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
    • 74 Critic Score
    This Is How Tomorrow Moves
    The album’s minimalist moments are its strongest.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan
    An unusually linear Mountain Goats record full of powerful moments that not even the eternally moving Darnielle can scrape into the whole it deserves.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Pale Young Gentlemen
    While Pale Young Gentlemen is frontloaded and slightly naïve like a record of this sort should be, there's more than enough reason to anticipate what they're capable of when they decide to get darker, older, and less gentle.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Still Life
    Still Life is steeped in Dylan's back-to-basics period at the turn of the '70s, carefully adorned but never skeletal; from the beating-heart bassline that sits underneath "Drowning" to the drunken horns that close out the eight-minute "Amen", Still Life is sumptuous, slightly rickety, offhandedly gorgeous.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    The Good Fight
    The Good Fight is a streamlined reminder to ignore the restraints. Great music is great music, no matter where it comes from.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    The Waeve
    Those looking for Graham from Blur will find it in his laconic vocal turns and occasional guitar explosions, while Dougall’s dreamily dejected melodies will resonate with fans of her solo work. But The WAEVE has its own chemistry, an alchemic mixture of psych, punk, folk, tenderness, and dread, laced with dextrous saxophone tones and a few come-hither drops of terror.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Salt River
    The contrasts within the songs are more interesting than those between style and source.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not
    Give a Glimpse does, however, stick largely to well-trod paths, with not a ton in the way of experimentation. As always, it’s Mascis’ guitar that is the main attraction here, the reason for caring.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Boys Outside
    In both its lyrical candour and soft-rock accessibility, Boys Outside sees Mason ready to meet the public again, and in some cases, actually cater to it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Electric Circus
    Com comes off as alternately uncomfortable and downright lazy, half-speaking-- or worse, singing-- new-age revelations to the masses.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Monday At The Hug & Pint
    The least bullshitting, most accomplished and first consistently great release from Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Wig In A Box: Songs From & Inspired By Hedwig & The Angry Inch
    Anything that keeps this compelling musical in the foreground of popular consciousness is worth something, and if a fan of Hedwig happens to be an indie rocker as well, this compilation is a delightful wedding.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Miss Machine
    DEP is still struggling to re-establish a unified and compelling sound, and their newfound penchant for melodic exploration seems out of place amid the album's most inspired thrash moments.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    The Grind Date
    The Grind Date brings together an unimaginable team of the underground's hottest producers and meshes their idiosyncrasies without dissidence.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    O
    The big, inescapable problem with O is that, aside from being derivative, Rice's songwriting is also unbearably repetitive-- he stubbornly relies upon time-tested singer/songwriter formulas (quiet acoustic strumming and sober, wavering vocals), and repeats them almost exactly the same way, every time.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Songs For Christmas
    By the last two discs, the songwriter finds more success in being less reverent.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Monsters Of Folk
    The opener is as intriguing as it is unexpected. It's just too bad, then, that the rest of the album continues to ask similar questions, but never again with the same vigor or innovation.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dive
    Dive might not be the most ambitious instrumental record you hear all year, but it almost always sounds good.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    {Awayland}
    To its credit, {Awayland} rarely comes across as false, but O'Brien's affinity for cleverness over clarity ensures it rarely comes across in any real way.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Retrash
    While it's no Manifest Decimation, Retrash is still one of the year's most notable mutations of thrash, and Oozing Wound show a lot of promise to get even weirder.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Quietly Blowing It
    Taylor writes about big issues—income inequality, political corruption, a society fraying at its edges—but these complex matters are undermined by the rote uplift in his songs, an optimism assumed but never really earned.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    C'est La Vie
    Though nothing else on the album quite sounds like that first single (or hits the same giddiness), the Simon similarity runs deep. Houck’s narrator is often sly, wry, and conversational.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    I'll Be Lightning
    Odd instrumental touches crop up throughout the album, and there's a welcome layer of grit and murk to even the prettiest songs here.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Traumazine
    As a concept album, Traumazine is uneven. But as an embodiment of the phrase “healing isn’t linear,” its significance couldn’t be more clear.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Yes Lawd!
    What’s astonishing here is the way they manage to forge a sound nearly as rich and original as that of America’s most blunted.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Leave Home
    The Men's treatment of their well-curated influences is less akin to that of fan-boys playing in a tribute act and a lot more like an irreverent hip-hop producer's approach to breaks--key in on your sources' coolest moments, change the context, and ride that perfect sound forever.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Pale Horses
    Musically, Pale Horses functions as a kind of career summary, compressing their musical digressions into a coherent whole.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Cascade
    On Cascade, he’s back to forestalling that knowledge through repetition, which is what gives his abstract pieces their surprising sentience and unaccountable melancholy. The machine is doing the work, but the composer has done the thinking and feeling, and that makes all the difference.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    The Center Won't Hold
    Even if tracks like “Can I Go On” or “RUINS” don’t manifest themselves as solidly as some of the others, they’re still interesting, well-constructed, complete thoughts. The Center Won’t Hold is a Sleater-Kinney record not only because their name is on the cover, but because all of the elements you first fell in love with are still here.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Songs In The Key Of Yikes
    At times, bursts of velocity push the group toward a kind of transcendence, particularly when the spiky “Everybody Dies” is chased by the galvanizing gallop of “Stuck in a Dream.” The moments of speed also lend a sense of urgency to McCaughan’s nagging anxiety, which complements the barbed melodies and gnarled chords; every element suggests that he’s searching for a way outside of his head.
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