Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,715 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: 10,452 out of 12715
  2. Mixed: 1,949 out of 12715
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12715
12715 music reviews
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 41 Critic Score
    Xscape
    It's true that the new versions sound more modern and souped-up than the originals (which you also get if you buy the "deluxe edition" of Xscape), but their producers don't have enough distance from Jackson's presence to reframe his voice the way that, say, Junkie XL's remix of "A Little Less Conversation" reframed Elvis Presley's.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Everything Now
    Butler’s commitment to the detached frontman where singing occurs barely or not at all robs songs of their emotional largesse, that basic thing we licensed to Arcade Fire and upon which their entire identity relies. What saving grace there is on Everything Now is scattered throughout its mercifully short 47 minutes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Fatherland
    Fatherland is a significantly simplified effort, a work of gentle, singer-songwriter consideration largely haunted by lost loves rendered as exactingly as still lifes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Film School
    At times, Film School achieve a foggy, grandiose psychedelia, but their compositions aren't always as shimmering as their production.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Sundark and Riverlight
    Sundark and Riverlight is like the thumbnail version: everything compressed, details lost.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Music For Listening To Music To
    La Sera's experiment with a new musical direction, line-up, and producer is by no means a failure, but, being the product of a logistical opportunity, comes across as more like a short stop on the way to something more solid and definitive.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Ready to Die
    Iggy's delivery is too wry to exude rage, the songs rarely rise above a mid-tempo chug, and Mackay's jovial sax blurts are way more roadhouse than Funhouse.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Eskmo
    Without much variety to spice it up, the overall sluggardly pace is energy-sapping. An album of the sort of tracks on which Eskmo earned his reputation might not have gone amiss before he ventured a more songwriterly statement, but there's no reason he can't regroup and pull that off yet.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Total
    Highlights aside, Total's belligerence is as predictable as it is teeth-grinding.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    American Goldwing
    Ultimately, the trip they're taking us on isn't into America, but into the past, and they show too much reverence for their forebears.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    MTV Unplugged [Live]
    It displays the boundlessness of her vocal talent but finds her tethered to a frustratingly limited aesthetic.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Massacre
    The Massacre's best tracks have 50 dropping club-clatter and gangster lean to show us the mind behind the six-pack, gat, and Teflon.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Everything Goes Wrong
    It's weirdly kind of a grower. There's nothing that immediately jumps out and announces itself as the 'Where Do You Run' of Everything Goes Wrong.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Leave Your Name
    Dalley possesses neither heart nor soul as a lead vocalist, and his milk-warm emotional outpouring of tiresome, overwrought subject matter could get lost in a crowd of two.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Kamikaze
    Obviously, Twista's not breaking down any walls with his wordplay on Kamikaze, but along the way he kicks over a few garbage cans while letting Kanye West, Toxic and the rest of his production crew move some crowds and elevate their status, one slow jam at a time.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Phoenix Album
    Tired riffing, uninspired lyrics, and god-awful wankery.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Super Sound
    Mixing downtempo with trip-hop and some samples from a funky-ass toolbox (where you keep your funky-ass tools, of course), Pepé Deluxe seem to have struck upon a recipe for success.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Savage Imagination
    The “Dimension Dive” tracks sometimes sound like they belong on a different record altogether, although taken in the grab-bag context of Savage Imagination it just about works. It’s just that elsewhere there’s a more coherent flow from one change to the next.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Raven in the Grave
    The untangled pop of In and Out of Control has been reconfigured and dipped in black eyeliner as the Raveonettes veer toward 1980s goth.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Let Me Introduce My Friends
    The group's size makes the white-robed hordes of Polyphonic Spree an obvious comparison, but I'm From Barcelona's taut songwriting renders their numbers largely incidental-- these songs were meant to be shared by many voices.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Z [EP]
    Z's biggest problem is that, despite choosing a sound that is soft and somnolent, SZA is too often overpowered by the music.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Digital Roses Don't Die
    Moments with genuine heart and drive are too often spoiled by overeager schmaltz. The raps on Roses are fleeting compared to previous projects, and while K.R.I.T. has proven many times that he can carry a tune, the album suffers when he shifts gears completely.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    A Picture Of The Three Of Us At The Gate To The Garden Of Eden
    Picture, the more ambitious of the pair, simply sounds unfocused, overly concerned with effects and production--with moments and sounds--than with songs or overall shape.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 48 Critic Score
    Manhattan
    Each of the 11 songs here are positioned at some point in an endless cycle of going out, scoping girls, getting drunk, making out, passing out, and “waking up in [your] clothes.” But for Skaters, such scenes are apparently so routine that they often sound disinterested in their own debauchery.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    UUVVWWZ
    There are plenty of signs that UUVVWWZ are on track to become a better band, but "Castle" is the song that will make you impatient for them to hurry up and get to their next level right away.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    The Beautiful Struggle
    What frustrates about The Beautiful Struggle is that its flaws are purely musical: Kweli remains the fist-raising visionary who burned "The Manifesto" at the Lyricist Lounge with the same fiery pen that blazed "African Lounge".
    • 66 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Outside
    Outside is a fine but ultimately feckless return to form, an attempt to rebuild The Loon's simple charms.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Brass
    Brass is certainly an easier record to wrap your mind around than Flux Outside. But, with one too many good-not-great melodies and that nagging sense that these guys are holding something back, it's also a whole lot less likely to get itself lodged in your skull.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Guerolito
    Even for an artist this venerable, a remix record is still a remix record-- generally uneven, part enlightening, and part skippable.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Hymns
    While it's nice to finally hear these two follow up on a promising debut, Hymns isn't likely to capture many people who weren't taken with the original Cardinal record.
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