Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,713 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 53% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Sign O' the Times [Deluxe Edition]
Lowest review score: 0 nyc ghosts & flowers
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10,450 out of 12713
  2. Mixed: 1,949 out of 12713
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12713
12713 music reviews
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    • 87 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Have You in My Wilderness
    Have You In My Wilderness embraces the specific, rather than the eternal, and in her narrowed focus you can sense a palpable self-confidence and a hard-won precision.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Black City
    The production is as inventive and immersive as ever, but what separates this album from the last is that Dear mostly sticks with one theme all the way through.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Hard Luck Stories: 1972-1982 [Box Set]
    It’s the rare box set where the rarities feel integral to the compilation’s impact, tying up loose ends and illuminating areas previously shrouded in darkness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    One Life Stand
    One Life Stand is their most consistent and most complete record.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Un Verano Sin Ti
    Un Verano Sin Ti is a cohesively packaged voyage through the various sounds synonymous with the Caribbean region—reggaetón, reggae, bomba, Dominican dembow, Dominican mambo, and bachata, among others.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Slow Forever
    Slow Forever thrives in that existential anxiety, as though Wunder and Fell realized they had a lot to lose but even more to gain. As surprising as it may seem for an album where death, despair, and destruction linger in every word, Cobalt gambled on resurrection and, against the odds, advanced.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Rocket
    Sometimes, there really is no substitute for the revelations that come when an artist unlocks the mysteries of their work. But it’s certainly the reason why Rocket feels like one of the year’s most endlessly generous records, as Alex G’s restraint is our gift that keeps on giving.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    HEAVN
    Filled with personal memories, affirmations of self, and gazes of society’s racial strife, HEAVN is a singular mix of clear-eyed optimism and Black girl magic.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Habits & Contradictions
    He's probably not going to be a break-out star, but it's hard to imagine that there will be many more original or satisfying rap long-players this year.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Gossamer
    Anyone can manufacture hope through a slogan, but there's an empathy and humanity that simply can't be faked as Angelakos tries to figure out how to stay atop his life. It's hard to think of a more noble goal for a pop album.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Stay Positive
    While they continue to prove themselves a more convincing classic rock act than should be possible in 2008, there's a tension in this album's lyrics between old-fashioned storytelling and breaking down the fourth wall. Stay Positive is their mostly successful bid to have it both ways.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Orquídeas
    Uchis’ vocal performance across the record represents a leap forward too: 12 years ago, she possessed the more limited—but still soulful—range of a lounge singer; now she stretches her voice to a fluttering whistle register on “¿Cómo Así?” When she dives into Latin American idioms, Uchis is unstoppable.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Maths + English
    His post-genre American-mythos statement.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    A Collection of Rarities and Previously Unreleased Material
    This remastered Collection of Rarities is intriguing beyond its archival purposes, as it traces the evolution of an artist over the course of 11 years.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Mi Sei Apparso Come un Fantasma
    Fantasma offers a better introduction to Songs: Ohia than the last couple of proper albums.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Swim
    Despite his chameleonic tendencies, Dan Snaith retains his singular identity as an artist--and Swim is a reminder that even at his most challenging, the man's compositional capabilities can dazzle.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Cross
    Cross is a harsh and mostly instrumental set that nonetheless plays like the ideal crossover electronic-pop record. Justice knows how to sequence a dance album to avoid drag and boredom.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Songs in A&E
    Songs in A&E is certainly Spiritualized's best work in 10 years.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Fossora
    With her 10th album, Fossora, she is grounded back on earth, searching for hope in death, mushrooms, and matriarchy, and finding it in bass clarinet and gabber beats.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    A Place To Bury Strangers
    A Place to Bury Strangers may not be easy for would-be record buyers to find--it's currently limited to 500 copies and put out by, um, Killer Pimp Records--but it's worth every effort.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Tether
    Her precision never feels overly technical or stiff. Tether is as intuitive and loose as it is intentional.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Drifters/Love Is the Devil
    These records, steeped in reference and atmosphere, draw on memory but, being so textured and tactile, they bring the focus back to the present moment.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Acid Rap
    The structure is as expansive and freewheeling as any strange trip.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Crazy for You
    This record is carefree and instantly likable--even if it doesn't seem to care what you think of it.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Reward
    Her music speaks loudest in its calmest moments, and Reward is an album most remarkable for how it fills its space.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    The Regal Years 1997-2004 [Box Set]
    The Regal Years does a thorough job of not just compiling the Beta Band's recorded legacy, but underscoring the real reason why they're missed--it’s not just for the music they left behind, but for the infinite possibilities within it that had yet to be explored.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Rated O
    Oneida are the only band running that I could tell a listener with a straight face, yes, it's worth three discs, and it's worth your time.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Let It Come Down
    Granted, a few tracks here require perhaps too much patience, or never peak as one might expect, or are overburdened with sound. But even these lesser tracks contain the simple, yet stunning affirmations that make Pierce so engaging.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Gold
    Restraint, patience, trust: time and again they make GOLD sound like an incredibly wise record.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Singles 1978-2016 [Box Set]
    This is still a staggering monument all the same, an elaborately detailed portrait of a shambolic artist whose astonishing productivity, creative restlessness, and utter disdain for the niceties of civil society know no bounds.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Total Loss
    Total Loss uses the common tools of pop expression-- four-minute songs, autobiography, choruses, confession-- to create a work of poignant and devastating art.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Thank Me Later
    Thank Me Later presents its star as a bottle-serviced hip-hop headcase tirelessly searching for love and good times while caught up in his own thoughts.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    When I Get Home
    The album rewards repetition, in listening and in execution.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    A Sufi And A Killer
    Together [with producer Gaslamp Killer] they've created A Sufi and a Killer, one of the most fascinating slabs of hallucinogenic head-nod music to arise from Southern California's post-hip-hop vanguard.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart
    A testament to the influences of their youth; echoes of Lennon and McCartney, Simon and Garfunkel, Nick Drake, and Fairport Convention glide through the album before tiptoeing into a corner and reappearing a few tracks later.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    True Romance
    Like 90s pop stars turned 10s pop sophisticates Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé, Charli XCX stamps her personality across the entire project, and True Romance suggests she'll be worth following for a while.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Punk
    The Nagoya-based band’s second album, PUNK, is terrifically over the top.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Is All Over... The Map
    Some of the rowdiest Giant Sand music since the near-grunge of 1992's Center of the Universe.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Raw Power [Reissue]
    This reissue-- available in a 2xCD, budget-priced Legacy Edtion set and as a more elaborate $60 4xCD Deluxe Edition-- doesn't attempt anything quite so ambitious. Instead, the main impetus is bringing a remastered version of the original Bowie mix back to market.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Shine A Light
    Though not quite the slap in the face issued by their debut, even this album's very worst song shines a light on what's wrong with our landscape. Find it and follow.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Clark
    What’s always set Clark apart is his eclecticism, dynamism, and flair for the dramatic, all of which is on fine display here. His tracks don’t drop as much as they slip or swerve, forever off-balance.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Fuckbook
    As much as I'm looking forward to the next one from Ira, Georgia, and James proper, it's gonna have to work awfully hard to match the effortless blast that is Fuckbook.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Miss Universe
    Yanya’s songs reflect a woman who’s uncertain of how much of herself to reveal to the world. That is both the allure of Miss Universe and what augurs even brighter things to come.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Nostalgialator
    As much as Ladd continually references the past, from Dr. Livingston and Picasso to Minor Threat, Funkadelic, and De La Soul, he moves the air with a beat that's entirely his own, the sum of too many parts to reflect any one too prominently.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Front Row Seat to Earth
    As much of a throwback as Mering can seem, at her best she captures her era in her words.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Laulu Laakson Kukista
    Laulu connotes this youth, motion, and playfulness in various states of repair and construction, and it does so by alternating well-formed, multi-faced pop songs with abstract head-scratchers, each component as warmly evocative and strangely necessary as the last.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Seek Shelter
    Even at its most sophisticated, Seek Shelter retains Iceage’s restless spirit.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Space 1.8
    That deliberate smallness, that inner focus, is the source of much of this understated record’s outsized power. For all its overdubbed layers, “Space 8,” like the album itself, feels as simple and as steadying as breathing.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Patterns in Repeat
    There’s a whole history in these songs. There’s also a certain honesty, plainer here than in Marling’s more ornate work.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996
    The broad sweep of the anthology—from state-sanctioned folk-rock to disco, exotica, musique concrete, and jazz in many guises—offers a breathtaking introduction to Ukrainian music’s scope and diversity.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Live in Paris
    Live in Paris is the victory lap leaving us wanting more.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Electric Lady
    Taken as a whole, The Electric Lady is a convincing argument for the virtues of micromanagement, but some of the most powerful, tender moments come from acknowledging limits.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Documentary
    The end result is a rich, triumphant sonic tapestry; you can hear every dollar that went into it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Surf
    While written with absolute precision and poetic skill that rivals the best rappers currently working, Chance's words tumble from his mouth effortlessly, as if he's already done with the verse by the time he recites it, looking to what's next.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Okovi
    Okovi’s dramas are hard to miss.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Alright, Still
    In terms of a debut record-- and especially given the weight of expectation placed on her to deliver something special-- Alright, Still isnâ??t anything else but a fantastic success.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Through The Windowpane
    Through the Windowpane is at times a last-dance hallelujah, at other times an open wound, but it's never meager, and hardly ever mundane.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Andorra
    Andorra will undoubtedly win Caribou a lot of new fans and rightfully so; it's a big, bold, tuneful collection that impresses with its ambition and meticulous arrangement.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Shall We Go on Sinning So That Grace May Increase?
    The resulting Shall We Go On Sinning carries itself with the strength of a soft prayer, masterfully fusing jazz, deep house, and minimalism into an enormous, featherlight shield.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    New Blue Sun
    New Blue Sun is the most emotionally direct music André has ever made. The methods might be oblique, the instrumentation often unclear, the man himself occasionally missing in action or off on his own pursuits, but the sense of intermixed sadness, loss, and peace that permeates this music is impossible to miss.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    In Ear Park
    Ambitious and complex, it's stuffed with cocooning harmonies and shimmering, sunlight-smacking-the-Pacific melodies--a languid, easy West Coast record (think Randy Newman or SMiLE), infused with classic East Coast anxiety.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Moon Rang Like a Bell
    Hundred Waters are always set to simmer. That mostly works in their favor on The Moon Rang Like a Bell, as the album’s strength comes from its gradually accruing moments.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Bootleg: Detroit
    Even the dubious choice to make an official live album out of a lo-fi audience recording proves a good one. A little added echo goes a long way for Morphine's spare sound, and fills in the blanks far better than a crystal clear soundboard recording ever could.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    High Land, Hard Rain [30th Anniversary Edition]
    High Land is not only his first statement of intent as a songwriter, it’s his most innovative, his most influential, and his most timelessly vivid. Peaking early can be bittersweet, but the album is all the better for it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Seek Magic
    A record of achingly gorgeous dance-pop that captures both the joy of nostalgia and the melancholic sense that we're grasping for good times increasingly out of reach.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Left Of The Dial: Dispatches From The '80s Underground
    You don't judge a compilation by its hits alone, and it doesn't take long to find the set's weakness: sequencing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    It Still Moves
    An album by turns beautiful and possessed, by others raucous and fiery.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Days Are Gone
    Days Are Gone's is so polished that Haim could easily be seen as clinical and lifeless, but their lighthearted attitude complements their recording rigor.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain
    Dreamt for Light Years proves less targeted than 2001's It's a Wonderful Life, but this is a check in the plus column: Linkous sounds best when he's warring with structure and sound, when his songs sound unsettled.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Impossible Spaces
    Impossible Spaces isn't simply the most accessible and immediately rewarding album to bear Sandro Perri's name, it also serves as a handy musical roadmap to its maker's sinuous creative course.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Pool
    Pool is an introspective record, tailormade for lonesome nights.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Homesongs
    But Homesongs is not simply a procession of trembling troubadour tunes. For each turn of boxwood fragility, there's also one of bold and confident songwriting.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Girl in the Half Pearl
    If you come to Girl in the Half Pearl looking to find a soothing voice in the wilderness, you will instead find a complex maze of battered beats and warped shouts. The gripping soundscape doesn’t allow you to watch its protagonist’s transformation from the safety of the back row—it shoves you through the screen.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Skeleton
    It's a feat the band manages to pull off again and again, track after track, over the course of Skeleton, and the true heart of the record: making the familiar seem fresh and giddy pop seem like indie manna.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ephorize
    Her lyrical tricks are unexpected and endlessly quotable .
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    03/07-09/07
    The songs here are almost all identical: polyrhythmic miniatures built by small drums and shakers, clouded by blankets of echo and reverb; deliberately basic structures; short, and in their own way, catchy and pretty.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    No Said Date
    Masta Killa has delivered one the most urgent, straightforward Wu releases since the group's debut over a decade ago.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Kicking Television: Live In Chicago
    So this is what A Ghost Is Born is supposed to sound like.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away
    These songs contain a newfound lushness, an O’Rourke-ian vibrancy that allows each instrument to express its particular tonalities to the fullest.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Lucky Shiner
    The dusty melancholia of Lucky Shiner feels earned and lived-in. It's a far cry from just naming your new bedroom-pop band Double Dare.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments, Pt. 2 [EP]
    It’s an Aphex Twin EP more than just an EP, and as those go it’s very good.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Mr. M
    It's to Lambchop's credit that their music avoids comfortable resolutions. Instead, it hangs there, no moral, no judgment.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Hive Mind
    This egalitarian spirit and anti-hierarchical approach to song-making fuel the sleekest, most robust music of their career.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Source
    On Source, she weaves together so many threads so masterfully that she instantly establishes herself as a foundational voice in the larger, ongoing story of the London jazz scene. Her debut is a stunning introduction.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    ZUU
    There are few forces more powerful than the feeling of belonging. In creating his stunning Miami rap opus, Denzel Curry taps into that, demonstrating that he belongs among its most distinguished representatives in the process.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    If You're Reading This It's Too Late [Mixtape]
    On If You’re Reading This, all of this chest beating is delivered over the most darkly hypnotic beats Drake’s graced since So Far Gone.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Capacity
    Capacity is a remarkable record, one that proves that Big Thief are not a one-trick pony, they are the full circus.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Boygenius [EP]
    For anyone still struggling to tell any woman with a guitar apart, the deft collaboration and complex collective songwriting on the boygenius EP is a great place to learn.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Devotion
    Nothing about Devotion feels like a burden. Instead, it’s so personable and candid that it feels like a privilege to spend a few minutes hearing what Tirzah has to say, imperfections and all.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ambivalence Avenue
    While Ambivalence Avenue is an excellent album by any measure, Bibio deserves extra credit for venturing outside of his established comfort zone.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Cee-Lo Green Is The Soul Machine
    A strong experimental record that draws on Cee-Lo's malleable style of rap... one of the year's strongest hip-hop albums to date.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Hannah
    The album oscillates between emotional registers, balancing profound quiet with strummy, emphatic pleas about how we might better comport ourselves in the world; there’s a sense that even at their most gentle, these songs are transmitting something deeply earnest and hard-won. This is as true of Read’s lyrics as of her arrangements, which are newly rich and rewarding.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    April
    The album draws its power not simply from the quality of Kozelek's songwriting, but from the close intertwining of words and music, which makes his albums much more essential than any book he could ever publish.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ashes Grammar
    Ashes Grammar draws you in by offering outstanding moments in strange contexts; you'll re-listen to hear specific pieces even though you're unable to remember exactly when and how they occur.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Black Tambourine
    That Complete Recordings has long gone out of print makes Black Tambourine an essential acquisition for current In the Red, Woodsist, and Slumberland loyalists. And even for old-school adherents, the bonus tracks included warrant a repurchase.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Within and Without
    Within and Without is an excellent demonstration of what happens when, even after the buzz-band cycle has faded, you continue to investigate a sound on your own hushed, ambitious terms.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Everyone's Crushed
    Ultimately, it’s not the hazy discontent that makes Everyone’s Crushed indelible but its livewire sound.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    What Now
    Every song here, even the slow stuff, feels giant and propulsive—a grand celestial tour of rock and R&B, guided by one of the few singers and multi-instrumentalists with the range and intuition to pull it off.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Picaresque
    In developing into such a formidable flock, the Decemberists not only have far outstripped those ridiculous comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel that dogged Her Majesty, but have also allowed Meloy to widen his lyrical scope and hone his ambitious narratives.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Flower of Devotion
    There’s a nagging instinct that pop songs are supposed to have more pieces to them, or that drummer Eric McGrady is supposed to be using more than half of a drum set. Stick with it, though, and something even better emerges from those gaps. By leaving their songs exposed, Dehd show how much they believe in them, and rightfully so. Their confidence in their concision is the best part.
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