Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,724 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: 10,460 out of 12724
  2. Mixed: 1,950 out of 12724
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12724
12724 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Rock N Roll Consciousness
    Where The Best Day proffered a somewhat uneven mix of extended odysseys and rough-hewn sketches, Rock n Roll Consciousness is much more cohesive and smoothly sequenced.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Humanz
    All the masks and cameos aside, this still feels like a Damon Albarn solo project, a place for him to treat the studio like the welcoming arms of oblivion, and for us to join him.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Pleasure
    Pleasure features a number of songs that stretch towards the five-minute mark, making more sense as part of the whole rather than individually.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Devout
    From its gentle textures come a calm centeredness, from its soft words a sense of strength.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Playboi Carti [Mixtape]
    Playboi Carti feels like a break from life, the soundtrack to a mindless good time.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem [Live]
    At Saint Thomas feels drier. The virtuosically unspooling vocal runs of “Die Stunde Kommt” feel particularly embodied, like you’re watching her vocal cords come unraveled there in person.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Visuals
    If you’re looking for pop with a light outer frosting of edginess, Visuals hits the spot and then some. But if you’d like to hear Mew explore those edges and break free from the stultifying safety of their music, Visuals leaves you frustrated.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tara Jane O'Neil
    While remaining as obtuse as ever, O’Neil’s newfound appreciation for singer-songwriter-dom presents some of her most personal work yet.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    What Now
    When Meath and Sanborn ease into a slower lane, they find a sweetness that isn’t entirely likable. There is a bitterness to their Southern bless-your-heart feel, swaddling sharp observations in mannered dance-pop.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Look at the Powerful People
    Look at the Powerful People begins with 54 of the most exciting seconds of music I’ve heard in 2017. And then they start talking.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Love Is Love
    The ease of his melody is matched by his own ideas. It might be a small notion, but that’s where Woods operate most efficiently, for a moment achieving the solidarity that Love Is Love desperately seeks.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Guppy
    These hooks are delivery mechanisms for often acerbic, often exhausted lyrics about the endless crap conveyor belt that is life and love as a girl.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Narkopop
    The music carves out a space that always leaves plenty of room for the music’s most important component, the one that, in this artistic sphere, ultimately determines what it all means: the listener.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    The French Press [EP]
    Its six songs shine just as bright as those on Talk Tight, but they cast longer, darker shadows.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Belladonna of Sadness
    Her voice and affectations are so guided by the heavy hands of Turner and Ford that Belladonna of Sadness is largely indistinguishable from their work: At best, Savior is a muse for her own introduction; at worst, she’s a conduit who’s yet to prove that she can hold her own with the company she keeps.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Belong
    The downside of Belong’s greater tilt toward pop and feelings is an occasional lurch into treacle.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 49 Critic Score
    The Search for Everything
    It’s progress, probably, that Mayer keeps the condescension to a dull sneer, but this also makes everything sound that much more anodyne.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Americana
    No matter where he dwells, Davies remains an outsider, and that alienation unites Americana’s jumble of eras and places.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 92 Critic Score
    DAMN.
    Kendrick Lamar has proven he’s a master storyteller, but he’s been saving his best plot twist this whole time, waiting until he was ready, or able, to pull it off.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Electric Lines
    Though solidly enjoyable, Electric Lines could have benefitted from some more concretely original ideas to propel it forward. But when Goddard taps into his love for house, disco, and techno, his enthusiasm radiates through the speakers.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Darling of the Afterglow
    She hasn’t yet sorted out the particular combination of influences that fit her strengths, and few of the songs’ melodies are compelling enough to overcome the album’s strangely stale take on alternative pop.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    The Wild
    A quick glance at a recent list of his favorite hip-hop records of all-time--rooted firmly in the golden and silver ages of hip-hop--reveals what inspires him most. When Raekwon leans into those sounds and themes, the rhymes that flow through him are evidence that this OG can still hang with the best of them.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Season High
    It's so clinical that it works better as an audition reel for their next round of features than it does its own statement.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Bloodlust
    They keep the music raw enough that it sounds almost-but-not-quite amateurish--again, following in the hardcore/early-thrash tradition--while Marrow’s willingness to indulge in comic absurdity with the lyrics makes Body Count’s preachiness more palatable.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    AZD
    For all its artfully-deployed discordance, AZD maintains a musicality that holds the listener close.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Siberia
    Siberia faithfully captures the wistfulness of the pilgrim’s journey--but it also suggests that the ears may be fickle traveling companions.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    At What Cost
    At What Cost is ambitious, slickly-produced, and relies a great deal on live instrumentation. However, where Attention Deficit’s jumbled tracklist smacked of design-by-committee compromise, At What Cost is clearly guided by GoldLink’s vision from start to finish.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Memories: Do Not Open
    It is an anodyne pop record for a post-EDM world, one where trap and trop-house mix with pale imitations of the Migos flow and Coldplay’s cornball sentimentality.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The World's Best American Band
    The World’s Best American Band is mixed significantly louder than anything else you’re probably listening to right now and it’s equally glittery and gritty like a blood-caked switchblade—far more polished than the similarly indebted Sheer Mag, but with more edge to rule out any comparisons to the ’70s LARPing of Free Energy.
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