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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    • 77 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Margerine Eclipse
    Another in a line of accomplished, eternally pleasant and intermittently brilliant Stereolab records.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 35 Critic Score
    Nightfreak And The Sons Of Becker [EP]
    A flatulent, irrelevant, self-indulgent attempt at recapturing the hotwired spontaneity of their debut through a dirge of sub-par psychedelia and try-hard freakouts.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Secret Wars
    Secret Wars is the first step toward the combination of Oneida's monolithic psych-rock and the numbing riff iteration they've spent so long deriving.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Punk Rock
    Even as Punk Rock shows that The Mekons have far better musicians today than when they were first fumbling around with Gang of Four's instruments, it also proves they're better songwriters.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Heron King Blues
    With Califone's penchant for extemporaneous creation finally being properly indulged, Heron King Blues is an appropriately loose and sprawling record, requiring a bit more patience than some of the band's previous projects.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Cellar Door
    As a singer, he's remarkable and distinctive, and on Cellar Door, he explores the range and impact of his voice to great effect.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Immortal Memory
    An epic, sweeping cycle of songs that's completely over the top-- usually in the best possible way.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Pyramid Electric Co.
    Just as Elliott Smith's "Needle in the Hay" was perfect for the suicide-attempt scene in The Royal Tenenbaums, any song on this album would complement a still-photo montage of a prolonged labor ending in a miscarriage.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Underachievers Please Try Harder
    Captures a portion of the wispy bedsit magic that used to mark some of The Field Mice's best work and boosts it with the lush, "Hazey Jane II"-like chamber-pop of Belle & Sebastian's first flourishes of glory.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 94 Critic Score
    Boy In Da Corner
    Dizzee's despairing wail, focused anger, and cutting sonics places him on the front lines in the battle against a stultifying Britain, just as Pete Townshend, Johnny Rotten, and Morrissey have been in the past.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Phantom Planet
    A record of overwhelming deconstruction and newly explored territorial demarcation.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Love Is Hell, Part 2 [EP]
    The sad fact is, no marketing strategy, no matter how savvy, could conceal this collection's bathetic, overwrought travesties and gruesome failures.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Tasty
    With Tasty, Kelis has left the roller-rink, returned from outer space, and she's back on her own two feet on terra firma-- unfortunately.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 32 Critic Score
    Democrazy
    He's already recorded such a wealth of great material that no mystique remains, leaving no real reason for anyone-- including the most dedicated fan-- to seek out these poorly produced musical shreds.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Atlas
    Electronic music that genuinely rocks.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    This Is Not A Test!
    It's the album's end-to-end strength that speaks the most-- against hip-hop artists who fail to make solid albums and those rock idiots who say it can't be done.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Maryland Mansions
    So perhaps it's about time that we stop calling Cex a wunderkind: He may be barely 25 but with the introspective yet exuberant Maryland Mansions, he's officially grown up, establishing himself as a performer to be taken-- yikes!-- seriously.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Let It Be... Naked
    Ultimately, Naked is not essential. Unlike scattered moments in the Anthology series, this music (though immaculately presented) doesn't really expand on either the music of Let It Be, or The Beatles' legacy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Black Album
    Even in falling short of Jay's classics, Reasonable Doubt and 2001's The Blueprint, it manages to eclipse 1999's brilliant Vol. 3: Life and Times of S. Carter as his third-best album-- which in itself still makes it one of the year's best.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Spokes
    Indeed, there are some dull moments on Spokes, but plucking tracks from the record and turning them around under the magnifying glass probably misses what Plaid intended (this one seems meant to be listened to in succession).
    • 77 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Pieces of April [Soundtrack]
    The new Magnetic Fields songs will, thankfully, not raise any eyebrows; the enthusiasm and sparkling spontaneity is, like always, pressed into ukuleles and tucked into preposterously addictive Yamaha sound settings circa 1985.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Dangerous Magical Noise
    Stubbornly lo-fi and expectedly scrappy, the album is also tremendously listenable, a rhythmic, leg-flailing romp through vintage soul cool, glam boogie, classic rock thrash, and punk bravado.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ghosts Of The Great Highway
    For the first time, Kozelek has put out an album whose meticulous sequencing yields more than just a random scattershot collection of great songs, but rather a complete cohesive musical statement.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 29 Critic Score
    Rock'n'Roll
    It's not so much that Rock N Roll is incorrigibly written as that the record is unforgivably careless, unwilling to commit to anything including itself.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 41 Critic Score
    Skull Ring
    Overproduced, under-written, swaggering nonsense.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
    One of the most impressive aspects of The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place is that it feels constantly in flux, growing and transforming with every note.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Per Second, Per Second, Per Second... Every Second
    Thankfully, the band is up to the challenge of turning up the spotlights and the volume, and they crank out a solid batch of insanely catchy, pristine pop songs that'll crawl inside your brain and die there, only to come back and haunt you at the oddest times.
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