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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    • 80 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Hey Mr Ferryman
    It’s Eitzel’s heaviest album, but it’s also, in a peculiar way, his sweetest.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life Without Sound
    While Life Without Sound isn’t their strongest work, it’s got the seeds that could lead to their next definitive statement.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wake in Fright
    With Fright, both have found new sides to themselves: Greenberg tapped into his inner metal kid, but Berdan has taken the self-apocalyptic energy of his past and turned it into a weapon for redemption and moving forward, much like Negative Approach did in the ’80s.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Apocalipstick
    While Haxel Princess was full of goofy and relatable teenage dispatches, Apocalipstick shoots daggers. Now 19, Creevy sounds wizened and ready for battle.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ty Segall (2017)
    Whether it’s the jarring track-to-track juxtapositions or within the shape-shifting songs themselves, Ty Segall shows that, nearly a decade into the game, the only predictable thing about Segall is his ability to continually surprise.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Near to the Wild Heart of Life
    Near to the Wild Heart of Life ultimately lacks the urgency of the band’s best music. The tower hasn’t collapsed, but it’s starting to wobble.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Future Politics
    It’s music to be escaped into, whether on dance floors or alone somewhere, filled with a little less despair.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Lonely Planet
    His most fully realized work yet, and also his most original. Bookended by a pair of gentle, ambient-leaning cuts, the record mostly ignores the dancefloor in favor of resting pulses and humid atmospheres.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Music to Draw To: Satellite
    Listening to Music to Draw to: Satellite, it’s hard not to wish that Koala would lean just a bit more on his core skills, though there’s admittedly something admirable about his willingness to be seen as a novice, rather than a master.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    New Start
    New Start proves that the prowess of footwork’s first family is intact, and Taso might just be the glue that holds it all together.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    He's Got the Whole This Land Is Your Land in His Hands
    It’s an album that seems to exist primarily to be disliked, and it couldn’t seem prouder of itself for achieving that sad goal. Credit Joan of Arc for this, though: 20 years in, they’re still finding new ways to alienate and infuriate.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Foxhole
    The Ornaments are yet another in a long line of floppy-haired guitar bands flying the flag of a purer pop past, but they’re also, unmistakably, one of the better, least pretentious ones. Sometimes it pays to be grateful rather than cynical.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Oczy Mlody
    These pendulum shifts--from frustrating to fascinating and back again--play out within the songs themselves.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    A Shadow in Time
    While this sense of riveting discovery isn’t fully achieved on “For David,” the album nonetheless offers a stunning journey into a vast, ink-black void.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    50
    Even as it draws on new and old songs, 50 presents a startlingly current and nearly apocalyptic vision of America; it’s album full of brimstone and brine, perhaps more perfect for this moment in history than we’d like to admit.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Hear the Lions Roar
    Some of Fair’s bug-eyed mantras feel even more impactful when the music can swell in tandem, but there’s also the threat of just sounding like a very good rock band than like the joyful mess that they can be.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Machine Messiah
    Machine Messiah, though, is the rare Sepultura album where the vibe of the music doesn’t consistently match its central themes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hang
    With Hang, Foxygen have proven their capacity for lavish spectacle, but they’re still at their best when they give themselves the freedom to roam.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Migration
    All told, Migration is an impressive improvement over The North Borders, and easily the most listenable record of Bonobo’s fifteen-plus year career.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Forever
    Its 11-track, 35-minute runtime proves an abrasive, acerbic listen from start to finish.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Iris [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    This agreeable sameness infects much of the score, turning the voices of two inimitable musicians into hack work for hire, churning out glossy tones for images of cheap thrill and intrigue.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    AFI (The Blood Album)
    At least half of The Blood Album’s songs feel virtually interchangeable and the other half sound like AFI wrote this stuff in the time it takes to play it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    I See You
    As an album, I See You has the eerily seamless wholeness of the self-titled debut, a smooth and polished object with no visible edges.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Gentlewoman, Ruby Man
    With the exception of James Blake’s “Colour of Anything,” which here sounds like an outtake from the Virgin Suicides soundtrack, Morrissey and White fare better with the more recent material than with the old.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Jackie [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Like an solid frame to a complex painting, Levi’s score concretizes and helps control the artistic experience of the film. In effect, the score may not supersede its filmic anchor, but is sure does make the entire endeavor more beautiful.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    The Return of East Atlanta Santa
    The Return of East Atlanta Santa leans on this lighter, more playful side of Gucci’s personality, proving along the way that back to business doesn’t have to mean an absence of fun.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Stillness In Wonderland
    Unusually for such an introspective album, the guest spots are welcome respite.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Reflection
    Each note acts like a pebble dropped into a pond, sending out ever widening ripples that slowly decay, but not before certain tones linger and swell until they more closely resemble drones. Listen closer and certain small frequencies emerge and flutter higher like down feathers in a draft.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Don't Smoke Rock
    Pete Rock and Smoke DZA have forged something we still need, too: a great, modest New York rap album of concrete beats and blood-in-your-mouth bars.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Very Kacey Christmas
    Musgraves’ album summons up the mid-’60s era nostalgia of A Charlie Brown Christmas, gliding naturally from her established Western-swing throwback aesthetic to kitschy exotica and vintage pop, with an expertly curated song selection that leans on campy novelties, classy standards, and a stocking’s worth of originals.
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