Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,729 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: 10,465 out of 12729
  2. Mixed: 1,950 out of 12729
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12729
12729 music reviews
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Further Complications
    While his songwriting remains funny and incisive at 45, ostensibly ballsier numbers like 'Fuckingsong' and 'Angela' veer dangerously close to bar-band boneheadedness.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Ministry of Love
    Ministry of Love does come off like something of a fashion victim, sounding expensive but uncomfortable, looking good but doing little to stand out.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Mamalarky
    With this much creativity, it’s unfortunate that the band falls into predictable patterns on wordless bridges or codas that start to feel samey after 10 songs. The spidery instrumental “Singalong,” on the other hand, is a smart sequencing choice to mix up the album’s flow, while “Big Trouble” has the most notable tweaks to their formula.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Just Like The Fambly Cat
    It's all vaguely familiar, but Lytle's fine-grained production pops a freshmaker or two into the mix.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Real Close Ones
    Following their first two crunching and careening albums, it may seem as if the M's have lowered the bar for themselves, but through all the detours they've made an album that sounds more like themselves than any previous work.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goddess
    Banks could certainly go places--but Goddess doesn't, and instead seems content to wallow in the same depressive rut for an exhausting 59 minutes.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Rendezvous
    A worthy if not exactly earth-moving capstone to the band's career.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Age Against the Machine
    The album falters in spots because of the disparity of its urges. Age Against the Machine seems to want to ease Cee-Lo back into the Goodie Mob’s world while not-so-gently tugging them into his.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Blood On The Silver Screen
    She commits to pop music’s campiness to convey the way love and heartache magnify even the most fleeting memories into heart-wrenching melodrama. It’s an interesting pivot, but much of the music feels too aimless to effectively deliver these intense emotions.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rabbit Habits
    Habits has little to apologize for, no serious blemishes or ill-advised shifts in direction.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Up
    The first five tracks here are on par with anything you loved about Us.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 31 Critic Score
    Love Is Hell, Part 1 [EP]
    A collection of preposterously cheerless (and charmless) songs that try much too hard to achieve a poignancy-- or anything, really-- that might hide their complete insignificance.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Ten
    Ten is half as long as the band's debut and much more focused; each performer shows improved range and sharper talents. And yet, it's still a mixed bag.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Milk Man
    They've focused their maniacal energy into seriously dense and carefully considered songwriting; even the cleaner and deeper production betrays Deerhoof's commitment to letting the songs speak for themselves, and to keeping individual parts as precise and undistracting as possible.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 41 Critic Score
    Skull Ring
    Overproduced, under-written, swaggering nonsense.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Gotham!
    It's not a bad album by most standards-- in fact it's pretty good at points-- but in the end slides into a mire of adequacy after generating high expectations early on.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Kissin' Time
    The results as a whole, whether fabulously disastrous or formidable, offer an aural spectacle that other 55-year-old, or even 35-year-old, rock stars should dream of wrangling.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    The Night
    The album updates the trio's sound without the forced experimental quality of some of the weaker material on Yes or the unsuccessful lounge-pop sleeper, Like Swimming.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Commonwealth
    Commonwealth as a whole is that of a noble failure. It's an interesting experiment, albeit less fulfilling than the band's best and recent work--but quality and relative position within their deep catalog aside, the album's very existence is heartening.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    The Clearing
    Now, she is after a larger quarry: the contemporary chamber ensemble. But she does not quite capture it on The Clearing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Always Strive and Prosper
    Production-value is high, with Ferg enlisting top-tier beatmakers like the aforementioned DJ Khalil but also No I.D., DJ Mustard, and even Skrillex. But the beats take a backseat to the lyrics. The overall sound remains intact, but he’s even more invested in what he’s saying.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Valtari
    The problem isn't that Valtari aspires to beauty, even if it's a commonplace, celestial understanding of it. Sigur Ros have proven they can make indelible music that's pretty and unpredictable, pretty and melodic, pretty and unnerving, pretty and inspiring. Valtari wants to be pretty and that's it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Roy Ayers JID002
    Though Younge and Shaheed Muhammad may enjoy casting themselves as career revivalists, Roy Ayers JID 002, as pleasant and groovy as it is, never quite feels like a true Roy Ayers work.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Live in Cuxhaven, 1976
    What’s here, across 30 minutes, is a worthy and incomplete document that contains some of the most unrestrained live Can moments yet available. What it’s missing are the doldrums, the drawn-out experiments, and that feeling that Schmidt hopes to convey.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Natural Disaster
    Cosentino sounds strongest when she gives herself permission to veer from her influences and find her own voice.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    For All My Sisters
    For All My Sisters is a scruffy, buzzy and very hooky guitar album that doesn’t quite scan as "punk" or "indie".
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Only the Strong Survive
    It’s got character, and more than that, it’s got energy: Springsteen has never sounded quite so lighthearted, so unburdened, on record.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Who Needs Actions When You Got Words
    Plan B manages to milk his biographical plight without resorting to the childhood-trauma-as-pissing-contest tactics of most memoirists.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Music to Draw To: Satellite
    Listening to Music to Draw to: Satellite, it’s hard not to wish that Koala would lean just a bit more on his core skills, though there’s admittedly something admirable about his willingness to be seen as a novice, rather than a master.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    McCartney III Imagined
    If the remixers embrace McCartney III’s lawless ethos, the cover renditions here are faithful to Macca’s fundamental tunefulness. Almost too faithful: You’d hope Josh Homme would add some QOTSA-sized muscle to a bluesy chugger like “Lavatory Lil,” but his take is actually more restrained than the original. Still, there’s a great deal of fun to be had in hearing Phoebe Bridgers make “Seize the Day” her own.
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