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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    • 72 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Dark Sky Paradise
    Dark Sky Paradise is a big leap in the direction of the ideal Big Sean full-length.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Archive Series, Vol. 1
    The songs on here are surprisingly strong, such that any of them could have appeared on a proper album at any point in Beam’s decade-plus career. But the collection never sounds like the sum of its parts.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Physical Graffiti [Remastered]
    Physical Graffiti is Zeppelin's best album ultimately because it felt like a culmination.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    I Want to Grow Up
    Her blasé delivery might seem impenetrable at first, but there is warmth and wit to her work that rewards those who are patient enough to hear its message.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Ibeyi
    Some of the rougher edges and raw(er) emotion that got the twins noticed in the first place get ironed out a bit. And one side effect is that a few of the album's final tracks sound somewhat similar in tonality, tempo, and their vibe. But Ibeyi still find subtle ways to create shape.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Rose Mountain
    Rose Mountain might be Screaming Females' most deliberate music yet, but it lacks much of their former wildness.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Gliss Riffer
    At his finest, most expansive moments, Deacon renders this dilemma beside the point, but on Gliss Riffer, it's hard to avoid it; the battle between song and arrangement is staged in too small of an arena.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Restarter
    On Restarter, that precept again takes the lead, and Torche have made their most compelling record since Meanderthal.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Body Pill
    It sounds less like a young producer enjoying the fruits of quick success than a restless experimenter figuring out what to do next. Lucky for us, the woodshed is destination enough.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Rapture
    Rapture is ultimately an honest effort devoid of staying power.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon
    As it is, the album feels slightly cluttered by a surfeit of dry minutiae that calls for a cutting room floor of its own.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Whatever, My Love
    On a whole, Whatever is milder and gentler than the darker Become What You Are; that comes with age, I guess. But, all said, it does feel like a return.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Live at the Music Hall
    The six-piece around Houck is more competent than combustible, a quality that’s long made Phosphorescent a good band to see for a 90-minute show but not one that makes you need to take them home.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Guitars and Microphones
    Pierson hasn’t lost any of the force or heat that’s characterized her vocal work for 40 years; if anything, she’s acquired the ability to enrich otherwise pedestrian line readings with a resonance that feels born of a life well lived.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Supermoon [EP]
    The most successful [alternative versions] are the ones that drastically reinvent their material, recasting, for instance, rock songs as synth-pop songs, synth-pop songs as rock songs, or busy twee-punk as slightly less busy acoustic twee-punk. But Supermoon never takes those kinds of leaps.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Vestiges & Claws
    Even when Vestiges & Claws exudes strain, González never gives the impression of truly challenging himself.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Modern Streets
    Most tracks on the first half clock in under four-minutes, but as the songs stretch out longer on the album’s back half, there’s not enough structure to support them.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    The Mainframe
    It might still mortify some of his more purist fans, but there's little on this record that a few instrumental-version substitutions wouldn't fix.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Picture You
    The end result is a record that reverently draws from a dazzling array of past masters only to short-circuit critical capacity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Sour Soul
    Both the scant material and under-inspired lyricism are symptoms of the same problem: a dearth of unexpected ideas from an MC once seemingly capable of endless ones. Ghost’s done worse, but he used to be so excitingly unpredictable. Now you pretty much know what you’re going to get.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tangier Sessions
    He’s spent decades getting musical vocabularies from all over the world under his fingers, and even when his improvisations begin to meander, what he creates from his well of options is remarkable and wholly his own.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Transfixiation
    Those who are coming into Transfixiation blind might just hear a notable band boasting a currently rare commitment to an '80s kind of noise-rock rather than the '90s iterations of shoegaze, goth, or industrial that’s more prominent in 2015. Then again, APTBS’ progress as a band only serves to expose the underlying one-dimensionality of their actual songwriting.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Talent Night at the Ashram
    Talent Night at the Ashram is grounded in a very palatable reality, one that harkens back to the band’s first two albums. But that isn’t to say this record isn’t without its surrealist moments.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    I Sell the Circus
    If Circus isn't a front-to-back triumph, it's got enough juice in it to forgive the occasional misfire.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mourn
    More than a simple clash of teen-angst noise and old-soul poise, Mourn’s debut album is a reminder that a big impetus for the former is the frustration of wishing you were old enough to savor the latter.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Fashion Week
    The album needs the percussive abrasion of his voice, and digging into some of the more typical slabs of Death Grips' instrumental tendencies doesn't unearth much more than a pretty solid workout soundtrack.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Sorry 4 The Wait 2 [Mixtape]
    On Sorry 4 the Wait 2, he's enjoying being Lil Wayne again, for better or worse. It also feels like rapping is once more a choice rather than a contractual obligation, which, at this point, might be the single greatest compliment one can pay Lil Wayne.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    From Out Here
    For a notionally darker work this album ends up being more enjoyable than some of his prior records, mainly because the sense of exploration is heightened with each turn taken.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Mr. Face [EP]
    The four songs are pleasant enough, but in comparison to the unruly sounds on Live in San Francisco, it feels like a bit of an afterthought.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Hyperview
    Consistent, concise and stylistically compelling, Hyperview is a good set of tracks, and a worthy crossover attempt at that, provided you’re OK with consulting the lyrics booklet and willing to take a ride on the undertow.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Man It Feels Like Space Again
    Even in their repeated defiance of having anything to prove, Pond still scramble with the passion and irreverence of underdogs.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Reflection
    It’s an album of fun, feminist pop that is simultaneously wise beyond its years (four of its five members are still in their teens) and refreshingly age-appropriate—and it effortlessly embodies the ideals grasped at by the girl power think piece wave, with a sharp, nuanced perspective that can only come from lived experience.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    S [EP]
    She has indeed stepped outside with S, but perhaps not far out enough; as it stands, Moss’ journey isn’t done just yet, but the final stretches of her expedition are in sight.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Dance Mania: Ghetto Madness
    The legacy of Dance Mania’s insouciant, trail-blazing ghetto house is preserved in the city’s flourishing juke and footwork communities as much as it lives on through the label’s second life; Ghetto Madness is just a reminder.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Creatures
    Egregiously melodramatic missteps aside, Creatures exists as a reminder that out there in the between of electronic music are swirling, delirious spaces that are yet to be explored.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    Time
    Though Time is never less than competent, its biggest problem is an unfortunate lack of personality.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Non-Fiction
    Though Non-Fiction only occasionally rises to the high songwriting standards of Ne-Yo’s seamless 2008 album Year of the Gentleman, it does correct some of the faults of his last record, 2012’s R.E.D., where the R&B songs and the Euro-dance songs played as if they’d been written for entirely separate projects.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Hexadic
    The constantly-disruptive feel of Hexadic makes it perhaps the most consistent Six Organs albums to date.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blackheart
    Blackheart is the singular, visionary work that she's been hinting at since she struck out on her own post-Diddy in 2011.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Cowboy Worship [EP]
    Given the similarities to its source material, Cowboy Worship probably would’ve made more sense as a bonus-disc appendage to Love than a stand-alone release.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    I Love You, Honeybear
    Bored is one of 11 songs on I Love You, Honeybear, an album by turns passionate and disillusioned, tender and angry, so cynical it's repulsive and so openhearted it hurts.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Africa Express Presents...Terry Riley's In C Mali
    Africa Express keeps it to a bite-sized 41 minutes, and every one of them includes something to savor.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fantastic Planet
    "Sisters" and "Growing" display a tendency to let her fascination with the moving gears trump the narrative movement that marks her best material. But fortunately, such moments are few and far between.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    A Flourish and a Spoil
    They’re a "the + plural noun" band. For those who felt the "New Rock Revolution" was exactly what its name promised rather than a revival of old aesthetics, the Districts' A Flourish and a Spoil signifies a restoration of order. For everyone else who simply likes rock bands, it's actually kinda quaint.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Alasdair Roberts
    Roberts’ songs here are quieter and simpler, and his language less ornate. And while all of Roberts’ music, even at its most traditional, has sounded unique and intimate it has seldom sounded this personal.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Signs Under Test
    While most of the dance world continues to view the creation of a solid album discography as strictly optional, Signs Under Test is a strong entry that proves Tejada's quietly building up a legacy of excellence.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Lost Themes
    Lost Themes is plenty dark and heavy but shorter on inspiration.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    XE
    Zs demonstrate an energy and urgency here that they’ve never before had, as these pieces leap off the page in exhilarating fashion.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Teaspoon To The Ocean
    The result is a little absent-minded, with the difference split between gleeful assertion and wanton noodling, the type of album that might sound best when you’re thinking about something else.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Sauna
    As always, that mystery resides in the sounds he manipulates. No one else sounds like Phil Elverum.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    B4.DA.$$
    He's gradually but noticeably building up a real identity on record. But if that next level's within reach, there has to be one obstacle to overcome: Firsthand truths take longer to sink in when they're delivered with secondhand styles.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Depersonlisation
    For those who grew up worshipping at the altar of such ephemeral sounds, a record like Depersonalisation is a welcome bit of gloom, even if it ultimately feels like a record you probably already own.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Big Dark Love
    As the band churn up sound and fury, we can hear the strident strains of Balliet’s cello, scribbling suicide notes in the background and lending some gravity to an album that sounds, tragically, weightless.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Shadows in the Night
    For the more casual, less obsessive listener, it can be a bit of a snooze. The songs are well chosen and certainly revealing, but Dylan and his band play them all pretty much the same, sacrificing any sense of rhythm for stately ambience.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Further Out
    Further Out does successfully sound genreless despite being referential of a half dozen genres at once and is presented as a continuous listening experience.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    We Are Undone
    In its often inchoate roar, We Are Undone bears little resemblance to the laser-focus punk-blues of their earlier work. The songs just aren't as good. The most satisfying callback to Two Gallants' halcyon, mid-'00s prime comes in the album's second half.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    All We Are
    ll We Are makes a stylish first impression, showing up so impeccably tailored that you wonder if it secretly fears all of that fumbling human contact that could mess things up.... Meanwhile, the back half of All We Are is filled with slow jams that barely stir from a post-coital heap.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Miscontinuum Album ( Fiepblatter Catalogue #3)
    It doesn't require your full attention, but it tends to capture it. I like to imagine what it would feel like to stumble across the piece on the radio, late at night, perhaps in your car, having no idea what you were hearing, or why.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Reality Show
    Sullivan, better than singers and songwriters in almost any genre, creates worlds where relationships take on more complex dynamics, but are immediate in their effect.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 47 Critic Score
    Mansion Songs
    Musically, it’s the grittiest-sounding track on the album, with eddies and distortion clotting the guitar licks and evoking the more destitute vistas of San Francisco. Lyrically, however, the song sounds entirely disingenuous.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Matador
    Instead of following his darker impulses or fantastically out-there indulgences, Coombes plays it safe.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Silk Rhodes
    On each of his many releases to date, Collins is always trying to reinvent one wheel or another, and even though that's traditionally seen as a fruitless exercise, what he and Desree have ended up with on Silk Rhodes is an invention worth marveling at in its own right.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    On Your Own Love Again
    On Your Own Love Again has more earnest moments, but its unadorned emotional uncertainty is profound and relatable.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Apex Predator - Easy Meat
    It’s still a Napalm Death record through and through--which means shredded eardrums and tinnitus for days. After all this time, we’d expect nothing less.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Range Anxiety
    Range Anxiety goes by in an instant, makes minimal demands, and is remarkably enjoyable for its simple pleasures. It may not have the heft to move you, but it’s gentle and never unwelcome.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    You, Whom I Have Always Hated/Released from Love
    Taken as a full-length by two groups that treat the format with some suspicion, You, Whom I Have Always Hated is a remarkably cohesive and singular album. Though it shows signs of both responsible parties, it also proves their inherent restlessness.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Natalie Prass
    A warm, intimate debut album that leaves space for darker contemplation—those stray thoughts that light you up at the end of the night.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    The Planet
    The two musicians match well in terms of overall ethos, but at some points it feels like they just stopped listening to each other, and what should be otherworldly comes clunking to the ground.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Ratworld
    Theirs is the rare lead vocalist/backing vocalist dynamic that feels like an equal partnership, with Violet’s injections propelling these songs nearly as much as their rubbery bass lines or pogoing guitars.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Vulnicura
    It’s simultaneously her most mature feat of arranging and almost psychosomatically affecting.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Individ
    Ten years deep into their career, the Dodos have never actually steered too far from their roots, but the loose, unselfconscious feel of Individ proves that there is something to be said for recognizing and playing to your strengths, trusting your chops, and simply feeling things as intensely as you possibly can.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Runners in the Nerved World
    "Blissfield, MI", like most of Runners in the Nerved World, is such an effortlessly enjoyable listen that you can miss the tension and ambition emanating from a band that’s chasing greatness as an escape from being Midwestern also-rans.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    G Stands For Go-Betweens, Vol. 1 [Box Set]
    The Go-Betweens' endless enthusiasm for their own work is what propelled them out of that Brisbane bedroom in the first place, and the richness of context that this box provides makes it a deeper pleasure than its component albums are on their own.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Tetsuo & Youth
    It's a tricky muse, but every Lupe project has found a way to harness at least 15 or 20 minutes of his fluid, fleeting mind. Tetsuo & Youth is the most generous gulp he's managed in years.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Viet Cong
    Viet Cong has only seven tracks and more than half don’t pass the five minute mark. Yet all are heavy, ingenious contraptions.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Uptown Special
    Too top-heavy to sustain its momentum, yet too fleeting for its thematic framework to cohere, Uptown Special is that rare beast: a concept album that actually could use more fat.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance
    It takes something else, something that can’t be explained by a mission statement. For a band so well-loved for writing from their heart, it sounds like they got stuck in their head.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 41 Critic Score
    Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of "Inside Llewyn Davis"
    The lack of any sort of critical thesis or undergirding may seem merely academic, but it translates into performances that are wanly reverent and unanimated, celebrating the music mainly for its age but not its actual history.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Inherent Vice [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    The soundtrack is a pungent, incoherent, occasionally haunting trifle. The feeling is of a bunch of intelligent and talented people trying on a bunch of funny-colored clothing and giggling at each other. If you're not wearing the costumes, there's a limit to just how entertained by all of it you can be.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Nights in the Dark
    Despite the stumbles, Nights includes some of California X's best work, and these moments are so strong, it's impossible to write the band off.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Slurrup
    Slurrup is the unmistakable product of Hayes’ peculiar personality, infusing songs that feel like lost '70s classics with dispiriting images of stardom unattained.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
    The failure of this album, in addition to being overlong and under-ambitious, is the idea that maturity should beget lazy, hammock songs.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    No Cities to Love
    The album has the particular aliveness of music being created and torn from a group at this very moment--tempered, but with the wild-paced abandon that comes with being caged and then free.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Irreal
    Irreal is a deliberately exhausting listen. The band dares you to see how far you can stomp behind them without a melodic phrase or a lyrical narrative to grab hold of.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    SremmLife
    Though a few songs stretch out an interesting idea too far—for instance, the post-Nae-Nae scrum "My X"--SremmLife is a showcase of an electric new talent paired with all the trappings of a bigtime major label debut.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Ghost Culture
    It's clear that he's arranged them with an ear for future extended mixes in which the pop songs fall away, leaving only the shuddering metallic chassis underneath. Maybe, in retrospect, it's his judicious sense of balance that holds him back: a few more extremes, and his next work might really sing.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper
    It’s a playful, fantastical response to some serious life changes.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Music Industry 3. Fitness Industry 1. [EP]
    Rather than feel tacked-on incongruities, the three Rave Tapes remixes found on the EP’s second half provide a welcome, unpredictably outré counterpoint to the linear songs heard on the first.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 94 Critic Score
    Black Messiah
    Black Messiah pulls together disparate threads few predecessors have had the smarts or audacity to unite.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Pinkprint
    The Pinkprint’s singles underwhelm.... But they’re redeemed by the bonus tracks—a thrilling, confounding six-song set that elevates The Pinkprint from an occasionally transcendent, if unbalanced, break-up album to something far more intriguing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A Los Campesinos! Christmas [EP]
    A Los Campesinos! Christmas is a record for those who want to spin a seasonal record that's both crushingly isolated and humorously self-aware.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    SUCKER
    It's not her finest work, but it's plenty good enough to rope a cohort of new fans into what's promising to be one hell of a creative ride.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    V A R I A N T [EP]
    It would be a tall order to expect them to rival Frost's raw power, but these remixes don't unearth much fascinating stuff, and the EP turns out (mostly) competent but wan.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    2014 Forest Hills Drive
    2014 Forest Hills Drive is a decent album selling itself as great. It wraps itself in the garments of a classic, but you can see that the tailoring is off.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Black Beauty [Remastered]
    It’s a strong album, but it’s not another Forever Changes, whose accomplishments in retrospect were unrepeatable, or even another Four Sail. On the other hand, Lee wasn’t aiming to craft something in that vein.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sun Zoom Spark: 1970 to 1972 [Box Set]
    A handy 4xCD compilation (disc four a fascinating set of outtakes and unreleased material) that captures the good Captain’s cagey albeit failed move towards mainstream rock acceptance.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Sings Christmas Carols
    It’s just voice and guitar throughout, but Kozelek’s nylon string work is consistently engaging, even as he falls back on some of his go-to fingerpicking patterns.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Gentlemen At 21 [Deluxe Edition]
    The sequencing shapes the album beautifully, creating a sense of emotional fatigue while only hinting vaguely at redemption. Thematically, however, that cycle implies a romantic fatalism, as though every relationship is doomed to end painfully. That’s what makes Gentlemen at 21 such a compelling and necessary reissue, even if the album has never been terribly hard to find.
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