Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,715 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: 10,452 out of 12715
  2. Mixed: 1,949 out of 12715
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12715
12715 music reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin
    Black Thought remains a spectacular rapper, decades into a career with plenty of invitations to burn out. He hasn't slackened an inch. His flow patterns on "Understand" hit like flurries of jabs to the sternum. The problem for listeners, of course, remains that he never quite knows how to stop dancing on his toes; he always sounds like he's high-stepping through a tire-field.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Only Built for Infinity Links
    Though they haven’t solved all their curation and sequencing issues, Quavo and Takeoff’s compatibility grants Infinity Links an easygoing energy that’s hard to resist.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Shine Your Light
    Shine Your Light never gets oppressive, though during its final third, it does suggest what living in a record store might be like after the novelty wears out--kinda lonely, a little bit stuffy, and leaving you subject to others trying to tiptoe around.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Damage and Joy
    It feels more like an intimate recording project than a live band document, mostly splitting the difference between routine electro-Stones rave-ups and strung-out ballads.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    That Lucky Old Sun
    "But now I'm back." And he is, with his finest non-"Smile" album since the golden age of the Beach Boys. Lucky us.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A World Out of Time
    While each song could pass for a portion of a larger jam, they all get to the point rapidly.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Issa Album
    He is so compelling when he digs deeper into his psyche this way, providing more than superficiality, but there aren’t enough of these moments to sustain Issa Album, which is as basic as its title.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Let Me Come Home
    Let Me Come Home is still too overworked, but, as that final song proves, it represents a welcome shift toward (relative) musical simplicity and lyrical honestly that shows that the band is heading in the right direction.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Sob Rock
    The truth is he could have amped it up in both departments—more hunger to prove himself beyond his influences, more fearlessness to work outside his comfort zone. Even if this is one of his stronger albums, the whole thing feels self-consciously minor.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 44 Critic Score
    Ultraviolet
    I's a 40-minute, 12-track dance-rap full-length without a single hard punchline or trenchant moment, the sort of thing that sounds like it could've been banged out in a couple of weeks.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    These Days...
    The more human Ab-Soul dares to be on record, the stronger he becomes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Cope
    Four albums in, it's becoming pretty clear that the genre in which Manchester Orchestra resides has more untapped potential than the band itself.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Welcome the Worms
    While not a record of cast-iron slam dunks, Welcome the Worms possesses enough raw power to cast Bleached in a completely different light, and one that is considerably more sustainable than their debut.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Magnifique
    It’s not that the album is bland, it’s that it doesn’t really do anything or go anywhere.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Semicircle
    After five albums, it’s nostalgic sleight-of-hand for the Go! Team to continually look back on the sounds of the ’60s yet still tune out the underlying noise of that radical decade.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    How I Learned To Write Backwards
    It's pure fun-- insanely, immediately likable, and ingenious in how much it achieves.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 35 Critic Score
    Fatherfucker
    The beats on Fatherfucker are not only frustratingly simplistic, but the energy and surprising rhythmic complexity of the vocals on her debut are noticeably absent, too.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    American IV: The Man Comes Around
    Cash's renditions are often breathtaking in their simplicity, but rarely do they justify their presence among a dozen other similarly afflicted songs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Terrorbird
    While the fragments themselves are never short on energy, they are short on substance-- Terrorbird simply doesn't equal the sum of its parts.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Get Born
    We sound like everyone's favorite old rock bands, we have insipid lyrics, we say 'Come On!' and 'Oh Yeah!' every five seconds, we have no discernable identity, and we're from Australia. What could people possibly dislike about us?
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dimmer.
    It's a really solid record, unassuming yet memorable, subtle: It's mildly melancholy, modestly dark, and discreetly brooding.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Honey From The Tombs
    Honey's more fleshed-out productions show Millan has the ability to be engaging on her own, but they are too scarce to make this album anything more than a humble footnote.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
    At its worst, this is effectively a contemporary acoustic neo-No-Depression record with Costello's signature vocal tics slapped on top.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    ...And the Ever Expanding Universe
    Their latest, ...And the Ever Expanding Universe, gets grandiose in nearly all the right places; it's the singing part of the songs that could use a little beefing up.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Liquid Love
    For Shy Child, synth-pop short-circuits the space between unreality and truth, the artificiality of its expanses allowing a sort of wide-eyed honesty that naturalism forecloses. That bittersweet sincerity sticks much harder than Liquid Love's sleek surfaces would ever suggest.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    DJ-Kicks
    In his own dogged, idiosyncratic way, he's keeping a neglected strain of dance music alive here, and while the joys are subtle, the more attention you give the mix, the deeper they feel.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Krieg und Frieden (Music for Theatre)
    Ring’s orchestral and electronic score communicates the narrative’s swing from complacent luxury to riveting despair, showing what happens when worlds collide.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    A Quiet Darkness
    That A Quiet Darkness doesn’t offer much in the way of immediate pleasure shouldn’t be entirely to its detriment, but this album doesn’t grow on you; it wears on you.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Fantasy
    While it's hard to fault a band for branching out beyond their established template, the tidy electronic textures of Fantasy don't begin to match the mysterious depths of Lightning Dust's best work.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Tonight You Look Like a Spider
    Albums recorded over ample stretches of time often don't hold together well, and Tonight is no exception.... Although one of the strengths of this album is that it's clearly coming straight out of a void, oblivious to anything else around it, there's also a childlike wonder coupled with a decent understanding of the gruesome side of life.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Bitter Rivals
    Bitter Rivals too often feels like a cheap thrill ride, firing on all cylinders but without any grand design.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    9 Songs
    If not all of Dub Thompson’s ideas work, the more important takeaway is that, at this early stage, they sound like a band with no lack of them.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    The Golden Echo
    For now, though, Kimbra's status as "That singer from the Gotye song" woefully underserves her full potential, but so does The Golden Echo.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    LateNightTales
    This is an inspired collection of songs, even if you do get the feeling Hopkins prefers to spend his late nights alone.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Chrissybaby Forever
    Chrissybaby is 16 songs long, which might be more of this particular pleasant, low-stakes mood than you need at one uninterrupted stretch.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Boronia
    These lyrics threaten to drag the rest of the album down if you listen too closely, but Stephenson’s vocal melodies are buoyant enough to keep it all afloat if you’re playing this in the background.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams
    He runs into trouble when he loses the self-awareness of it all. ... Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams finds its true comfort zone when it is simply sweet.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    Bohemian Rhapsody [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Since Bohemian Rhapsody is a soundtrack targeted at a wide audience, not an archival release suited for collectors, not all of the Live Aid performance is here; “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “We Will Rock You” are missing. The omissions underscore how superfluous Bohemian Rhapsody is.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Egowerk
    The music has retained its urgent physicality. Still, it’s probably for the best that the Faint continue working at their recent leisurely pace of about an album every half decade, because this band burns through their ideas fast.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Islands
    With TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone on production, Islands polishes Durant’s sound to a resonant and gently rollicking gleam, brightened by dulcimer, guitar, brass, and woodwind. Durant’s songwriting is fine-boned and small-scale, and her lyrics are quietly epic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Support Alien Invasion
    Aguayo’s productions have frequently flashed a sly sense of humor, but the mood here is driven, focused, heads-down. His drum programming is as slinky as ever, but there’s a newfound force to it; his drums could double as battering rams.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Beneath the Eyrie
    It’s weird that “better than nothing” became the bar for what was once one of the most celebrated bands of their era, but if it’s a choice between more records as solid, if unspectacular, as Beneath the Eyrie or nothing, the Pixies might as well keep them coming. It’s been a long time since this band had anything left to lose.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Candid
    For the most part, these covers are faithful, fine-tuned, and sound great. No track on Candid warps its original in a particularly wild or ambitious way; Whitney are more concerned with nailing these takes respectfully than fundamentally reimagining them.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Think of Spring
    Its mellow sway is alluring but it also can drift ever so slightly into the realm of mood music, perhaps an inevitable result for a gently restless musician who seems to favor feel over feeling.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Break Me Open
    Though his words reach for darker emotional valences, the album’s most honest moments come across in Carey’s compositions.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Little Songs
    He delivers these lines like a seasoned storyteller, reminding himself of the timeless feelings that drive us to keep the music playing, whether it’s old or new.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Dreams Of Being Dust
    TWIABP are now making the most technically proficient music of their career and admirably facing down some of the world’s most dire issues. But in the pursuit of radical evolution, they’ve forsaken the emotional dynamism that has consistently buoyed their music through their tumultuous history.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Heavy Rocks
    Heavy Rocks does the things you expect a Boris album to do.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Songs
    The main issue with Songs is that, for an album of "songs," there are too few pop cuts to work well as a whole. It's more of a pick-and-choose affair where the modern ability to fast-forward to your favorite musical moments, down to the second, is crucial.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Anything In Return
    For now, the musically and emotionally rewarding Anything in Return evokes the feeling of being young with options and in no hurry to figure it all out.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Coming Out of the Fog
    On Fog, Arbouretum does well by both parties [his songwriting influences: singer Will Oldham, with whom he toured as a backing guitarist, and Baltimore punk-rock-Gnostics, Lungfish].
    • 70 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Smoke
    Williams' ostensible depthlessness, like that of his forebears, is itself only a façade, and Smoke offers plenty to discover across repeated listens--particularly the way in which he tweaks his own voice, melting and reshaping it like the models' Technicolor "tears" on the album cover.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Let Love
    Sometimes it really does seem like he’s rapping to instill love, sometimes he’s rapping for rap’s sake, and those lines get smudged at times, but more often than not he’s methodical. It is in the moments where his precision underscores his affection that Let Love truly conquers.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Think Later
    THINK LATER is full of homogeneous trap-pop ballads devoted to one-dimensional introspection.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Hippies
    If Hippies has a flaw, it's only that it overstays its welcome by just a few minutes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Food & Liquor, Vol. 2: the Great American Rap Album, Pt. 1
    Lupe's dexterity remains his greatest asset.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Rosegold
    This might be her least distinguished set of songs to date, relying too heavily on cliché (“I’m flying without even trying”) and vague, pat sentiment (“Sometimes it doesn’t come together ’til it breaks”).
    • 70 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Mirrors the Sky
    Mirrors the Sky reflects a subtle yet effective refinement of her sound, as she tweaks these elements and influences to create music that is both familiar and idiosyncratic.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Mister Mellow
    Truly, it all feels right on Mister Mellow, which is why it doesn’t leave much of an impression. Even if Mister Mellow asked more of Greene than any prior Washed Out album, it lacks the artistic ambition and tension that made his work endure beyond a blurry moment in the sun.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Through The Devil Softly
    There's no real standout track--no 'Fade Into You' for this decade--but it's a good listen while it lasts, a thing of slow, sad grace.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    One Fast Move Or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur
    For an album about a doc about a book about going into the wilds of California, One Fast Move sounds awfully sleepy.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Grand Archives
    The insularity of "Cease to Begin" certainly has its merits, and it's pointless to argue about who comes out on top here, but the way Grand Archives come forth with arms outsretched results in a debut that likely exceeds most expectations.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    You Disgust Me
    Both are more than capable of crafting memorable hip-hop music, even if they're too focused on cranking out bangers at an industrial rate to notice whether anything they've made stands out.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Yoyogi Park
    The line separating Saturday night and Sunday morning is no thicker than a second hand; Yoyogi Park invites you to clear out a space inside that sliver of time, and to luxuriate in it.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Welcome To Condale
    Unfortunately, Welcome to Condale is stylistically all over the place and, despite its generally upbeat tone, kind of a drag to listen to.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Queen of the Wave
    Queen of the Wave just makes you lay prostrate at the feet of Pepe Deluxé in the hopes that you won't mind them relentlessly hammering you with tacky quirks and leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    August by Cake
    After over 30 years in pursuit of the perfect song, Pollard has finally started to recognize the album for everything it can be.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    BOOMIVERSE
    Boomiverse doesn’t have the same freewheeling, blitzkrieg energy as Sir Lucious, but it reestablishes Big Boi as a dependable record maker who will always make music worth checking for, no matter what else is going on around him.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Conversations
    The best songs on Conversations point to a viable middle ground where earnest delicacy and shadowy tones co-exist, but the band has yet to fully explore that realm.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Pink Friday 2
    While Minaj is still rapping valiantly—especially as Red Ruby Da Sleeze, a new persona introduced on the Diwali riddim-sampling single of the same name—the album’s intention is muddled through its scattershot production, which sounds less like genre innovation and more like an insidious ploy to worm its way into as many crevices on TikTok as possible.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    A Hundred Miles Off
    Despite occasional flashes of inspiration, much of the record blends together into a whole that is somehow much less than the sum of its parts; the ingredients are colorful, but the end result is disappointingly dull.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Get Awkward
    The guitar work here is still ten times rangier and more inventive than you'd expect, but it takes a few very professional steps back, nailing down its snappy flourishes amid ecstatic "whoo!"s, new-wave poses, and occasional clouds of glitter and confetti.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Skrillex And Diplo Presents Jack U
    While Jack Ü doesn't exactly roll the ball forward, or do much else to make listeners rethink the principal actors here, it's dumb, loud fun from two architects of the dumbest, loudest fun of the 2000s.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Blue
    The music on Blue is always lovingly crafted, and the album’s lack of musical pretense makes for an enjoyable, if predictable listen.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Tearless
    Where Another Life felt bright and alert, shimmying towards oblivion like lemmings in a conga line, Tearless is burned out and overwhelmed. This is ugly music, even at its most melodic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    The Altar
    The Altar has a lot in common with Goddess, including its fatal flaw: its attempts to position Banks as edgy or dangerous, despite all musical evidence to the contrary.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Cerulean
    Caroline Polachek fares best of all Harle’s features; in both “Azimuth” and “On and On,” she iterates a dancefloor diva more at home at Camelot than, say, either the Paradise Garage or Pacha, and Harle really sounds like he’s having fun honoring her commitment to the bit. Other vocals fail to emulsify.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Rapor [EP]
    Rapor should be a display of Grossi’s adaptability, but it just ends up leaving you to wonder what he actually stands for as an artist.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Young Hunger
    The many guests on Young Hunger prevent the album from getting too bogged down in schmaltz, adding color and texture to the record.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Passionoia
    If you think intelligence in indie lyrics must come at the expense of coherence, take in a couple of these impeccably linear narratives.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Tulsa For One Second
    The lack of freshness is most apparent on the disc's instrumental tracks, most of which sound like hand-me-down versions of the micro-carols on Mum's Finally We Are No One.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 31 Critic Score
    #1
    #1 is a mixture of sounds already available on many Human League, 808 State and Heaven 17 records, arranged by amateurs exploring their self-obsessed, nerdy sexuality.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    The Instigator
    Miller offers more than enough quality material here to justify stepping out on his own: what he's occasionally lacking in energy, he largely makes up for with craft.... That said, it's unlikely to instigate much beyond some afternoon head-nodding, and even some of Miller's fans will be somewhat put off by the album's borderline MOR sound.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 29 Critic Score
    Alone With Everybody
    Overly orchestrated mid-tempo ballads with inane lyrics.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    It'll Be Cool
    Ultimately, It'll Be Cool succumbs to the general lack of ambition that has always been Silkworm's Achilles' heel.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 53 Critic Score
    Joan Of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain...
    The album's saving grace is the surrounding music, which almost, but not quite, makes up for Kinsella's constant barrage of tiresome non-sequiturs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The People's Key
    Every line is laid with the rich sense of rhythm and texture that he's mastered over the years, but it still adds up to very little: a wildly spiritual record without any spirit.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
    Dinosaurs is a testament to how 90s alt-rock angst can translate meaningfully to middle age.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Liturgy Of Death
    Blastbeats churn and tremolo-picked guitars gnash their teeth. These guys know what they’re doing. Liturgy of Death has its share of weirder moments, too.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Grand
    Luckily, Grand features not only some of the band's most personal lyrics, but also some of its most universal.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    The Forgotten Arm
    Here's yet another exemplary Aimee Mann album to add to the pile.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    High Off Life
    Except for the previously released singles that pad the end of the record in keeping with industry norms, High Off Life is better-paced and sequenced than most of Future’s recent releases—the whole thing seems to glide by frictionlessly.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kids in L.A.
    While it's admirable that Kisses turned their puppy dog-eyes outward, their attempt at social commentary ultimately feels half-hearted.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Wild Strawberries
    The quieter work here may suggest a way forward, but Wild Strawberries has a transitional feel.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Sounds Of The Universe
    Ending with a brief, queasy reprise tease of 'Wrong,' Sounds of the Universe concludes anticlimactically, an echo of its promising start.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Elegies to Lessons Learnt
    Elegies to Lessons Learnt is an undeniably effective 50-minute ride, but it's also rather coldly mapped out.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Lady Bird [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    The way he colors the film’s world leaves it wide open, with room enough for gentle movement and subtle triumphs. His light, playful motifs buoy the narrative without crowding it, and help paint a rich, fulfilling portrait of a girl on the edge, ready to fly.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Way I Am
    Spilling out over the course of 73 minutes, the album drags, even if it has no specific slow spots. .... Any random song on The Way I Am is sharply crafted and unpretentious in a way that carries on the best Nashville traditions. If it’s not quite a comeback, it is, at least, a satisfying demonstration of Combs’ strengths.
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