written. There’s a lightness of touch and a tenderness at ‘On Sunset”s heart.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Disrespectful [Mixtape]
    Bad Boy Chiller Crew clearly just want to keep make songs that purposefully and brilliantly celebrate the hedonistic corners of life – and that desire should be embraced. They locate their power not just in the recording booth, but on stage, the race track and the dancefloor, fully self-aware and seemingly unstoppable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gifted
    Given its creator’s effortless vocals, smart lyricism and obvious ability to craft new bangers, ‘Gifted’ will only add to the clamour surrounding Koffee’s name: time will tell how far she will continue to rise from this point.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything I Know About Love
    The vocals and instrumentation help the album ultimately overcome its few shortcomings, such as its occasionally unwieldy lyrics (“I’m scared of flies / I’m scared of guys” is one such culprit on ‘Valentine’). Yet the lyrics also give us one of ‘Everything I Know About Love’’s primary delights: Laufey’s candid self-expression wrapped in the dreamy lilt of the old jazz standards.
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