Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,704 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: 10,441 out of 12704
  2. Mixed: 1,949 out of 12704
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12704
12704 music reviews
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    • 88 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Arular
    With all the column inches and message board posts arguing about whether M.I.A. is an opportunist or a clever contextualist, genuine or a fraud, full of good intentions or no specific intentions at all, the closest thing to a truism about Arular is that it's a taut, invigorating distillation of the world's most thrilling music; a celebration of contradictions and aural globalization that recasts the tag "world music" as the ultimate in communicative pop rather than a symbol of condescending piety.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Alternative To Love
    Although Tchad Blake's mixing is a fabulous constant, his consistency means the weaker tracks are revealed for what they are: solid formula-followers lacking the elusive intangible charm that an unexpected note or rhythmic tic can bring.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Silent Alarm
    This is a solid, intelligent album that a lot of people will love-- one that'll slot onto indie-crossover CD racks right beside the debuts from Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, and the Futureheads.
    • 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.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 24 Critic Score
    Hotel
    If Moby has accomplished anything with Hotel, it's that he may have become the rare musical artist equally despised by both of modern music criticism's warring camps.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let Us Never Speak Of It Again
    A huge success, a fresh-sounding record that doesn't feel too obviously indebted to anything that's come before it, much less like anything Out Hud have made before.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Surrounded By Silence
    Whether Herren is using Surrounded By Silence to spread the word about some of his favorite acts, or to insta-build a portfolio of outside production work, or a little of both, it's a much different-- and far more inconsistent-- affair than previous Prefuse efforts.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lullabies To Paralyze
    Lullabies occasionally evokes early Black Sabbath and nods to a few psych-rock stalwarts but, like most Queens' records, it's oddly unclassifiable. It's also troublingly inconsistent.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Forest
    Here A-Frames teeter on the line between consistency and monotony, falling mostly on the former side-- their endless doomsaying can grow tiresome but more often it's fun to play along.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ghetto Bells
    Songs like "Vesuvius"-- not to mention "Rambunctious Cloud" and "Gnats"-- have depth, a cagey charm, and an elusive mystery that demand not just repeated but aggressive listening. Chesnutt and his collaborators don't make that level of attention easy, but they do make it worthwhile.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Church Gone Wild / Chirpin Hard
    Naturally, the double-album's peaks occur when both members' ideas intersect.... With these moments, Hella back up their ambition with impressive amounts of ingenuity and elbow grease, creating a White Album for disgruntled Gen Xers still finding solace in shoeboxes full of NES cartridges.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Press The Spacebar
    A mess of an album.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    B-Sides & Rarities
    Proves a better retrospective than the equally matter-of-factly titled The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    10th Avenue Freakout
    Too many songs proceed from point A to B with little variation or depth. Those tracks seem to equivocate between the collagist Fog and the pop Fog, reconciling their tensions instead of exploiting them.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Flies The Fields
    Sounds like a step backward.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    The Angels Of Light Sing 'Other People'
    Gira's songs have many one-of-a-kind nuances that tether the album even when it ventures.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    The Fallen Leaf Pages
    Their penchant to recreate the music they love leaves little room for innovation, and ultimately the album has the freshness of an unearthed time capsule.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Akron/Family
    Despite the boundlessness of their instrumentation, Akron/Family maintain remarkable warmth... playing at restrained volumes that invite close listening.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Yr Atal Genhedlaeth
    All Yr Atal Genhedlaeth lacks is the unifying ambition of the great SFA records.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Human After All
    Where the weight of expectation and precedence get to have a say, this feels like not just a failure, but a heartbreaker.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Employment
    It's deadly entertaining in bursts-- especially if you pick out the right bursts.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Origin Vol. 1
    But forget about style and charisma: This band has no hooks and no energy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Wind In The Wires
    Wind in the Wires is like Bright Eyes' Digital Ash in a Digital Urn if Nick Cave had made it, a fertile nexus of tradition, technology, and Wolf's powerful pipes.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Evens
    The Evens positively brims with revelations, not least of which is the consistent effectiveness of MacKaye's singing voice.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Meltdown
    Sadly missing here is Ash's sense of vulnerability, a key element to their charm.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Kasabian
    Kasabian is brash, loutish, and seems liable at times to cut you; the consistent kick drum beat throughout it is like a great party's heartbeat. But like the roustabout in the corner, drinking all the lager and scratching up your old records, it can be more loudmouthed than substantial.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Blue Eyed In The Red Room
    A restful wash of clean, simple lines, unfractured beats, and neon-tinted melodies.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Golden Ocean
    It's fantastic stuff-- at its best, the innate catchiness of Hersh's writing gets a shot in the arm from her cavalier vocals and musical caterwauling.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    No Wow
    No Wow steps up to the promise of their EPs and debut LP, a boisterous reminder that kids can still hook up to songs that are little more than a guitar and attitude.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Set Yourself On Fire
    Set Yourself on Fire is about breaking up and breaking down, and as such the album feels wontedly cathartic, like the moments right after you hit your emotional nadir and start getting your shit together. Stars handle the mood delicately with few slip-ups; my only complaint is that they never handle much of anything else.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Who's Your New Professor
    Forget the details: The sheer comfort of this stuff can charm just about anyone, from the rock bar to the office to your grandma's house.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Let Them Drink
    [An] entertaining, varied rock record.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Hurricane Bar
    Hurricane Bar has diluted the two things that made Mando Diao's first album distinct: immediacy and a sense of fun.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    A Few Steps More
    Sounds a hell of a lot like Stereolab.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Massacre
    The Massacre's best tracks have 50 dropping club-clatter and gangster lean to show us the mind behind the six-pack, gat, and Teflon.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Some Cities
    In the three years since Last Broadcast, Doves have cultivated a better understanding of their strengths and limitations, and Some Cities beams with a revivified looseness.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Frances The Mute
    A homogeneous shitheap of stream-of-consciousness turgidity.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    In The Clear
    The album tries to conjure the anchorlessness of travel, but instead it sounds oddly weightless, floating by pleasantly but unobtrusively and rarely demanding your attention.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Soviet Kitsch
    There's a wealth of great material here... all diminished, to various degrees, by genre affectations.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Back To Me
    Back to Me is a bolder album [than Failer], with Edwards figuring more prominently and actively in the more personal songs.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Solarized
    There's nothing terribly new to the electro-psych sound he's worked up for himself-- it actually throws back quite a bit to the Roses-- but here he has a clutch of great melodies for him to hang his honey-dipped voice on, and he delivers those nicely.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    Aha Shake Heartbreak
    The album's one redeeming element is the band itself, who-- over the course of one EP and two albums-- have improved tenfold.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Earth Is Blue
    The most satisfying and sheerly transfixing work of the twosome's career.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Dignity And Shame
    Regrettably, no other song here has a lyric nearly as compelling as "Andalucia"-- a major flaw for what is essentially a pedal steel-enhanced singer/songwriter album.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Transistor Radio
    This one is just a little tiny bit less perfectly imperfect than [Transfiguration of Vincent], but it's still got all the warmth and gentle disorganization of its predecessor-- with a few more oomphy tracks standing in for Tranfiguration's most introspective meditations.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Gemstones
    Green's self-consciously dweeby vocals hang his off-kilter lyrics like a doomed curveball.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    End Of Love
    End of Love isn't Barzalay's best collection of songs, and the production tends to gloss over the instruments so songs like "Collapse" and "When We Become" sound subdued and blandly unobtrusive.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Lost Marbles And Exploded Evidence
    Can't remember many bands whose B-sides/rarities comp things I liked as much as their full-lengths, but here's one.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Cloud Making Machine
    What Garnier can lack in feeling, he makes up for with years of technical know-how, on The Cloud Making Machine as before.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Heart Like A River
    If Ida's sound is like a river, the emotions the band conveys are simply stagnant.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 29 Critic Score
    Awake Is The New Sleep
    Like a washed-up athlete, Lee's stuck reliving his glory years.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    The Cosmic Game
    Their most focused and captivating work to date.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Woman King [EP]
    Woman King will provide eager Iron & Wine fans a welcome holdover between proper albums, but the EP also serves a larger developmental purpose, marking one more evolutionary hop for Sam Beam, and christening a new genre-- post-basement.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Fear Of A Black Tangent
    He typically sounds like David Allan Grier with amyl nitrate in the air. Our man raps in an "ohmygawd this is sooo ridiculous" tone that can make you either think he is a jackass or a jester. My instincts say it's the latter.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Government Commissions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003
    Bottom line is that Mogwai are an insanely powerful live band, and these sharp recordings play like a unified set rather than a scraped-together compendium of disparate sessions.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Feathers
    Feathers may not have the heft of Dead Meadow's other albums, but it's easily its most listenable and satisfying from end to end.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Nashville
    As with past Rouse efforts, Nashville is always pleasant, if unexceptional.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Fast Cars, Danger, Fire And Knives [EP]
    With the quality and effort put into this release, Def Jux and Aesop Rock have done what every EP should do, provide something of unique value and create anticipation for future releases.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tree City
    Most of Tree City sounds lifted from Britt Daniel's songbook. By that, I don't mean it sounds somewhat like it. I mean, it sounds like they stole the tapes from Britt's house and scribbled their name over his.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    A Gun Called Tension
    The album loses a little of its steam toward the end, when too many songs play up the rap side of the equation over the rock, but on the whole A Gun Called Tension is surprisingly balanced and beholden to no preconceptions of how these two styles should mix.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    LCD Soundsystem
    Plenty of good-not-great stuff, and a tad unfocused.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Take Fountain
    The result is a lot like Elvis Costello's periodic returns to rock territory: snappy genre exercises from a reliable songwriter, but not much more.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Outside Closer
    What's remarkable is that instead of sounding autumnal and frigid, the bulk of this album has a warmth, an emotional weight, and a sense of underlying motion that competes damn well against the occasional fireworks. Some of these pleasures may be subtle or take time to grasp, but the sinking-in is gorgeous and worth the wait.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Negrophilia: The Album
    Its best moments are stellar and exhilarating.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Healthy Distrust
    His style has finally caught up with his intellect, and while his beats are passable but unexceptional, his voice locks onto and scans over them so ferociously they're almost obliterated.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Manzanita
    The high points of the album are the tracks that feature Todd by herself either on guitar or piano, filling the song with the trembling strength of her singing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 47 Critic Score
    Burn The Maps
    Burn the Maps often sounds like simplicity transformed into bloat in an attempt to sound interesting.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
    The Mysterious Production of Eggs might wrestle with unsavory topics, but it does so with a shrug of the shoulders, a wry smile, and a heart full of awe-inspiring song.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Out Of Breach (Manchester's Revenge)
    Out of Breach is less suited for a fucked-up dance party than just for being fucked up.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    I Am A Bird Now
    The ultimate draw is Antony's voice, and within the first two seconds of the album, it should be very clear to even the most unaware newbies that Antony has an amazing Nina Simone/Brian Ferry/Jimmy Scott vibrato, a multi-octave siren that would sound painfully lovely no matter what he was saying. Lucky for us, he fills that promise with worthy syllables.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Happiness In Magazines
    Exploring the vacated ghosts of stale forms, Coxon has breathed new life into some of rock's most bankable clichés.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Before The Poison
    This may not be a perfect album, but it is affecting and haunting.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    World's Apart
    Worlds Apart is an aspiration, an apology, the sound of confusion.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Emoh
    While this new batch of songs is pleasant and often charming, they're not as memorable or passionate as Barlow's best.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Digital Ash In A Digital Urn
    Digital Ash has the claustrophobic feel of a singer locked up with a computer, and it's distractingly chipper, like Rilo Kiley in their own Dntel homages; not every Bright Eyes record has to be an emotional epic, but Digital Ash feels like a practice run.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
    I'm Wide Awake weaves the personal and the political more fluidly than most singers even care to try, and the consummate tunefulness just strengthens those moments where he pinches a nerve.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Push The Button
    The Chemical Brothers tend to find the best results when they focus on atmospheric, buzzing instrumentals.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    The Great Destroyer
    If this album is indeed the beginning of a long, arduous journey of rediscovery and rebirth and other fun ponderous stuff, here's hoping the rest of the trip is more enjoyable than this initial misstep.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Before The Dawn Heals Us
    This is a mammoth collusion of synth gasps and distorted swirls, darker and more urban than its meadow-bound predecessor.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Wilderness
    The consistency of Wilderness' eleven songs is almost overwhelming.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    '64 - '95
    '64-'95 succeeds when Lemon Jelly stick to their bread and butter: pleasant and facile ambience.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Right Here Is Buck 65
    Filled with shimmering waves of pedal steel and slide guitar, these spare, gritty reenactments will surely please fans of his 2003 urban-folk platter Talkin' Honky Blues.... Underground hip-hop enthusiasts, however, might be put off by Buck's near-complete disregard for the rippling, sample-laden funk of his youth.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    I Sold Gold
    Its flimsiness usually finds a way to sound purposeful, and that makes Aqueduct's personal, cerebral pop worth coming back to.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Superwolf
    Soft and subtle, Superwolf is the kind of record that unwinds slowly, and is best enjoyed over multiple listens and, unsurprisingly, many glasses of wine.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Valende
    It reveals a manic, uncommon glint in their inventive fires, the unmistakable fervid gleam which accompanies artists who know exactly what they're doing, even if the rest of us don't.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Different Days
    Their songs burst open upon inspection; you must first shrink to their size, but once you do, you'll probably want to stick around for awhile.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Peanut Butter And Jelly Live At The Ginger Minge
    Another goddamn home run.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Chaos Theory: Splinter Cell 3 [Soundtrack]
    This isn't a revolutionary album for Tobin but it's a lot of fun, and works surprisingly well on its own, given the stringent requirements it had to meet.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    A Question Of Temperature
    Ultimately comes out a very solid if not revelatory record.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    School Of The Flower
    His strongest, most satisfying effort to date.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Do The Bambi
    This album, even more than their others, is like a cheap pinata: A lot of candies come out, and a few of them are bound to be stale yellowish things that don't taste like butterscotch.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    All Harm Ends Here
    All Harm Ends Here is hushed and apocryphal, but at times it sounds almost as half-hearted as it is heavy-hearted.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Trials & Errors
    Magnolia Electric Co. is no Crazy Horse, and Molina's vocabulary on the guitar doesn't yet have the presence to carry such extended interpretations of his material.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Black Mountain
    Black Mountain are about as referential as they come. But despite the obvious touchstones-- which, incidentally, fucking rule-- the band are affable and idiosyncratic enough to win over those who passed on recent retrofits like Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral or My Morning Jacket's It Still Moves, and make those records' admirers practically cream themselves.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    The Seven Autumn Flowers
    It's well-recorded, well-mixed, well-performed-- hell, it's even well-packaged-- but it has little spark and a bad habit of insisting on five-minute songs.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Purple Haze
    Cam's flow is a thing of beauty.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Nothing's Lost
    Nothing's Lost is a well-meaning record that just got its priorities mixed up. These tech'd-up tearjerkers can out bench press anyone in terms of sonic fodder, but the album is whiny, transparent, and a colossal hodgepodge.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Street's Disciple
    Yes, it's "sprawling," "massive," "has lots of filler," "should have been one disc," etc.-- but guess what: It's cocksure and it works.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
    Brash, grungy, and loud... a tiny handful of outstanding tracks and a whole mess of schmaltzy filler.
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