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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    • 88 Metascore
    • 94 Critic Score
    Magdalene
    MAGDALENE is visceral and direct, but despite featuring a trunk-thumping Future collaboration (“holy terrain”), this is not a play to make pop music in the charts-humping sense. It’s a document of twigs’ marked achievements in songwriting and musicality as she elucidates her melodies without sacrificing her viewpoint.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Athena
    Having developed a sound so distinctly her own, Parks has liberated herself from any preset expectations of genre or style.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Myths 004 [EP]
    Myths 004 has a woolier charm [than Deerhunter's Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?], running on antic, inventive rhythms that suggest a Rube Goldberg device.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Fibs
    Chaotic uncertainty is the reality Meredith repeatedly presents on FIBS, both emotionally and through musical structure. It is the work’s deeper raison d’être, even when the individual pieces seem digestible, pretty, or even safe.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    FEET OF CLAY
    This is straight-up anti-pop-rap: unpolished, unevenly mixed, structurally unbalanced, primarily self-produced, and polarizing. ... They don’t sound half-baked so much as purposefully unfinished, a move even further off the grid for one of our most promising shut-ins.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Altogether
    Even when Turnover try spicing things up with congas, a violin, and a couple of ill-fitting saxophone features, Altogether tastes incredibly vanilla, like a playlist of department store slow jams.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Monster [25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    It’s hard to determine how Monster got this way and the demos included with this reissue aren’t edifying. The band declined to throw in any embryonic versions of songs that actually appear on the record. ... But the 1994 Monster as-released tends to outright reject R.E.M.’s past.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Spring
    Opener “Lily” falls into this liminal ground, as does “Blue Spring,” and while these tracks don’t seem pointed towards anything particularly urgent, their instrumentation (like the rest of Spring) remains rich and resonant, each component part augmenting the others.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Kiwanuka
    Offering no blandishments, no expressions of we’ll-get-through-this, Kiwanuka is a nerve-wracked, sustained act of whistling in the dark. Absent, though, is any hint of reveling: a tendency that often leads to soul rot.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Wildcard
    Lambert balances her high-spirited romps with more contemplative numbers, cooling off long enough to reflect without flagging Wildcard’s momentum.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    On a Clear Day I Can See You Forever
    Lindstrøm may have timed these tracks to fit on a vinyl record, another sign of putting material concerns over creative vision, but there’s a good 15 minutes of so of beauty within those grooves that just might make a believer out of you.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Hello, I'm Doing My Best
    Hello, I’m Doing My Best often reads as a guidebook for young adults learning to navigate the world, and in that light, Barter’s no-bullshit lyricism is punkish and endearing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Guv II
    Like the Luddite lover pining for old-school communication in a digital world, GUV II is the sound of a pop classicist forging his own singular path in a post-everything era.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Three Chords and the Truth
    Though he sticks closely to the conservative R&B, blues, and jazz modes that have defined his ’00s discography, the LP’s 14 songs showcase his determination to wring profundity out of even the most common language.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Seeker
    Cronin’s music has always been ingratiating, but that quality works against his material here, which yearns for something deeper or darker. There are clear limits to the affability that makes some of his previous singles so winsome.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Colorado
    On tracks like “Olden Days” and “Rainbow of Colors,” Young’s basic folk melodies are rendered grittier and heavier by the band, if no less tender.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Four of Arrows
    Four of Arrows’ best songs are ones Menne co-wrote, ones that keep the energy up and the ideas simple.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pyroclasts
    Pyroclasts feels about as close to that completeness as a metal album by a druid-robed group named after their amplifiers can get.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Jesus Is King
    Yes, the bassline on “Water” is one of the best I’ve heard in a long time, but a moment like this feels like a consolation, not a highlight. Kanye albums used to stretch our perspectives and imaginations. Now they illuminate the contours of his increasingly shrunken world.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Surviving
    The album on the whole is a solid, self-aware addition to Jimmy Eat World’s catalog, and if the band’s modest strivers’ outlook has proved anything, it’s that there will be another. A band whose biggest song is against writing oneself off always has work to do.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Cheap Queen
    She isn’t breaking ground in pop by disregarding its supposed borders. But where post-genre stream-baiters pull their numbers by anesthetizing distinctive sounds, King Princess pulls hers by playing up their contrasts.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Cry
    Cry is a soulless and Styrofoam record as hollow as a booty-call text at 3 a.m. “Hey sexy, you up?” the record seems to beckon. It’s hardly an inviting proposition.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Woptober 2
    Like most of his recent records, it’s another collection of mostly very good Gucci Mane songs, marred by occasional awkward bits.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    PONY
    Rex Orange County isn’t Frank Ocean; he stacks vast emotional weight on predictable, inoffensive songs until they buckle like wire shelving. Pony is simplistic, clueless, subtlety-free.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Anicca
    There’s constant movement here, and while everything is lovely, nothing lingers too long or lends itself to stasis.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Bigger Than Life
    Bigger Than Life takes Black Marble aboveground, where some songs bloom, while others struggle to adjust to the daylight after so long in the shadows.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, Pt. 2
    Rather than forming the second half of a complete statement, Part 2 struggles to differentiate itself.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    All Encores
    All Encores takes a step backward [from 208's All Melody], toward a simpler, sparer sound. In essence, it represents a set of rough drafts, avenues abandoned as All Melody assumed its final form.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    You Deserve Love
    It’s wish fulfillment as transportative as any of the prog fantasies White Reaper’s idols put to tape. On You Deserve Love, the risk and rewards are lower: White Reaper aspire to be a very good American band.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Dawn Chorus
    Dawn Chorus is most compelling when the production does the bulk of the talking.
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