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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    • 82 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Roped In
    The soft edges of Roped In make it both a sublime record in its own right as well as a pleasant, inviting portal into a wider world of simpatico artists. The album feels like the aural equivalent of gazing into a massive and well-appointed aquarium, a vessel for color and movement that quietly soothes as it shuttles along.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Lighten Up
    With her latest album, Lighten Up, Rae keeps the songwriting focused and tight while broadening her stylistic palette, landing on a sound that’s less acutely folksy and more classic, unpretentious pop music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Evolution Here We Come
    Swapping their detached sneers for a warm, heartfelt tone, he gives his strongest vocal performance to date. As Forsyth ventures into new territory, he’s found a way to bring his influences along for the ride.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Shebang
    Ambarchi’s most ambitious and absorbing piece to date.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Up to Anything
    Each song is well-structured and wise beyond its years while the messages are confused, delicate and very, very teenage. This is the sound of growing up smart.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tara Jane O'Neil
    While remaining as obtuse as ever, O’Neil’s newfound appreciation for singer-songwriter-dom presents some of her most personal work yet.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Ones Ahead
    It’s a remarkably assured statement of purpose.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    There Is Love In You
    There Is Love in You always has just enough going on to pull you back in any time you feel like relegating it to the background. It works best taken whole, rather than broken into individual tracks.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Being Funny In A Foreign Language
    Being Funny is as sincere as the 1975 have ever sounded, and also as hopeful. Without the thematic discursions and stylistic detours of past records, Healy’s glamorous love songs finally take center stage, their message as convincing as ever.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Childqueen
    Bonet lets her imaginative, polymath inner child run free--but she never loses sight of adult reality.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Walked with You a Ways
    Like all albums birthed out of a particular music fascination, the influences on I Walked With You a Ways are widespread and a joy to uncover with each listen.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Heavy Light
    Heavy Light thrives in this sort of dissociative blaze where gender politics, grief, and deeply fucked-up pop hooks slam into one another. So much of Heavy Light exists in this emotional space that feels like an exquisite freefall.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    An Letah [EP]
    Backed by locals like Highlife's Doug Shaw and the band Skeletons, An Letah follows 2010's Bubu King EP with a whiplash 14 minutes of electrified bubu that presage what will no doubt be a watermark year for Nabay.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sit Down for Dinner
    Though it goes a long way to reinstating Blonde Redhead’s singular mystique and impressionistic aura, Sit Down for Dinner is distinguished by an easygoing melodicism that, even in its darkest lyrical depths, makes it the warmest and most welcoming record in the band’s catalog.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Brothers
    When it's all said and done, the 15-track set runs almost an hour long, causing one to think that the Keys might have done the best material here a disservice by shoving so much onto one album when they could've easily saved some up for their next release.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    The Dream Is Over
    Frankly, the energy and intensity that’s channeled into the first half of The Dream is Over feels utterly impossible, especially given the subject matter. But even at 31 minutes, Babcock’s relentless self-loathing can go from intoxicating to simply toxic.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Jarvis
    Jarvis is the record of someone losing hope, the sound of dejection turned up to 10.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Post-Nothing
    This is terminally catchy music played with punk's enthusiasm and velocity, and maybe it's the fact that there's only two dudes in this band that makes you feel like joining in to bash along.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pain Is Beauty
    There's a propulsive quality to much of the beat-oriented Pain, but there remains a relative sense of privacy.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I Play My Bass Loud
    Despite its long, solitary genesis, I Play My Bass Loud is anything but a lonely bedroom-pop album.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Zoy Zoy
    The music is colorful and bright and dizzying. It recalls the energy and wall-of-sound quality of Konono No 1, except more frenzied and texturally varied.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Saturation III
    On Saturation III, the collective’s objective begins to come into focus. They still paint in broad strokes and their songs sometimes still lack continuity, but they’re truly moving as a unit now, and the star power is all but obvious.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Stitches
    In total, Stitches is exactly the sort of Americana record that can act as antidote for what’s happening in the genre right now.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Good Looking Blues
    While generally more song-oriented than previous outings, Good Looking Blues is built on a foundation of acid-jazzy, polyrythmic beats... [it] shows a Laika that has learned from its past mistakes-- they don't get lost in their own loops like they used to-- and willing to stretch out and explore their surroundings.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    band red
    Their tendency to temper their noise with surprisingly sugary pop hooks and wormy choruses is what keeps these songs from becoming pretentious or tiresome.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Venice
    With every album, Fennesz's music has become prettier and more accessible yet still retains his distinctive style-- and Venice is no exception.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Haha Sound
    An enveloping, mysterious record that marries the idealism of "the future of tomorrow today" to the stark reality of the post-millennial present and finds beauty and fascination in the tussle between melody and rhythm.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 98 Critic Score
    The Moon & Antarctica
    For the first time, Modest Mouse craft an album, not a collection of songs. That they manage to go beyond any other rock band out there is staggering.... OK Computer must be mentioned, for Modest Mouse just got invited to the same club.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Album Of The Year
    The songs are instantly welcoming, flickering with enough hope and tenacity to outlast Kasher's heartbreak.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Primary Colours
    The Horrors' shoegazer makeover aside, the real story here is Badwan's growing confidence as a singer, and his willingness to sound more scared than scary. Primary Colours loses its radiance when he reverts back to bogeyman type.
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