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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    • 54 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Might Delete Later [Mixtape]
    Both would-be singles, “Fever” and the Bas-featuring “Stealth Mode,” feel like half a record abandoned before being rounded into its ideal shape. (The former is slinking and still mostly effective, especially after it recovers from a clumsy opening line that for a second recalls his infamous, room-clearing verse on Jeremih’s “Planez.”) Elsewhere, attempts at verbal pyrotechnics become indistinct.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Molina And Johnson
    There are a few bright spots on this otherwise monochromatic album, most crammed toward the beginning.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Who Is the Sky?
    Byrne’s recipe is comfort food, sunny nourishment in troubled times. But his determination to look on the bright side of life yields an album with no ambiguity or subtext. All the joy is right on the surface, delivered with relentless gaiety that becomes hackneyed long before the album is over.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Logic Will Break Your Heart
    The Stills are what The Posies were in their day, and what The Libertines were a few minutes ago: stuck in a phantom zone called "not there yet," and possibly because the personalities of their influences eclipse any sense of identity they could muster.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Dystopia
    The kicker is that, without their live/electronic shtick to distinguish them, Midnight Juggernauts don't seem to be anything other than gifted mimics.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Go Plastic
    Go Plastic exhumes the corpse of stuttering, fast-paced percussion and arbitrary programming that was bled dry and buried in a time when the Y2K bug still signified economic collapse and nuclear meltdowns.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Put the Shine On
    On Put the Shine On, when they rap lines about familial abandonment in an aloof, sing-songy chirp, the effect of both their words and the way they choose to deliver them gets muddied. The pain behind the words is real, but its rendering starts to feel like a bit.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    12 Memories
    Each new direction leads into a wall or dies for lack of momentum.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Rebel Heart
    Rebel Heart grows confusing and irreconcilably uneven as it progresses.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    The Trouble with Fever
    The album isn’t bold enough to commit in any one direction, offsetting whispery synth-pop with saccharine country ballads.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Otherness
    Otherness isn't just less immediate than other pop music; it's less self-aware, and way less fun.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Blue Film
    Lyrically, Lo-Fang songs range from almost embarrassingly inert to annoyingly overwrought to frustratingly tone deaf.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    How We Operate
    Anyone who enjoyed Gomez for their more adventurous traits will be left in the cold by How We Operate.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Anchor
    Even though Anchor is a truly disappointing work from such an inventive mind, it’s not enough to suggest that he’s reached the point of creative bankruptcy.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Meine Zarten Pfoten
    Together with the ultra-mellow atmosphere, this lack of cohesion makes the album feel messy, and maybe worse, a little boring.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    A Rush Of Blood To The Head
    But while the sound of this album is more expansive, the influences a bit less obvious, and the approach more varied, the guys forgot to tote along their initial strength: the songs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Wrath Of Circuits
    Hardly melodic and not adventurous or invigorating enough to pull off the scuzzy brassiness of its yelping forefathers, the Nein get all anguished and pissed as it alternates between grubby grunge slow jams and lo-fi oom-pah on Wrath of Circuits.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Up To Now
    The biggest problem, though, isn't the outright clunkers; it's the sheer length of the thing. Snow Patrol's basic sweep isn't the type of thing that holds up over two hours, and after the 20th straight-faced lovelorn hymn, you'll start climbing the walls.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Sand+Silence
    The main problem is that the music is so self-conscious, as most of these songs sound like a band still trying to feel its way forward. The quest is noble and even necessary; the results, much less so.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    This Machine
    At the outset, This Machine seems like an apt title for a record that surges forth with a wiry, motorik momentum; by the end, it becomes an all-too-fitting descriptor of a band going through the motions.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Specter at the Feast
    Where the record falters is on the rockers, which are composed of clichés and exhausted riffs only.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Saviors
    Stripped of the urge to reinvent themselves, Green Day hope to ride into the sunset as America’s most affable punks. Even the album’s one sincere stab at acting the band’s age, a reflection on parenthood called “Father to a Son,” seems to give up halfway through, content to repeat its title rather than dig deeper.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Ghostdini: Wizard Of Poetry
    It's tough to imagine how The Wizard of Poetry came into existence in the first place.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Diamond Rugs
    In theory, Diamond Rugs should prove extremely comforting, a celebration of rawk and male friendship in the face of vaguely rendered but all-consuming sexual denial. And yet, there's no catharsis or viscera.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    ununiform
    The problem is that the production on ununiform struggles to match the raw, naive ingenuity of Tricky’s early music, instead suggesting the rather basic electronic beats of 2014’s Adrian Thaws.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Illusion [EP]
    Illusion is a slight effort by any standard, even the most fair: the bar set by the prior work of the band members themselves.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Heat
    Flimsy replicas of rock history.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Beer In The Breakers
    The problem with Beer in the Breakers isn't one of culture or slang so much as a narrator who is almost wholly forgettable--their stories are boring.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Shawn Mendes
    This looming sense of familiarity extends past the album’s musical elements and into its writing. Shawn Mendes is populated with stock characters: the girl who’s a little too high on her own supply, the girl worth waiting forever for, the girl who got away.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    "Pussy Cats" Starring The Walkmen
    Do they embarrass themselves? Not in the least. But they do raise the question of why this album even needs to be heard outside the band themselves, and why it should be in stores.
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