Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,726 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: 10,462 out of 12726
  2. Mixed: 1,950 out of 12726
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12726
12726 music reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Warp Riders
    The Sword's songs seem to follow the same basic blueprint: Opening-riff trudge, part where Cronise sings about magic, solo, more crunching, more magic, another solo.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    So Much For The City
    The Thrills' external, sometime vaccuous pinching is clearly self-conscious, a carefully premeditated breach of expectation that causes more of a wince than a flash of pleasant surprise.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Several Arrows Later
    So maybe Pond really is just another ordinary-guy exemplar of the ongoing post-Coldplay adult contemporarization of indie, as his ordinary arrangements and ordinarier songs would attest.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Travellers In Space And Time
    There's certainly no shortage of well-crafted, playful, memorable tunes here, and that-- matched with Schneider's willingness to try on a few new sounds for size-- adds up to the best Apples in Stereo record in more than a decade.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Fornever
    Most of the songs are toss-offs, but it's plenty of fun to be along for the ride as long as some restraint is issued. Without it, ForNever alternately struggles to keep its head above water with washed-out cautionary tales ("The Problem Is...") or slums it in the shallows with mildly tawdry goofs ("Asian Girl").
    • 72 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Dagdrom
    The key to Dagdrøm's daunting mystique: You're never really sure if what you're hearing is the calm before the storm or the storm before the calm.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Home
    Home is an ace of a second album, one which maintains the most important elements of Chung's painstakingly crafted sound while progressing nicely into a friendlier arena.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Cyclops Reap
    These songs don't ever feel overstuffed. Everything is faithful to White Fence's well-established aesthetic, but simplified.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tally All the Things That You Broke [EP]
    Savage sends each line out to the back of the club every time, all underneath sugary post-punk revival guitar lines courtesy of Savage and his longtime associate Austin Brown.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Dizzy Heights
    Finn sounds best when Dizzy Heights is at its dizziest, when he has to completely rethink how his voice fits a song. On the other hand, he sounds slightly less engaged on the more straightforward tunes, which perhaps don’t offer the same heady challenges.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Dark Sky Paradise
    Dark Sky Paradise is a big leap in the direction of the ideal Big Sean full-length.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Pissing Stars
    Pissing Stars feels purposefully small, a personal retreat from full-band compromise by someone who is trying to understand the world and his role in it. The result is indulgent, neurotic, and harrowing, a reminder of the complete mess we’ve made. But it’s oddly reassuring, too.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Book of Travelers
    Book of Travelers seems stuck in limbo about what it values most, about what it should accept or abhor. Both album and country teeter on a precipice above that inhospitable canyon, even as they keep chugging like trains along its edge.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Darker Days
    The stylistic left-turns taken on Darker Days are more hit-or-miss than the songs that explicitly recall the band’s native origins. ... But it’s also surprising, and indicative of the fact that even Darker Days’ most glaring missteps go a long way towards renewing interest in what Peter Bjorn and John are up to these days.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Saints & Sebastian Stories
    Konradsen’s approach skips the groundwork to go for experimentation. It’s folk music untethered from tradition, prioritizing well-crafted production over well-crafted songwriting.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Petrichor
    Trost sings evenly and with an appealing clarity but little emotion, letting her voice tangle with the various layers of sound until it’s just another signal on the switchboard.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Song Of The Earth
    Borrowing Mahler’s vivid contrasts while jettisoning the soothing unity, Song of the Earth feels more like something coming apart than coming together, which may relate to Longstreth’s ideas about the earth and how we live now. But if you can’t get on its chaotic wavelength, it can wear you out.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 36 Critic Score
    The Courage Of Others
    With precious little exception, these songs are just so wispy, and the band's treatment of them so delicate, it turns Courage into a museum piece, stuffy, bloodless
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Zeros
    Vasquez's knack for atmosphere was there from the beginning, but he's becoming a better, more defined songwriter.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Coconut
    Coconut seems to be a "transition album": A sometimes-exhilarating, sometimes-WTF layover between a possibly played-out formula and exciting new sounds on the horizon.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Attention Please
    Attention Please at least offers something fresh for Boris.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Euphoric
    Georgia’s willingness to experiment is promising, but it’s unfortunate that Euphoric takes such a predominantly safe journey. As on Seeking Thrills, some songs also succumb to vague lyrics that resemble placeholders.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Old, Familiar Friend
    Benson emphasizes the raw power of his riffs instead of polishing them into a smooth sheen. It's not as DIY charming as his earlier works, but it's pretty darned effective.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    We're On Your Side
    It's experimental music, to be sure, but it doesn't conflate experimentation with alienation.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Greatest Hits, Vol. 1
    Rather than build off each other's styles and arrive at a cumulative, comprehensive sound, Teenage Time Killers' revolving cast have conflated quantity with quality, resulting in a pedestrian product that, at best, offers a decent soundtrack to throwing back beers at Punk Rock Bowling.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Oceania
    His new band might not question him very much, and they may play better or more professionally, than his old crew. But Oceania suffers a kind of rock-star-dictator airlessness.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Poster Girl
    “Poster Girl” is so enraptured with this idealized vision of a pop star that it leaves no room to learn about the woman behind the mic.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Music for Animals
    At more than three hours long, Music for Animals is difficult to digest in its entirety; there’s a fine line between patient and dull. Frahm’s extended track lengths are presumably meant to foster immersion, but after a while, they come to seem indulgent.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Seefeel
    Seefeel is a thorny album, a thicket of crackling guitars and faltering rhythms.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Astrological Straits
    At its best, Astrological Straits is a mashup of Liars tribalism, Boredoms bombast, Smell-scene art-punk, Lightning Bolt repeti-grooves, and Frank Zappa prog-overload. All this sonic hyperactivity can be exhausting, and Hill's fondness for effects, especially in his Vocoder-ish vocals, makes some tracks robotic, more like exercises than songs.
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