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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    • 46 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Chapter 1: Snake Oil
    You don’t listen to a Diplo album for the songwriting, and Snake Oil suffocates in treacly kitsch.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 4 Critic Score
    Weird Revolution
    The Butthole Surfers have finally become shocking only in their sheer banality, like a watered-down mix of the worst Beck and Perry Farrell material you can imagine.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Harverd Dropout
    Pump’s only motivation is to stunt on his old high school teachers. That theme is heavy-handed on the album, as Pump bashes us with a running joke about how he used to go to Harvard before dropping out.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    (Together) [EP]
    (together) is borderline unlistenable taken as a whole.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Lulu
    Audacious to the extreme, but exhaustingly tedious as a result, its few interesting ideas are stretched out beyond the point of utility and pounded into submission.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 39 Critic Score
    The Gold Album: 18th Dynasty
    We have 12 microwave-nuked approximations of Drake songs circa 2013 and Kanye songs spanning from The College Dropout to Yeezus, with none of the wit, soul, or edge.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    True Magic [First Version]
    Everything about this album is half-assed: From the bafflingly bare packaging to the at-times miserable mix, True Magic is a mess.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Generic Treasure
    The Steinhardt who made Generic Treasure comes off as a guy far too stuck in his own head to get himself into yours.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    EP-1
    This music wasn’t just written or recorded without any regard to the quality of the Pixies legacy, it was done so without regard to songwriting quality at all.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 32 Critic Score
    Democrazy
    He's already recorded such a wealth of great material that no mystique remains, leaving no real reason for anyone-- including the most dedicated fan-- to seek out these poorly produced musical shreds.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Skins
    The album never makes a case for X as anything other than a thinly subversive figure and never even rationalizes the baggage that comes saddled with it. X’s musical legacy will forever be interlinked to violence. Skins is merely a shallow attempt to overwrite that legacy gone awry.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Mission Accomplished [EP]
    I've listened to this EP twice; that's once more than I would have ever liked to have heard it, give or take one listen.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 22 Critic Score
    The Entrance Band
    He's only a middling guitar player, but insists on soloing and showboating endlessly, drawing out songs to unnecessary lengths.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Speedin' Bullet 2 Heaven
    Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven is interesting the same way a friend getting a dramatic bad haircut is interesting: Once the shock wears off, you still have to look them in the eye and level with them.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    The Weirdness
    An album that hideously disgraces the band's original work.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    LP1
    He relies on inane songwriting concepts, rote misogyny, and feelingless flexing. The lyrics are puerile and half-baked.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 27 Critic Score
    Generation
    Generation is a sonic mess, all weightless synth swish, dull beats, and maybe-ironic midi horns.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    God Did
    He stays in the background for most of God Did’s 18 tracks—but once in a while, he finally tiptoes out of his usual templates. It’s not enough to salvage a bogged-down album, but coming from him, even a little experimentation is surprising.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 41 Critic Score
    Crown Royal
    Run-DMC wind up overwhelmed by the guest stars and the schizophrenic nature of the production.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 39 Critic Score
    The World We Left Behind
    That air of obligation presides during The World We Left Behind, a nine-track slog.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Memories: Do Not Open
    It is an anodyne pop record for a post-EDM world, one where trap and trop-house mix with pale imitations of the Migos flow and Coldplay’s cornball sentimentality.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    NOW + 4EVA
    The band has sharpened their focus on their most recent records, but in doing so has placed a spotlight on their songwriting and performance. It’s a shame that NOW + 4EVA can’t withstand this greater level of scrutiny.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Somethin' 'Bout Kreay
    These are dance songs so strident that no one could ever hope to move to them, pop songs so thin that no one could choose lines worth singing along to, rap verses so fumbly that practically anyone could rewrite them and make them better.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    What The...
    Too many songs here feel like aggregations of quirky, tossed-off riffs.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 24 Critic Score
    Based On A True Story
    There are a lot of choir fills, growling electric guitars, and stomping drums, but the bombast is hollow. “Bulletproof” sounds like a “Wild Wild West” outtake, its country-and-western elements way overdone.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Liz Phair
    Liz Phair proves so ultimately unnecessary, it might as well not even exist.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    BAYTL
    It's a record that marks the time when the "Gucci Gucci" rapper's homegirl became notorious enough to do an album with Gucci Mane, and when Gucci Mane had fallen far enough to decide to go along with it.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    In My Defense
    The album is stacked with cartoonish approximations of what she thinks a rap song should sound like: shivers of bass, the occasional “skrrrt,” Mad Libs of designer brands and bodily fluids. Many sound like direct imitations of the rappers she admires.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 32 Critic Score
    United Nations of Sound
    United Nations of Sound arrives with a Sunday-school sermon's worth of resurrection rhetoric that conflates Ashcroft's return with that of J.C. himself.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 46 Critic Score
    Vultures 2
    Despite the frequent overtures to grandeur, spectacle, and machismo, these songs are limp and flabby.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 34 Critic Score
    DUMMY BOY
    Mostly the standard fare of Tekashi throwing sounds and flows at the wall, praying something sticks.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    143
    Aside from some fleeting hellacious decisions, like the jump scare of a warbling child’s voice that opens the cloying final track “Wonder,” 143 is mostly just…there.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Slick Dogs And Ponies
    The slightly more dynamic Louis XIV only give you testosterone-fueled rock at its least appealing extremes: heedless lust or, arguably even more repulsive, cheesy balladry.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Nine Track Mind
    It doesn’t help that Nine Track Mind is all ballads except for three tracks, two of which are duets (Trainor, a sleepy Selena Gomez) that somehow still feel like ballads. Puth cannot fill this frame of sentimentality with any genuine sentiment.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    Rebirth
    Concocting the world's finest excrement-related rhymes, Rebirth is most definitely a flop, terribly unsexy, and contains surprisingly few shit jokes.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 29 Critic Score
    Famous First Words
    In execution the whole thing comes off as nothing more than a thinly disguised, crass attempt to smoke latent Oasis fans out of hiding. Unfortunately for them, Beady Eye already beat them to the punch.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Live In Chicago
    On these eight Apples originals and one Beach Boys cover, Schneider and the band sound like they're having a blast, and the energy is instantly detectable.... Live in Chicago has the charm of a well-recorded audience bootleg sanctioned by the group on one of their best nights.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Red Stars Theory
    The track "Our Nearest Neighbors" best exhibits Red Stars Theory's unique strengths: to harness the emotion of emocore without indulging in the maudlin lyrics; and to exercise the artistic grandeur and complexity of post-rock, but without the cold detachment and pretension.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Machina II: The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music
    It would be extremely easy to dismiss this album as Billy simply taking out the accumulated garbage of the past couple years. It would be easy, that is, if it didn't almost redeem the Pumpkins.... This album features an abundance of tracks that throw the deficiencies of their previous record into even sharper relief.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Weekends of Sound
    On their third full-length, Weekends of Sound, the band showcases their strengths and improves upon their weaknesses, making it their most accomplished work to date.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Home Burns
    Something fresh might help Orange Can retain their strengths as musicians, while developing their own voice and avoiding blandness.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Elf Power
    Were its songs more dynamic, its arrangements less haphazard, its tone more even, its sentiments a bit more clearly stated, Elf Power could really be affecting. But as it is, it just feels affected; the sound of a band in mourning seeking a musical catharsis they can't quite extend to the listener.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Mantic
    Lots of people use music to try and escape their living rooms, but Lady Lazarus seems more interested in inviting us into hers.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Writings On the Wall II
    His lyrics' power stemmed from the imagery and humor he used to render in full color a world that for most rappers exists only in black and white. To the tape's considerable credit, Gucci disappoints here only when compared with himself.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Life Is Full of Possibilities [Deluxe Edition]
    For a record fixated on personal nostalgia, Life Is Full of Possibilities still feels bright-eyed and forward-thinking.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Schlungs
    In its pinnacles and pitfalls, Schlungs confirms that, even if the results can be cute, communicating with humans is usually the least impressive talent any alien has.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    777: The Desanctification
    There's more movement, more development, more variety; fitting for a trilogy's middle, it's where the sounds get thicker, where the possibilities simply become more intriguing.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Wild One
    Sometimes Wild One wears its influences a little too hard on its sleeve, or strives too hard to create something anthemic with across-the-board appeal.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Year of the Tiger [EP]
    For a "studio experiment," it's exceptionally listenable.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Whack World
    Whack World morphs into a clever exercise in economy and using only what you need. It’s a visual album prepackaged for optimum social media consumption; every tiny piece stands on its own without losing sight of the larger picture. At its core, though, Whack’s sense of humor--her captivating depiction of a black woman’s imagination--is an opportunity to celebrate an aspect of art that often goes uncelebrated, an opportunity for Whack to celebrate herself.
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