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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    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Invented
    If there's one thing that this Arizonan four-piece have been masters of since their inception in the early '90s, it's consistently possessing the over-bearing sentimentality of a teenage girl. Their seventh studio album certainly doesn't veer very far from their past emotional sensibilities.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hurricane
    In revisiting the production of her '80s records she paradoxically produces something that sounds timeless.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Condors
    There's two sides to Nedry. One is given to taking faintly voguish reference points, lopping off the sharp edges and smoothing out the kinks. It's pretty, but weirdly bloodless....The other is less polite....Message to the band: ignore your nicer side in future.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Defamation Of Strickland Banks
    Not a bad record then, but one that's debased by the disappointment of one of the UK's bright hip-hop hopes selling soul rather than surprises.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    United Nations of Sound
    Richard Paul Ashcroft has assembled that most ruggedly authentic of musical backings, a team of LA session players, and walked them through all of his most anodyne default settings, at a deadeningly flat pace.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Losing Sleep
    He's made one of the best British albums of the year--that's why he should be feted.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Own Side Now
    Similarities to She And Him abound, but minus Zooey's showtune splendour, the vulnerability in Caitlin's voice chimes as true as the clink of a quarter in an old jukebox.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lights
    It's an impressive attempt to drag folk music out of the hayloft and onto the dancefloor and it marks the emergence of a smart, sincere and talented new pop star.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Can't Fly
    Throw in the tinny synth on 'Fish In The Sky' and this album couldn't get any more late-'70s if it tried. If it was a TV programme, it'd be Starsky & Hutch--a dubious honour to say the least.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Senior
    It is pleasant, and largely forgettable.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Earth vs. the Pipettes
    The man who made the 's 'Dare'--can't add enough bells and whistles to stop the tunes from sounding like they've been faxed over from one of Stock & Aitken's duller days at the office.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    For the Ghosts Within
    For two men famed as political firebrands, Robert Wyatt and Israeli anti-Zionist and saxophonist Gilad Atzmon certainly make a beautiful noise together.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Come Around Sundown
    Ultimately, too many of these tunes are rehearsal room grooves in search of a hook.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's What I'm Thinking, Pt. 1: Photographing Snowflakes
    Guilty of knocking underdeveloped material out one minute and trying to be too clever the next, It's What I'm Thinking... is surely the most focused and mature record of his career.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Swanlights
    A record of beauty and balance, Swanlights cements Hegarty as the transgender: artsy and challenging enough for the Guardian chin-strokers, but with enough hushed melodic wallop to seduce all-comers.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Recitation
    A brutally romantic record.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lucky Shiner
    It feels like the ravishing opium dream of a Victorian gentleman explorer, trying to recreate the exoticism of a long trip abroad through a prolonged period of narcosis.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Margins
    Margins though, is mawkish and self-indulgent to the last, a wet weekend of a record, drably trudging through inelegant, wannabe-Mike Leigh vignettes into Smith's failed relationship.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mixed Race
    It's only on 'Ghetto Stars' when that ominous whisper comes to the fore, that Mixed Race excites, and a cascade of strings that don't so much make us yearn for past glories as wonder what Tricky thinks he has left to prove.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bubblegum
    It's far from bad, but if you're still waiting for a Clinic record as great as the utterly seminal Internal Wrangler, keep waiting, and probably don't hold your breath.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    1,000 Years
    Comparisons to SK will doubtless arise but the production here is sparser, with more focus on intricate oddities.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Record Collection
    And so paranoia produces, if not a great album, a respectable transition from love-him-or-hate-him brass-toting berk into a genuine, bonafide pop maverick.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Le Noise
    Young ends up smothered by unconvincing soundscapes on all but two acoustic tunes that stand out by virtue of actually not sounding like a hurricane.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Halcyon Digest
    For all its occasional lack of bite and drama, Halcyon Digest's tender, transgressive pop proves a fine and focused addition to a uniquely haunting body of work. Cherish it like you would a phantom limb.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Everything in Between
    No Age will never be legit superstars, but they have a keen and loyal fanbase, something cherishable in a year likely to be paradoxically remembered for forgettable chancers.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Public Strain
    Public Strain is an album that invites you in and lets you at least stay for tea.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    King Night
    King Night is sick. Not just in the sense that it's outstandingly good but in the fact that it seems extremely unwell.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ring
    Glasser's glowing debut offers more melodic and emotional consummation than almost any of her peers can muster, poised in a genuinely transcendent golden balance between the stern, the spacious and the gaudily sparkling. A very precious Ring indeed.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crush
    This is technically the fourth full-length they've released, and it seems AV don't quite reinvent themselves under pressure so much as contort themselves into bigger, better and weirder ways to take everybody's ears on a massive tangent.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good Things
    Much of this album, with its gritty street-level reportage of booze-alleviated dereliction and crooked politicians, feel so perfect for right now.
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