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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    • 76 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Deafman Glance
    His music is heavier and more complex than it used to be, the arrangements harsher and stranger. And then there’s his singing: Once a competent and breezy instrument, Walker’s voice has evolved into a throaty speak-sing that sounds depleted, as though it’s been scooped out of itself. These shifts give the record a deeper emotional resonance than anything else he’s put his name to.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Sexistential
    If there’s anything bad to say about Sexistential, it’s that it’s too damn short.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    When the Roses Come Again
    There are no real songs to speak of—just scenes, which flow together as seamlessly as fields glimpsed from the window of a moving train. The album is clearly meant to be experienced as a single piece of music, and the pacing is immaculate.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    The Block Brochure: Welcome to the Soil, Pt. 1
    The production on The Block Brochure series roams a little wider and farther than the Revenue Retrievin series did, which helps when approaching such a seemingly undigestible block of music.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Valende
    It reveals a manic, uncommon glint in their inventive fires, the unmistakable fervid gleam which accompanies artists who know exactly what they're doing, even if the rest of us don't.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    UGK 4 Life
    Though probably not the best UGK album, it might be the strongest illustration of what they do best.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Last Summer
    From an artist whose mind and appetites have always ranged so freely, such a cohesive, uncluttered document is doubly revealing.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Sun
    un doesn't reach the heights (or more accurately, wallow in the depths) of Moon Pix, but more than anything else she's made, it feels like a companion piece to that record, a conversation with an older and wiser voice.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    In Love With Oblivion
    If, like me, you're one of the admirers, then there's plenty to like here. If not, well, give it a shot anyway-- who knows, you might find something you like.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Promise Of Love
    This disc is aural aloe.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go
    For fans missing the pause-in-the-thunderstorm pregnant solitude of Songs:Ohia, Let Me Go will get you that fix you've been craving, a teasingly short half-hour reminder of his old persona.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Live at the Fillmore East: October 4th & 5th, 1968 [Box Set]
    This set is the document we've been missing of the onstage Family Stone of legend: the tightly knit extended family that sang and played together, the group that magically united black and white audiences. If it doesn't quite live up to their radiant reputation, it comes pretty close.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Blacklisted
    Blacklisted's accompaniment is roundly excellent and evocative, but Case's voice is what really sells the record.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Mark Kozelek & Desertshore
    It's arguably his best of the calendar year, thanks to strong songs as well as the band’s sensitive accompaniment. Rather than evoke the romanticism of the road (as Sun Kil Moon did on 2003’s Ghosts of Great Highway) or the emotional detachment of touring life (as Kozelek does on every live album), Desertshore pry open his brain and soundtrack his thoughts.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Bryce Dessner: Aheym
    Dessner's mordant vision is uniquely his; these are real, meaty works, troubling and beautiful.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
    Skeptics be damned that's just what Hey Hey My My Yo Yo is, an improvement and distillation of the duo's sound.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Undercard
    Even if there's no transcendent statement to be found, we're still left with these guys sketching out their own little Richard Brautigan short stories, rendering entire lives in quick, mysterious, devastating little strokes. If these guys wanted to make another one of these before another eight years elapse, I wouldn't be mad.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Moot!
    Thirty years ago, indie rock was rife with records that sounded like Moot!, and the bands of that era inspired successive waves of followers. But today, an album like this, coming from a context like Moin’s, feels radical.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Women As Lovers
    Xiu Xiu's music is all about discomfort, but Stewart and co. have become quite comfortable in this conceptual space, and are able to inhabit it like painters making wild, broad smears that intuitively cohere into a look that is distinctly theirs.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Love Is the Plan, The Plan Is Death
    [Blackshaw's] playing carries some of the echoes of his ornate 12-string flourishes, but here there is a grittier edge, with bent notes and the audible sound of his fingers sliding on the strings, his winding melodies casting out concentric smoke rings that call to mind Ben Chasny's acoustic work in Six Organs of Admittance.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Restarter
    On Restarter, that precept again takes the lead, and Torche have made their most compelling record since Meanderthal.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Highway To Heavenly
    Highway to Heavenly is a worthy addition to one of indie pop’s most consistent discographies. Thirty years on, their music is as fresh, creative, and catchy as ever.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Outside
    Sure, the band is rooted in American folk, but they're also adventurous listeners and composers, and Outside is unclassifiable in the same way records by northern contemporaries Beirut and Man Man are unclassifiable-- folk music, it turns out, is a broad and fluid thing.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Take the Kids Off Broadway
    Foxygen haven't so much produced memorable songs as much as cool, disembodied sonic layers that might one day coalesce into memorable songs in your head if you listen to it enough.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Red Devil Dawn
    The album's not a step forward so much as a squirm in quicksand.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Lucifer
    Lucifer is just their third album, and yet it's unmistakably drenched in their specific brand of patience and calm.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Watch Me Fall
    Watch Me Fall is neither a reinvention nor a holding pattern for Reatard--walking the line between them is tricky, but he continues to make doing so look easy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Midnight Zone (Original Soundtrack)
    Whether experienced alongside the film or on its own, Halo’s Midnight Zone is an object of bleak, almost terrifying beauty: a snapshot of a forbidden world, and perhaps a warning that some treasures are best left buried.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    The Singles Collection 2001-2011
    Taking the greatest-hits route through Gorillaz's career, it's impressive how few of the tracks sound dated.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    You Heartbreaker, You
    Beth and Hostile have been collaborators for nearly two decades, and together they’re responsible not only for every sound on the record, but for the entire visual package, too. Their mutual force and focus give the album the pressurized insularity and cracked intensity of a one-person project.
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