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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    • 65 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Everybody Wants To Know
    Everybody Wants to Know is the kind of album that grows more rewarding the second and third times through, as the subtle hooks gradually sink in. But once those hooks have engrained themselves in those old skullbag, it's pretty unlikely they'll offer anything you can't get from any other anonymous alterna-rock record.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Riot Now!
    They were and continue to be first-wave, American indie rock survivors whose legacy has become, at this point, less about their music and more about surviving. Riot Now!, the veteran outfit's first full-length in five years is a meat-and-potatoes rock record that goes one step further in explaining why that it is.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Poor Moon
    Poor Moon turns out to be a wisp of a record, intentionally light and certainly promising but also oddly--and perhaps ironically--weightless.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Ibifornia
    Standouts struggle to hold their own amid the album's more overwrought anthems and straight-up misfires.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    EAR PWR
    EAR PWR were once a band that refused to tie a tie or recite the silly rule--it could be annoying, but at least they were being themselves. Here, they prove how hard growing up can be.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Nick Waterhouse
    Waterhouse scrambles our expectations of old-school musical styles while underscoring how much pure listening joy can be found in these elements. Yet Nick Waterhouse can’t really make them add up to much beyond themselves. His references remain references.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Exai
    Some of its songs deserve to be cut into halves, while others should have been chopped wholesale. With those snips, Exai would be a really good Autechre album that summarizes the various successes of their career in an hour or so. As is, it's as much a frustrating obstacle course as it is a grueling marathon.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Heavy Mood
    What feels missing from Heavy Mood is specificity: Where are the characters, and what became of those kids passed out on the lawn? The heart of Heavy Mood is lost its in own sloganeering.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Everything Last Winter
    As big as the heart-swelling hooks get, though, Fields are more memorable when they let their early-1970s folk ghosts creep into the corners of their songs like dusty cobwebs.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Fain
    By drawing this deeply on both the physical and sonic landscapes of their forebears, and with too many go-nowhere solos blotting out its songs, Fain winds up feeling stuck in time.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Ceremony
    The band sound thoroughly comfortable. ... It's a shame, then, that on their own album, Phantogram foreground their most conventional, clipped pop selves, when their quietest moments are often the loudest of all.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    You & Me
    This uniformity of tone and tempo understandably causes You & Me to wilt through its middle stretches despite its relatively brief running time.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Electra Heart
    Whilst there's no getting past some of the duller and more unbearable material on this record ... if she'd made a record full of songs as unaffected as these four ["Lies," "Starring Role," "Power & Control," "Living Dead"], Electra Heart could be one of the year's most acclaimed pop albums.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Original Colors
    For a group who traded so well in whimsy, who got off to such a kaleidoscopic start, Original Colors can feel unusually drab.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    World of Joy
    The trouble with World of Joy isn’t that it’s bad, but that it seems perfectly content to stop short at “pretty good.”
    • 68 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Wedding Bells [EP]
    Aside from its appropriate feel for a good time get-down in a surprisingly cheerful cartoon post-apocalypse, it's hard to get any real emotional connection from these cuts.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    More Rain
    Though it’s mostly a pleasant record, there’s not much from it that sticks around long after listening--for all the talk of deluge, More Rain manages to wash itself away.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Me And Armini
    Torrini's voice is pleasant but also pretty anonymous, so it's therefore well-suited to any number of (mostly mellow) musical settings.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Star Line
    It’s rarely bad, just safe, doing more to remind us of the old days than to embrace the musical crossroads he’s at. That feels like a missed opportunity to fill in the blanks that are still there.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    The Singles
    The Singles' six originals would make for a disconnected night out, and no doubt an energetic live show, but they're a wild ride in headphones.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Encyclopedia
    The Drums are at least halfway to amassing a pretty great singles comp--they just can’t really call it a Greatest Hits.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Cee Lo's Magic Moment
    There is a lot of loud, full-bore belting. It's a little showboaty and on occasion his voice threatens to overpower the song itself.... Still, not a note of Magic Moment rings false.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    What Do You Think About the Car?
    His message loses strength, in part, because he doesn’t fully commit to it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Success
    Unveiled and ineffectual, Matthewson’s gripes get boring quickly. The sense that you’ve heard these songs before--or at least their frameworks and tricks--doesn’t help.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Tides End
    Now that the veil has been lifted, there’s not much on Tides End worth the price of progress.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    The Looks
    Keeler succeeds in meticulously reconstructing the electronic music he clearly has a taste for, but without stirring in any of his own personality the songs do little more than run in place, joylessly hitting the marks without changing the rules in any meaningful or attention-grabbing way.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Money
    Money is no less creative or searching than Skeletons' previous works, but it trades too many of their fantastical charms for scurrying reality.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    ISAM
    He has the ideas: ISAM's pieces keep wandering into unmarked industrial zones, evoking broken things and blight. But this is heavy, foreboding music; Tobin hasn't yet learned how to balance his robust sound-art impulses with footholds for his listeners.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Fate & Alcohol
    On Fate & Alcohol, Japandroids deliver the conviction that made their early records so great, but cannot overcome the palpable mismatch between their current lives and the characters their newest songs portray.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Barking
    So Barking stays the course, with the added prospect of a fitter, happier Underworld on the horizon. It's about time.
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