Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,704 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: 10,441 out of 12704
  2. Mixed: 1,949 out of 12704
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12704
12704 music reviews
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Act Surprised
    Instead of merely contrasting the tunefully heartfelt Barlow with the more erratic, irascible Loewenstein, the new album finds them mining common topical terrain—namely, the emotional toll of perpetually wading in a sea of misinformation—through their respective personalities.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Reward
    Her music speaks loudest in its calmest moments, and Reward is an album most remarkable for how it fills its space.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Diviner
    Some of its songs are so intimate that their meanings seem all but impossible for an outsider to parse. But in the moments when he decides to push his music out into the light, Thorpe's self-searching takes on a shape we can all recognize.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    California Son
    When they play it safer, like on their workmanlike strum through Joni Mitchell’s “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow” or the easy-listening wistfulness of their take on Roy Orbison’s “It’s Over,” the results are less remarkable. And while it’s a relief to be spared Morrissey’s bitterness, sometimes California Son feels too frothy, and he sounds like he doesn’t have any skin in the game at all.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    The Dots
    While The Dots is awash in dimensional, multicolored compositions, ALASKALASKA are able to pare things back when necessary.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fever
    She has prepared her whole life for the opportunity to challenge the coastal elites for a seat at rap’s table, and Fever is her folding chair.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    We Get By
    Because Staples has lost little expressiveness with age, We Get By sounds surprisingly raucous and admirably rough around the edges, especially on the percolating “Anytime.” But these songs are more about the small, quiet spaces where Staples can catch her breath and steel her nerves.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Amyl and the Sniffers
    The album exists so thoroughly in the moment that it winds up obliterating the group’s fetishization of the past and just delivers pure, uncut rock’n’roll fun.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Flamagra
    Flamagra may not comprise nearly as elaborate a world as those that Lynch conjures, and it doesn’t push Ellison’s art forward in the same way that You’re Dead! did. But the afterlife is a hard act to follow, and in the light of that flame on the hill, Flamagra makes for an engaging way station.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Ecstatic Computation
    For every track where Barbieri pushes her sound in new directions, there are others where she simply refines it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    We Fall
    On We Fall, Wiggs replicates the continuous momentum of the environment through sound, and she leaves just enough room on the rock to join in her wonderment.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Injury Reserve
    When Corey is at his most inventive, Injury Reserve feels remarkably fresh and singular. ... Too often, though, Injury Reserve gets stuck between its experimental urges and its pop ambitions. In searching for a happy medium, it’s never quite noisy enough or quite catchy enough.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 54 Critic Score
    Father Of Asahd
    The formula’s limitations are evident on Father of Asahd: There are plenty of voices but no clear message or intention.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    A Fine Mess [EP]
    Interpol might still be an exceptional act, but it’s a chore to have to squint this hard to see it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Nothing Great About Britain
    What binds the album is slowthai’s soul: his meticulously drawn characters, his affinity for left-behind outsiders like the glue sniffers sampled on “Doorman,” and his impatience with a profit-motivated world where, as he once put it, “You’re competing constantly without wanting to.”
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Mandatory Reality
    After over an hour of totally becalmed drift, the bustling pace here at album’s end feels like leaving a day spa only to squeeze onto a rush-hour train. You might find yourself simply wishing the album extended just a few minutes longer.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Toothsayer [EP]
    While much of the instrumentation is thoughtful (the Iranian-British electronic musician Ash Koosha contributed to the delicate “Snowblind” and the raging “Submerged”), nothing is as potent as Tagaq’s voice.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Living Theatre
    Olden Yolk have big ideas and big dreams about what type of art they want to make, and for the most part, they execute in such a way that feels both strangely soothing and impossibly lovely.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    IGOR
    Tyler, the Creator’s sixth album is impressionistic and emotionally charged, the result of an auteur refining his style and bearing more of his soul than ever before.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Sombrou Dúvida
    On their latest album Sombrou Dùvida, they transition from the oft-playful homage and stage-ready jams of previous releases to a serious attempt at tight, kaleidoscopic grooves, and the results are akin to a pleasant, cerebral trip--a little more potent than the edibles sold from wagons in Dolores Park, but nothing quite Leary-caliber.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    The Best of Luck Club
    Like a message from a wise friend, The Best of Luck Club is worth revisiting whenever you’re in need of a little perspective.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Dedicated
    She’s doing what she does best, calibrating lovesick or lovelorn synthpop that’s neither too hot nor too cold--and sometimes, regrettably, only lukewarm.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Are Sing Sinck, Sing
    If Pissing Stars reflected the cruel, chaotic world that every new parent worries about bringing their child into, then SING SINCK, SING emits the fragile hope that the next generation will be able to steer toward a better future.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Beauty Marks
    Despite a handful of highlights, Beauty Marks is marred by filler, moving between frothy pop-R&B and stale empowerment anthems that leave Ciara’s talents largely underused.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    I Am Easy to Find
    Although the album is the band’s biggest yet, with a cast of dozens including 13 violinists alone, it rarely feels bulky. Only the too-Arcade-Fire-for-comfort “Where Is Her Head” succumbs to grandiosity, prioritizing spectacle over purpose.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    3
    Nots’ third album is a guerilla campaign against surveillance in the service of systemic control. With 3, Nots make fierce rock music equally apt for moshing in solidarity or smashing an Alexa--all forms of control in chaos.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    The Secret of Letting Go
    The seeds of a half-decent album are buried among The Secret of Letting Go’s more experimental tracks. But, in the immortal words of another extremely ’90s act, that don’t impress me much. Modern audiences with no notion of the band’s unusual history are unlikely to be moved by this album’s velvety shrug.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    LEGACY! LEGACY!
    With LEGACY! LEGACY!, Jamila Woods positions herself to join the battle, bridging the gap, once and for all, between our unresolved past and the promise that awaits us all on the horizon.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    PROTO
    Herndon and her ensemble displace the human voice from its usual setting just enough that it startles the ear. But that displacement allows you to hear voices as if for the very first time, listening ravenously for proof that out there in the unknown, someone besides yourself exists and is singing.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Wheeltappers and Shunters
    These are novel variations on the familiar Clinic sound. Some, like the queasy synth refrain in “Rubber Bullets,” work less well than others. And some of the melodies seem rather thin, considering the band had six years to generate them (looking at you, “Mirage” and “Rejoice!”). That’s an ancient weakness of the group, and Wheeltappers and Shunters is nothing if not steeped in the past.
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