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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    • 75 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Be the Void
    Too often, Be the Void finds Dr. Dog unleashed, letting their wilder ideas get the better of them.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    The Singles
    Goldfrapp have spent the past decade moving back and forth between icy electro-glam and atmospheric balladry... [The Singles] makes a virtue of their range.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Black Session [Live]
    In the context of Wire's catalog, this is just another document of incremental change, and not even the best live recording they've made lately (that would be their gorgeous Daytrotter session from 2008).
    • 59 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Live from the Kitchen
    It feels like a pleasant yet unremarkable switch back to the past, the sound of Air staring into a half-empty well of ideas, on the verge of becoming their own tribute band.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon)
    A solid, listenable, blue-collar rap album.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Themes For an Imaginary Film
    Whether you treat it as background music, incidental listening, or a two-hour magnum opus, Themes for an Imaginary Film is a well-rounded portrait of a key figure in the American electronic music landscape.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Fin
    Bursting with color, nostalgic but never retro, easy-going yet slightly unhinged.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Libraries
    Libraries nods more to Burt Bacharach, and the record can sag occasionally under the drowsy weight of his influence.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Blondes
    Despite retaining a relaxed, lightly psychedelic feel, Blondes' songs are properly functionalist grooves.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Feel the Sound
    For the most part, though, from robotic-but-rambunctious opener "Runaway" to the late-album one-two closing swoon of "It's You" and "Overtaken", Feel the Sound leans on Imperial Teen's puppyish charm and love for soft-rock's smooth bliss.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Blues Funeral
    Though a mixed bag, Blues Funeral does have its moments.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Onwards to the Wall [EP]
    More color-by-numbers post punk that uses too many grays and not enough pure blacks.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 46 Critic Score
    Paralytic Stalks
    The thoroughly unenjoyable Paralytic Stalks might be a sign that Barnes should take some time off and let the inspiration come to him.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Horror
    It's The Horror's dirgey digressions that actually best showcase his cold-blooded character.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Clay Class
    Clay Class feels disappointingly stagnant. But it does offer encouraging signs that a blade of grass or two can sprout up from cracks in Prinzhorn Dance School's cold, concrete world.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Ester
    At this point it's hard not to feel like the Trailer Trash Tracys who sounded pretty vital in 2009 have been left behind by a whole slew of bands that followed their starting gun and reached the finishing line quicker, and better.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unexpected Victory
    Unexpected Victory's sound is too lousy--and its stakes too low--to ever possibly live up to his past glories.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Fabriclive 61
    So while Pinch might not have moved on from dubstep completely, he's definitely moved somewhere, and it sounds like an exciting place to be.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Rich Forever
    It's a record that uses nastiness to cement the character "Rick Ross" as three-dimensional, and uses a barrage of bangers to cement the rapper Rick Ross as an undeniable force.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    No One Can Ever Know
    Frigid, militant, and rhythmic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Tramp
    Matters of mistrust, isolation, and uncomfortable togetherness dominate Tramp, rolling through every track like a sick, creeping fog.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Tamer Animals
    Even if the emotional intent often feels recycled from other records, Tamer Animals is a record that takes you places.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Old Ideas
    The songs are decent, the singing is stunning.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    It's the Arps [EP]
    The clean lines and easy momentum of It's the Arps are really refreshing.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Vantaa
    This music is as simultaneously functional and pleasurable as Luomo's more active house tracks, only it's for an opposite function--and a more sedate set of pleasure centers.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Black Cocaine [EP]
    Black Cocaine comes across as not particularly different than, say, recent records from Saigon or Uncle Murda or M.O.P.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    I Love You
    On his best effort yet, I Love You, Urick's dub obsessions have moved to the front of the room.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Rad Times Xpress IV
    Rad Times Xpress IV illuminates how well that music lends itself to more experimental renderings while the songs seemingly engineered to hold onto RTX's denim'n'leather constituency yield surprises.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    La Grande
    One wouldn't expect Gibson's latest to bowl over any audiophile chasing the wow!-factor, but for the patient, contemplative listener, La Grande-- much like the campfire depicted on its cover-- is a record worth warming to.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Making Mirrors
    Gotye's exemplary pop sense may be the big revelation of Making Mirrors, yet it's his arty restlessness that will continue to keep him interesting.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Wilson Semiconductors [EP]
    There are plenty of impulses worthy of exploration, but too often they end up tarnished by a listless desire to meander without direction, making Wilson Semiconductors feel more like a stopgap than a valuable addition to Hagerty's canon.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Hospitality
    The not-new songs here don't sound reworked so much as run through some kind of cartoony scrubbing contraption, Wonka Wash-style, emerging stunningly clean out the other end, the curvy surfaces all gleaming in the sun.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Be Strong
    The guys' commitment to music-as-fun and big, croon-y hooks (Goddard's velvet vocals sound as good as ever here) keeps it enjoyable throughout.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Strange Weekend
    Porcelain Raft borrows liberally from both the shoegaze and dream-pop playbooks, and so we get layers of sonic gauze shot through with delicately strummed acoustic guitar patterns and Remiddi's reedy, rather androgynous voice.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Born to Die
    For all of its coos about love and devotion, it's the album equivalent of a faked orgasm-- a collection of torch songs with no fire.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    U&I
    Strangely, pairing with just Mt. Sims on U&I appears to have resulted in less-focused output, with the duo gradually circling a grimy musical plughole, only managing to pull themselves out via less cluttered material in the back half of the record.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    America Give Up
    America Give Up is inconsistent and derivative yet promising, and not nearly as impressive as some early adopters would have people believe.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Vodka & Ayahuasca
    That atmosphere helps hold up Vodka & Ayahuasca's sense of anarchic, altered-state unease when the lyrics don't quite cut it, though the tolerable-at-worst punchlines and metaphors are easier to stomach the less dead-serious you take them.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    MU.ZZ.LE
    MU.ZZ.LE might be a transitional point on Gonjasufi's path and it shows just one face of an eclectic, multifaceted performer. But it's also that rare album that feels meditative and cathartic all at once.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Back on Time
    It's a kitchen sink-like flood of sound, always on the verge of resembling a gigantic curveball being forced down your throat, but with Vibert pulling back from the humor brink at all the right moments.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Clear Heart Full Eyes
    Clear Heart is just good enough to keep us listening.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 39 Critic Score
    Resolution
    Lamb of God's general lack of adventurousness makes them mostly indistinguishable from their heroes and, budget excepted, the bulk of their contemporaries.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    The Lion's Roar
    For the sisters' part, their voices are steadier now, and richer.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 44 Critic Score
    The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy
    The songs are fine but largely feckless, and what could be an animating contrast between glum lyrics and upbeat music is too often hobbled by clunkers both generic ("I am lost in my mind when you go to sleep") and specific (something about tarot cards).
    • 83 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Attack On Memory
    As an accidental concept album affirming the enduring power and purity of early emo (as defined by Dischord, Deep Elm, and especially Jade Tree), Attack on Memory feels above all necessary, a corrective for indie rock making allowances for everything except music that actually rocks.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Iron Balls of Steel
    The disc ought to have the proud, few Loincloth faithful weeping with joy, but more importantly, it leaves room for a broader audience to hear what the fuss was all about.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Something
    Cleaner and more elegant [than previous album, Does You Inspire You], buffing their crisp electronic pop to an immaculate sheen.... Truly great.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    The Iron Soul Of Nothing
    "Ash on the Trees (The Sudden Ebb of a Diatribe)", [is] the real reason this set of reissues is worth the investment.... It's a terrifying maze of tangents, like the early works of Nurse With Wound cronies Current 93 and O'Malley's own Khanate remixed by some actualization of evil.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Fallen Empires
    You get the sense they're shooting for something epic, something that would sound just as big as the pop bangers on radio, but the results are goofy.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Headcage [EP]
    Even in this beatless world, he brings his techno producer's instincts out, dropping just enough in the way of fleeting, right-place-right-time hooks to catch your ear when it's ready drift away from the song.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller, Vol. 1
    The Drexciya reissue rightly returns the spotlight to the original electro's signature rhythms and analog palette.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Hymns
    While it's nice to finally hear these two follow up on a promising debut, Hymns isn't likely to capture many people who weren't taken with the original Cardinal record.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Voyageur
    Edwards often sounds lost in these new songs.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Cyrk
    More than just chart her progression as a singer and songwriter, CYRK also sees Le Bon and her four-piece band developing into a crack psych-rock outfit that consistently leads the songs into unexpected places.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Future This
    Where the Big Pink previously sounded invincible, nearly every attempt to intellectualize or streamline their sound makes Future This come off as timid and malnourished.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Evolve or Be Extinct
    It's one of his best, a mostly single-minded return to the on-the-mic fierceness and computers-go-tribal rhythms that first made his name.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [OST]
    There are few standout tracks; instead, the most arresting moments emerge out of layers of increasingly damaged sounds that set an uncompromisingly bleak mood.... It doesn't quite work as a standalone experience.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    The Dreamer/The Believer
    For every bit of overcompensation--he actually cracks a bottle over a dude's head in "Raw"--there's something vividly rendered and honest.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Glimmer
    Think of Glimmer as a little symphony, just with singles, and made by a musician who can't decide between the roles of producer or composer. Really, he shouldn't anytime soon.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Bestival Live 2011
    While the collection speaks highly of the Cure's professionalism, it never catches spark, save for a performance of "The Caterpillar", reportedly their first since 1984.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Spills Out
    Though much of Spills Out seems to zip by in a blur, it's assembled with enough care to never quite spin out from its center.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Collections, Vol. 1
    His new record is another collection of effortlessly gorgeous ruminations on hip-hop expressed through thermal updrafts, babbling brooks, and cracking twigs.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Purple Naked Ladies
    Like many spinoffs from the Odd Future machine, it's a small piece of a larger puzzle, useful for obsessives concerned with keeping their catalogs up to date.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Both Ways Open Jaws
    More often than not, the contradictions between the band's knowing appropriations and its calls against jaded cynicism resolve themselves in the album's intricately rewarding attention to rich and unexpected sonic details.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Let's Go Eat the Factory
    Spotty, strange, all short songs and shitty sound, it's got the collagist careen of Bee Thousand and Propeller and the tumbling tunecraft of Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes Under the Stars.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Echoes of Silence
    A strong finish to Tesfaye's first trilogy, providing just enough closure to satisfy, and just enough mystery left to entice us back for the next round.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Tragedy and Geometry
    At times the music can get sentimental and even sappy, but it's never heavy-handed.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    TM:103 Hustlerz Ambition
    Thug Motivation somehow feels both airless and over-inflated, the sound of an artist trying to revisit something gone.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Complete
    The new mastering job, by Frank Arkwright working with Marr, actually is really good: loud but not bomb-level loud, clear, and airy. (Hatful of Hollow, in particular, is dramatically improved from its previous incarnations.) On the other hand, Complete is a profoundly inaccurate description of this set.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Daydream Repeater
    Aside from one surprising flip of "Be My Baby", Papich doesn't seem as interested in transforming his source material as much as just presenting it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges
    Feels like music I've been subconsciously craving without even knowing it exists.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Live Love A$AP
    Even if the fusion initially seems unorthodox, LIVELOVEA$AP is exactly the sort of record you'd expect to hear in 2011 from a New Yorker who was 13 when "Big Pimpin'" came out.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Hazed Dream
    Hazed Dream has some heady moments--the languid guitar intro to "Incense Head" and the head-nodding chords of "Mexican Wedding"--but the songs are just too mellow, understated, and lyrically anonymous to move the needle much.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Live Music
    As Sambol unravels that theme across these 14 songs, the album grows more endearing, if never quite exciting.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    We Stay Together [EP]
    Fans of Stott's labelmates Demdike Stare, and all the other goth-n-screw artists out there at the moment, will be happy to gnaw on these bones.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Tago Mago [40th Anniversary Edition]
    It's a colossus of an album, the product of a band that was thinking huge, pushing itself to its limits, and devoted to breaking open its own understanding of what rock music could be.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    (Together) [EP]
    (together) is borderline unlistenable taken as a whole.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Lioness: Hidden Treasures
    There's little on Lioness: Hidden Treasures that sounds throwaway, or like it should have never been released; but there's equally little that sounds absolutely essential.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Blue Slide Park
    His art is 144,487 times less remarkable than his first week sales numbers would have you believe.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Emika
    This is the product of a dynamic and assured vision, one that retains an alluring sense of mystery.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Last Day of Summer
    What makes Last Day of Summer engaging has as much to do with White Denim's potential future as it does its roots.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    We Bought a Zoo [Original Soundtrack]
    It's all lovely and certainly more immediately engaging and compact than Jónsi's mostly-instrumental Riceboy Sleeps multimedia project from 2009.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Stage Whisper
    On the whole, Stage Whisper is enjoyable, but the live portion is dispensible, and the new studio tracks, which will likely please anyone taken with IRM, are the real draw.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Keep Your Dreams
    When they go for manic instead of mellow, Canyons do bring something new, even if it's just intensity, to the 80s retro party.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Quilt
    Like their namesake, Quilt's music feels handmade and stitched-together, as though its creators were sifting through a collection of musical hand-me-downs and collating the bits that spoke to them into something new.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tumble Bee: Laura Veirs Sings Folk Songs for Children
    Tumble Bee is a welcome addition to contemporary children's music, not only because it's sufficiently involving to appeal to adults, but also because it further demonstrates that songs for kids don't have to be cloying or sanitized.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Undun
    This isn't the Roots' most accessible album, and it's definitely their most downbeat, but it comes from a place that isn't always easy to dwell.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Parodia Flare
    Ward's real saving grace on Parodia Flare is the guitar, which he utilizes in unexpectedly welcome ways to propel his compositions, keeping them from dissolving into murky keyboard washes.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Pinch & Shackleton
    Pinch & Shackleton is a welcome return to each artist's peculiar roots.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    With U [EP]
    t's a strangely affecting synthesis of sounds and marks Holy Other's short debut out as a darkly oppressive but ultimately rewarding piece of work.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Radiant Door [EP]
    Radiant Door is exactly as its title suggests--the brighter side of one of America's best psych-pop bands.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    No Kings
    The dense weight of verbiage on No Kings actually welcomes uninitiated listeners, rather than siphoning them out for not being advanced enough on some impenetrable ultra-battler s***.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Biasonic Hotsauce: Birth of the Nanocloud
    As so often when it comes to dance-music full-lengths, Bias' good ideas get lost in the sea of makeweight stuff, and his attempt to please just about everyone results in a frustratingly spotty album.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Well-Done
    Bronson's biggest strengths are a goofy sense of humor and a refreshing lack of self-regard: at its best, Well-Done is like spending 45 minutes with the affable, roly-poly guy who cracked you up at your high school lunch table.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Bangs & Works, Vol. 2: The Best of Chicago Footwork
    The second Bangs & Works is a marked improvement over its predecessor.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Pan Am Stories
    What makes Pan Am Stories worth returning to is the scope Knight works within, where elements of prog, folk, and psychedelia blur in and out of focus.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    Camp
    While Glover's exaggerated, cartoonish flow and overblown pop-rap production would be enough to make Camp one of the most uniquely unlikable rap records of this year (and most others), what's worse is how he uses heavy topics like race, masculinity, relationships, street cred, and "real hip-hop" as props to construct a false outsider persona.
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