Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,767 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: 10,500 out of 12767
  2. Mixed: 1,953 out of 12767
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12767
12767 music reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Platform
    Despite the wide scope of her project, Herndon’s ambitious efforts are appealingly multifaceted and personal, and Platform may turn out to be the most thought-provoking experimental electronic music release of the year.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    IGOR
    Tyler, the Creator’s sixth album is impressionistic and emotionally charged, the result of an auteur refining his style and bearing more of his soul than ever before.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Your Future Our Clutter
    While there's rarely been a correlation between the accessibility of a given Fall album and the profile of the label releasing it, the lean, brute-force rockers on Your Future Our Clutter suggest that the Fall might actually be taking this upgrade to Domino seriously.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    And I Love H.E.R.: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
    Swain seems eminently capable of empathy, but most of his time is spent chewing on deeply personal concerns, with the result being that the record can feel a bit hermetic at times. Lucky for him, then, that his personality is sufficiently engaging and his music sufficiently buoyant that we don't mind following him down his private rabbit holes.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    X'ed Out
    While it’s exciting to hear a veteran band sharply change course on the fly, Tera Melos doesn’t always have a grasp on the mundane things like pacing or sequencing that make for a smoother LP experience.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Punish, Honey
    Unquestionably, Gainsborough's sonic ingenuity continues to be his greatest asset; his growth as an artist hinges on accepting that others can't always enjoy his noise as much as he does.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ritual Spirit [EP]
    Massive Attack were always equally as good producers as they were curators; it's promising that, as much of their old sound as they've retained, they've kept this as well.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ecce Homo
    On Ecce Homo, each tiny step reveals the will to run a marathon.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    All Day Gentle Hold!
    These are some of Maine’s most generous and indelible songs, so much so that the album’s 25 minutes feel too brief. Like the best summers, it’s done in an instant—but the feeling lasts long after it’s over.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Goon
    Goon isn’t an album of layers; what you hear is what you get, which in this case turns out to be something special.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    R Plus Seven
    R Plus Seven doesn’t have quite the disembodied weirdness of Replica, but it’s no less accomplished, another intriguing chapter from an artist whose work remains alive with possibility.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Push the Sky Away
    For all the album's wandering spirit, the first eight tracks on Push the Sky Away are neatly structured into two complementary, four-song halves that mirror one another.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Imperial Wax Solvent
    While Imperial Wax Solvent has all the buzzy, crunchy sonic hallmarks of great Fall, it also doesn't quite rank with their highest highs, an admittedly tall order when that includes albums recorded twenty-five years ago by a completely different set of musicians.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Lese Majesty
    The soul of Shabazz Palaces is pairing next-gen sounds with classic brass-tacks show-and-prove emceeing, and Lese Majesty tugs those extremes as far as they've ever been pulled; that it never shows signs of wear speaks to the strength of the bond.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Introduction, Presence
    Introduction, Presence doesn’t offer any great reinventions. ... But their understanding of the genre they’re working in—its workings, tropes, and trappings—is so refined that they are able to boil it down to its barest essence, saving catharsis for just the right moment.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Avalanche
    The Avalanche wallows, but the realization rather than the anticipation of karmic retribution lends it emotional urgency even as Kinsella works in his familiar modes of meandering melodies, exquisite acoustic arpeggios, and the occasional lapse into cringe-posting that threatens to break the whole spell.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Luminol
    The compositions on Luminol are precarious balancing acts, perched somewhere between the locating sensation of pain and the dislocation of trauma.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Smalltown Stardust
    Gaze into Smalltown Stardust’s airy arrangements and you might see a reverse image of previous King Tuff records. That was music made for the cold dark of night, or at least a dimly curtained bedroom; this is music made to be heard in the reassuring glow of sunshine.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Devil Music
    It’s dirty, smudged music, bitter with the terroir of suffering.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Fur & Gold
    Fur & Gold sounds a little bit too comfortable for its own good. Khan is a great singer, and her band is undoubtedly competent and capable, but the record sounds like it wants to be more than it is.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Wilderness
    The consistency of Wilderness' eleven songs is almost overwhelming.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Christfucker
    The result is oddly refreshing: an artsy, accomplished band turning their second album of the year into a pulpy slasher flick.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    99.9%
    His record’s name is meant to suggest a certain sense of incompleteness, but it’s one of the most well-edited, coherent debuts to emerge in recent memory.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fever
    She has prepared her whole life for the opportunity to challenge the coastal elites for a seat at rap’s table, and Fever is her folding chair.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Let It All In
    Let It All In feels lived-in and newly cut from his core.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Vertigo
    Gone is their past material’s giddy, lysergic bounce; instead, drummer Evan Burrows pours a spacious, continual foundation where melodies rise through repetition, and rich details (with string and wind arrangements courtesy of Backer) slither and swim.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Man Who Died in His Boat
    When it really hits, as it often does here, the music of Grouper creates a feeling that can only be defined as awe, an uncanny mixture of wonder and dread that nobody does better.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Lateness of Dancers
    This album sounds best in the context of the Hiss Golden Messenger catalog--as a comment on and a celebration of the spiritual and creative toil on the previous albums.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Cervantine
    Though they'd likely be the first to tell you how much they still have to learn, Cervantine's ravishing exploration of sound is another step towards mastery.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Music Sounds Better With You
    Music Sounds Better With You is a mash note to a wide range of indie-pop-- alternately buzzy, peppy, shy, melodramatic, and grandly sweeping.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Movement
    Appropriately named, Movement feels like a progression and challenge from one of the year's most exciting new voices, producers, and composers.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Super Champon
    Louder, faster, fiercer than their 2019 LP Itekoma Hits, the 20-minute, 18-track Super Champon goes down like a tart smattering of face-scrunching, neon candy.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Protect Your Light
    For the most part, Protect Your Light takes a more patient and self-reflective approach, vibrating on a different frequency. It’s the act of refilling one’s vessel in song form.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    I Speak Because I Can
    Her sophomore effort, I Speak Because I Can, finds Marling, still only 20, shrugging off virtually all traces of girlishness and wide-eyed charm, instead delving into darkly elemental, frequently morbid folk. And yet, astonishingly, the expected growing pains never come.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Leaving Songs
    As a solo record, it's no declaration of independence, but by sticking to what he does best, Staples makes it ring with sadness and sophistication.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Still in a Dream: A Story of Shoegaze
    Overall Still in a Dream is a job well done: an accurate portrait of an era that, while it can’t really be described as a lost golden age for rock, nonetheless provided sorely needed radiance and refuge during a particularly grim period.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You're Not As _____ As You Think
    It’s the kind of record that would be called “triumphant” if Boucher was in a position to enjoy any of it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Moms
    Although Moms is the result of its two creators' putting themselves through the wringer, it never feels overshadowed by dread.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Potential
    Hinton has an ability, not unlike the Books when they first hit the scene 14 years ago, of making shopworn techniques in sound manipulations seem strangely fresh, and Potential is the kind of music that makes you think about what your own part in a seemingly passive musical transaction of music might mean.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Strange Keys To Untune Gods' Firmament
    Strange Keys is generally relentless and tremendous, burying its themes in kaleidoscopic distortion. It's as if the comparisons that Bower has earned in the last seven years--Merzbow, Wagner, second wave black metal--finally took magnificent hold.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    I Am > I Was
    i am > i was shatters the notion of 21 Savage as a specialist with a narrow purview and audience, and recasts him as a star in waiting, all without forcing him into unflattering contortions. It also cements him as a far more original stylist than other hopefuls from Atlanta.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Humble Quest
    Humble Quest lives up to its name: 11 lithe songs about love, work, and family, some great, some good, with a coherence and clarity that make it feel matter-of-factly masterful.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Redemption
    In his raps, Jay Rock can come off as a reclusive hard-liner with a remarkable storyteller’s acumen and an internal logic that always feels sound. Few gangsta rappers are better at illustrating just how limited their options were and how undaunted they had to be to overcome them.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sprinter
    Scott fully inhabits her loudest moments by inching towards post-rock and synth-rock.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    The BBC Sessions
    Campbell's vocals sound breathless on the radio show, as she displays little vocal control, gasping for air between words and syllables. Despite that, it's still a worthy artifact.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Monomania
    Monomania is certainly a strong effort on its own merits, and more importantly, they’ve avoided making their deflating “diminishing returns” record.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Lost Horizons
    Make no mistake, the record is extremely endearing and flawlessly constructed-- it's just hard to love an album that has a dazzling surface and not much underneath.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Private Press
    The Private Press is more solid an album than anyone dared expect from an older, wiser DJ Shadow, and though it won't be televising another revolution, I'd be lying if I said its celebratory pleasure centers didn't communicate directly with my own.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Turn On The Bright Lights
    Loss, regret, and a minor key brilliantly permeate jangling guitars and rhythmic and tonal shifts-- and although it's no Closer or OK Computer, it's not unthinkable that this band might aspire to such heights.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Armchair Apocrypha
    Armchair Apocrypha is ultimately another object of strange and unique beauty from this inventive songwriter and performer.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Chemtrails Over the Country Club
    Lana Del Rey’s sixth album dials back the grandiosity in favor of smaller, more intimate moments. It carries a roaming spirit of folk and Americana without losing the romantic melodrama of her best work.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    The Way Out
    That stuff was fun on their debut, 2002's Thought for Food, but today those easy jokes seem like a waste of their skills. Better to seek out the greater mystery of those weird and splendiferous sounds, and those voices that seem so close and so unknowable in the same breath.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Going Places
    Every moment is tactile and visual, like paint strokes that are just color on their own but together create a meaningful image. The resulting pictures are also wide and expansive, like a slow Stanley Kubrick pan or a meditative Terrence Malick nature shot.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Short Movie
    Without an overarching conceit like Once I Was an Eagle, Short Movie comes off sounding like a transition record, a short movie in the sense that it’s a prelude to something bigger.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Seth Bogart
    The tension between artifice and reality is what gives Seth Bogart most of its conceptual heft, but it obviously helps that the album is very fun to listen to.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Spaceman [Mixtape]
    Whether it’s tapping our feet on the wet curb to gritty, unstable British realism, or gazing from a height over the glossy cross-pollination of world music, making sense of this outrageously talented pioneer is a challenging but deeply rewarding task.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) [Box Set]
    The resultant record [Toy] is a mixed bag. Bowie and his band gel well. ... But these seasoned pros often fail the material, losing the ramshackle charm of the originals. ... The 1990s albums reissued here, however, tell the story best.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's Fire
    Williams refines her singular voice as a songwriter, bringing a focused, single-minded intensity to her songs without giving the impression that she’s ever repeating herself.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    LUMP
    If LUMP is a commentary on the commodification of art and the self, then its final minutes suggest the duality of music as a commodity.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    McCartney III
    As was the case with the first two McCartneys, III’s eccentricities are best put to use when they’re supporting Macca’s endearing melodies rather than corrupting them. Fortunately, McCartney III has enough radiant moments to outweigh its stumbles.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Learned The Hard Way
    It all comes together to make an album that stands up as a varied and well-sequenced work, and as a collection of songs you can scatter through a shuffle and dig just as deeply.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Mutant
    Mutant is an album of contrasts, and Ghersi has an uncanny ability to let extremes interact with each other to create something new.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Strike a Match
    Sacred Paws have arrived, on the back of a troubled groove: a little preoccupied, maybe, but ready to dance.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Late Night Tales
    Floating Points keeps the mood consistent. Few selections move faster than a resting heartbeat, but they nevertheless feel dramatic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Mandatory Reality
    After over an hour of totally becalmed drift, the bustling pace here at album’s end feels like leaving a day spa only to squeeze onto a rush-hour train. You might find yourself simply wishing the album extended just a few minutes longer.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    All the Young Droogs: 60 Juvenile Delinquent Wrecks, Rock'N'Glam (And a Flavour of Bubblegum) from the 70's
    Most Droogs inclusions are fairly frivolous affairs lyrically--anthems of lust, celebrations of rocking out--but Third World War anticipate punk themes with the proletarian plaint and Strummer-like sandpaper vocals of “Working Class Man.” Hustler forge a link between the Faces and Cockney Rejects with “Get Outta My ’Ouse,” which is like Magic’s “Rude” recast as pub boogie.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Big Swimmer
    Whenever the album breaks out of its stream-of-consciousness flow, it shows a clearer sense of identity. Merrick’s secret weapon is her soaring singing voice.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    hooke’s law
    Hooke’s Law is an accelerant. Over staggering tracks overrun with rhythms, melodies, and voices, keiyaA hurtles through the abyss and dares you to keep up.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
    Few can match their feel for arrangement or sense of structure.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Key Markets
    Sometimes Williamson sings, after a fashion, which is where Key Markets gets weird, in much the same way that early Fall records got weird when Mark E. Smith tried to carry a tune.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Prequelle
    “Rats” and “Witch Image” get their strength from smoldering licks and stacked harmonies plucked from the Ozzy Osbourne playbook, providing metalheads with a welcome break from all the mid-tempo durdling. Given the unremarkable tracks that follow it--particularly “Helvetesfönster,” an ostentatious, baroque instrumental reminiscent of Medieval Times muzak--the latter might as well be the record’s closer.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Palo Santo
    Palo Santo is a promising sophomore album because it evolves past the sound of the band’s debut. But at its low points, the record lacks the bite to drive home the razor’s-edge duality of sacred and profane that Alexander seems to thrive on.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Everybody Scream
    On an album full of infernos, “One of the Greats” is one of the few songs to stand apart: Its ambition and vulnerability come closest to fulfilling Everybody Scream’s mission to let it all out.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Room Inside the World
    Given Ought’s radical inklings, you wish they dared to make these lovely songs say or do something a little more righteous, to twist them into more adventurous shapes. However, Ought achieve this spectacularly on the blue-eyed soul of “Desire.” It towers over Room Inside the World like the album’s lighthouse.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Figure 8
    But while Elliott Smith includes some of his least inspired music of all time on Figure 8, he also surprisingly pulls out some of his best to date.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    So Far Gone [Mixtape]
    So Far Gone still scans as one of the most compulsively listenable mixtapes of a great year for mixtapes.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Maraqopa
    This album is more of a mood piece, its melodic rewards teased out over time and drenched in the type of steady rain that his home state is known for.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Barbarism
    Barbarism is a deranged playground, a portal to uncomfortable feelings in an increasingly uncomfortable world. Like a half-remembered dream, it seems to continuously promise access to hidden answers, if only we could penetrate the chaos. And though it’s grating, uneven, and perplexing, Barbarism feels familiar.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Hovvdy
    Martin and Taylor don’t think in opuses, in grand gestures and proclamations, in magic or illusion. Hovvdy simply slows down time just long enough to capture the beauty in the moments that always threaten to float away if they’re not captured immediately and cherished.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    James Blake
    With this new LP -- released on a major label on both sides of the Atlantic, no less -- odds are, a lot of people are going to listen, and I don't mean in the tail-eating, blog-bite-blog sort of way.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Guidance
    Even when Guidance gets complicated, there’s a more organic and unforced feel to it, as if songs were allowed to grow wild rather than carefully cultivated.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Sophtware Slump
    The Sophtware Slump manages to sound reasonably fresh, yields its share of unshakable melodies, and excels in production. This is quite possibly the last great entry in the atmospheric pop canon.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Don't Like Shit: I Don't Go Outside
    Earl is carefully whittling away at the proclivities he's always had, remaining confident that he’ll light upon something that feels fresh and honest. So far, he's right.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    FM!
    Vince is at ease here, intertwining his personality into his somber celebration of Long Beach like never before. He’s rapping his ass off, and hooks are mostly an afterthought. He dips in and out of inventive flows.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On Time Out of Time
    On Time Out of Time makes the billion-year-old buzz of two neutron stars into something heart-stirring.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Regards/Uklony dla Boguslaw Schaeffer
    What we’re left with is a great-sounding Matmos album constructed from bits of Schaeffer’s work. You probably won’t come away knowing much more about either the duo or the composer than you did before, but if it gets stoners curious enough to hit up their local electroacoustic festival, it’s a win all around.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?
    I miss the enveloping nature of Daniel’s last two albums, the feeling of floating through a particularly absorbing dream. But the new album does have plenty of buoyant moments.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Ecstatic
    Looks like we finally got the Mos Def we were waiting for.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Motion Sickness of Time Travel
    Many of the familiar sounds of ambient music are here, and Evans boldly breathes new life into them.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Warm Leatherette [Deluxe Edition]
    Warm Leatherette was alternately more sanguine and more severe—a bracing confluence of reggae, new-wave, and post-punk that showcased Jones’ range as a performer and her uncanny, occasionally perverse vision as an interpreter of other people’s songs.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fault Lines
    While tracks like “Credence (Ash in the Winds of Reason)” and “Syndicate II” fit snugly into the band’s previous guitar-driven repertoire (not to mention this current era of peak post-punk), Deliluh are the rare band that can summon the menacing propulsion and imagistic density of the Fall without resorting to Mark E. Smith pantomime-uh.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Hadsel
    Hadsel is a new beginning for Beirut that sounds like old times, a record born of despair and solitude that still feels full of life.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Cartoon Darkness
    Not every big swing makes contact. The ultra-earnest ballads “Big Dreams” and “Bailing on Me” are overly sleepy, and they interrupt the flow the album establishes with its faster songs. Far better are the record’s experimental flourishes, like the sax on “U Should Not Be Doing That” and the inspired, oddball pairing of jaw harp and vocoder on “Me and the Girls.”
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Azel
    For all the guitar pyrotechnics, Western production, and reggae infusions, Azel never sounds like anything other than a sublime iteration of desert blues.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    You In Reverse
    Aside from its abundance of overlong songs, You in Reverse is marred by a lack of strong melody when compared to Built to Spill's other records.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Islah
    On Islah, his hook-writing is sterling.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    World Eater
    World Eater does not seem like a doomsday device by design, though. It might sound like one now, but Power leaves open the possibility of it being his darkest transmission before the dawn of a new bright tomorrow.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Bronco
    When the production is as over the top as Peck himself, it can be easy to excuse—if not quite ignore—these affectations, but whenever he’s relatively unadorned, as on “Let Me Drown” and “City of Gold,” his unsteady, amelodic quaver is difficult to ignore. All these tics were on Pony, too, yet there they added to the charm. Here, as part of a grander spectacle, they become a distraction—a nagging element that keeps Bronco feeling earthbound.
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