Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,720 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: 10,456 out of 12720
  2. Mixed: 1,950 out of 12720
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12720
12720 music reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Songs for Pierre Chuvin
    It is a brief but thoughtful collection marked by old-school production, deep allusions to his songbook, and performances that could be placed among those early pillars. Yet it doesn’t feel like pandering. Despite the familiar sound and old-world setting (4th and 5th century, to be exact), these songs never look back for too long. They feel like another step forward.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Sideways to New Italy
    These 10 tracks refine RBCF’s formidable strafing abilities. They roll. They’re feverish. They also coast. ... RBCF get in trouble, however, when they want us to pay attention to words and such. This is more of a problem on the material sung by White, responsible for the this-is-pop moments that require a slight deceleration.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)
    Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two) is the far warmer of the two works, despite titles that allude to Iceland and Saturn’s frozen moons. In its most mesmerizing moments, Hassell slips into memoirist mode, allowing old tropes from his past to flicker back to life.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Someone New
    Her songs are like islands: self-contained, gorgeous little worlds where nothing is obvious—especially the genesis of love and its unsteady first steps.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monument
    The performances sound more confident, the music less muddy. Singer Egor Shkutko’s grumbly baritone is better controlled, packing the intensity of a Russian Ian Curtis.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Good Woman
    The Staves manage to overcome Congleton's production and mixing tics because their voices can cut through anything. ... It’s heartening to hear them turn their attention inward; maybe next time, they’ll trust that sound to do its work without the input—or intrusions—from a collaborator.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Perfect [EP]
    Perfect is the first Mannequin Pussy release that’s as tender as it is tough.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows
    The album’s most affecting moments zero in on Albarn’s close relationship with nature, one built on trust and deference.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Wild Loneliness
    Wild Loneliness is the natural endpoint of this long interrogation—the product of a band whose confidence in their own reason for being feels like a beacon.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Continuance
    Continuance isn’t an overhaul of the blueprint established on Covert and Carrollton, nor is it straight-faced fan service. It’s a space for two rap veterans who are comfortable enough with their chemistry to continue prodding at their margins.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Spell 31
    On Spell 31, they rework their signature layered spirituals into fleet grooves that shimmer with color and joy yet still channel pain and loss.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Living Sky
    If they can’t quite recapture the full force or stark originality that characterized their lodestar during his lifetime (who could?) they can and do evoke his broad range of moods and colors, which seem to befit this moment. And they get us to lean in and listen, with just the right tilt.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    We Cater to Cowards
    On We Cater to Cowards, Oozing Wound have downsized to a smaller ride, but they’ve filled the tank with rocket fuel, and they’ve never sounded more comfortable behind the wheel.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Yian
    Chua creates landscapes out of the hollow spaces within her. Each track becomes its own kind of home, or at least a safe harbor.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Big Sigh
    Big Sigh is at its best when Hackman resists these broad-stroke urges, and carves out more precise imagery—whether with a pen or an ice pick.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Delight
    On Delight, Jain grasps for a joy that lies tantalizingly out of reach, bringing melodies informed by Raga Bageshri into dazzling contact with modular synthesis and digital manipulation.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    This Is BASIC
    When Forsyth piles on effects like Quine does, as in the wild wah-wah of “Versatile Switch,” he risks sounding tasteless, too. But these are faults that BASIC are glad to share with their namesake, proof that they truly embrace its sound. For Basic’s devoted fan base, This Is BASIC is evidence, finally, of the album’s enduring influence.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Flying Club Cup
    Flying Club Cup would be a triumph even with those layers stripped away; that's not to say that the cultural patina obscures the "real" songs underneath, but its removal allows us to sidestep mind-numbing questions about authenticity and intention.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Triplicate
    One does get the sense of life behind these performances, of private experience refracted through universal sentiment, of hard knocks transubstantiated into easy wisdom, but, as is often the case with Bob Dylan, the drama remains mostly internal.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Live from the Underground
    Live From the Underground shows that not much has changed with Big K.R.I.T. over the past two years. He's still an exceptional rapper with a befitting production style who can make some very good music. It's just that, at this point, good isn't good enough.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Landing On A Hundred
    Landing is an apt reflection of an artist restarting after several years, but without sacrificing the eccentricity that initially made him such a compelling figure.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Rest
    On Rest, Gainsbourg doesn’t just reveal her pain, but monumentalizes it, lays out a red carpet, and invites people to watch. Her refusal to be sequestered by grief is, quite literally, a death-defying feat.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    The Lady Killer
    If the de rigueur synthetic frills keep The Lady Killer from the visceral, tactile highs of the current soul revival, they do remind that artifice can often be its own reward.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure
    The test of any conceptual record is how well it stands on its own, removed from the angle. And A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure is a first-rate work, even if you're unfamiliar with the backstory.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Big Black Coat
    It's impressive and frankly unusual to see a band five albums into their career experiment with new sounds and actually make it work, but Junior Boys have pulled it off. Career longevity looks good on them.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    X: The Godless Void and Other Stories
    Elaborate but rarely ostentatious, The Godless Void is a true revelation from a band 25 years into the game—the rare Trail of Dead record that lets Keely’s shell-shocked performances chart the necessary emotional peaks without needing the music to follow suit.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Tell Me How You Really Feel
    It’s complicated. There are no punchlines. In these songs of existential despair, a change in perspective is its own kind of revelation, as is Barnett finding the few good words to describe it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Utopian Ashes
    Only once, on the wallowing “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” does the record get so caught up in its imagined misery that it becomes an actual buzzkill. Otherwise, Gillespie and Beth execute these songs with the tact of seasoned studio pros and the vigor of a couple crushing shared Righteous Brothers favorites at karaoke.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    End Times Undone
    End Times Undone neither elbows past nor dwells too much on Kilgour’s considerable legacy. It’s a frozen moment in a continuum, and it shines with suitable magic.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Pink
    But for now, basking in Pink's riptide, Wata, Takeshi, and Atsuo are 2006's balls-out riff-makers to beat.
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