NOW Magazine's Scores

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For 2,812 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 43% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Miss Anthropocene
Lowest review score: 20 Testify
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,287 out of 2812
  2. Mixed: 1,452 out of 2812
  3. Negative: 73 out of 2812
2812 music reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    That Lucky Old Sun
    It appears that Wilson came up with a couple of tunes about his own troubled life but realized it might be too much of a bummer, so he tacked on a few happy-sappy Beach Boys throwbacks to make for a sunny little song cycle about a magical place filled with sun, sand and surfer girls.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mechanical Bull
    Mechanical Bull is adequate arena rock, a collection of songs fit to play on Guitar Hero.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Uno!
    It comes off like a neutered reprise of the band's decades-old spirit.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Beautiful Lie
    Wading through almost an hour of smoky-voiced lonely-heart ballads like You Only Call Me When You're Drunk, Late Night Partner and Until Tomorrow Then is a yawn-inducing exercise that makes you question whether Harcourt's really this sad or if he's just putting on a lugubrious front.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Going Back
    He sticks so closely to the original arrangements that his shortcomings as a vocalist are painfully evident. Had he tried to reinterpret the classics even a little bit, we wouldn't be so quick to compare his singing to the originals.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Come Around Sundown
    The Followill boys were experimenting and started leading us somewhere. The fact that Come Around Sundown falls short, then, is all the more disappointing.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Last 2 Walk
    A track like 'Weed, Blow, Pills' shamelessly promotes narcotics and, even worse, goes Mike Jones on us to get its redundant point across, ultimately cementing the main problem with this album: nauseating repetition.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Babel
    This much-anticipated follow-up essentially repeats the foot-stomping, banjo-picking formula, but scrubs away the subtlety.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    WZRD
    These directionless, half-baked jams may show a young artist trying to find himself and mature, but he sure isn't there yet.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bad Blood
    Lyrics are corny and sometimes funny.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This
    All the reckless abandon the New York Dolls name conjures, the spontaneous handclaps, sloppy guitar-slashing and youthful over-indulgence that made those early Dolls recordings such a kick are sadly nowhere to be found here.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Chinese Democracy
    For all the wank and bluster throughout the album’s 14 tracks, the bottom line is that the shit simply doesn’t rock.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    F.A.M.E.
    If you already didn't like Brown – he would classify you as a "hater" – this album's combination of lewd (Wet The Bed, No Bullshit) and saccharine (Next 2 You, Should've Kissed You) content, delivered in that gross, oozing cadence of his, will only aggravate you further.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Don't Look Down
    Given Grey’s connection to music’s biggest headline-makers, it’s ironic that her own output isn’t all that memorable.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    One Man Revolution
    An album that's high on good intentions but low on spark.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Back From The Dead
    Reanimation never sounded so lifeless.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Nine Lives
    This record finds Winwood on a clichéd existential journey into jazzy world music territory, which should play well with the over-50 soft cock rock set, who for some inexplicable reason don’t seem to mind six-minute sax solos.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    That's Why God Made the Radio
    Most of the album is moronic Mike Love nostalgia that makes Kokomo sound good in retrospect.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Idlewild
    Their well-honed flamboyance has finally given way to full-blown pretension, the lyrics that used to be an afterthought hidden behind a painfully contrived yet musically unimpressive ragtimey veneer of muted trumpets, shoo-bop, shoo-wahs and happily jingling vaudeville pianas.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Colin Meloy Sings Live!
    For diehards only.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    DFA Remixes: Chapter 2
    Only their radical overhaul of Nine Inch Nails' Hand That Feeds shows any sign of creativity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Two Men With The Blues
    Don’t count on hearing any lively back-and-forth exchanges, though, they’re clearly too respectful of each other to risk stepping on any toes in public.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fly International Luxurious Art
    Rae is prepped and, in his own focused, deliberate way, amped, but the production and arrangements are generally uninspired.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Icky Thump
    Most of Icky Thump's songs sound half-assed, with keyboard parts thrown in ad hoc, but at least they had the good sense to trim the piano bar balladry.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Age Of The Understatement
    This might be news to the Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner, but for every artist there’s a point where aspiration exceeds ability. The Last Shadow Puppets, his new studio dalliance with pal Miles Kane, have way overshot it on The Age Of The Understatement.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Content
    Jon King's vocals sound especially diminished, a reality underscored by the occasional electronic manipulation, while the cluttered mix overcompensates for repetitive songwriting. Without the vitality of youth, Gang of Four risk drowning in the sea of bands they inspired.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Scene Of The Crime
    LaVette has little rapport with Hood, and her uneasiness interpreting his lyrics and the strange cover choices (Elton John's 'Talking Old Soldiers,' Willie Nelson's 'Somebody Pick Up My Pieces') comes through in every vocal performance.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Golden Delicious
    The latest release from former Soul Coughing frontman Mike Doughty isn’t quite as annoying as Matthews’s catalogue, but it comes close.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Consolers Of The Lonely
    It’s a much more musically diverse album than the Raconteurs have done before, but there are many more misses than hits among these 14 tracks.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There Are Rules
    On their fifth album, the Get Up Kids sound like a band who resent what made them popular in the first place.
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