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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    • 79 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Frkwys, Vol. 13: Sunergy
    The headier and grander it grows, the more its heavy drones swarm, the more undeniable the duo’s alchemy proves to be.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Lady Parts
    Despite its faults and flaws, it mostly scans as two talented musicians just having a good time.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    The Wink
    The Wink is a high-wire act that may find more fans among, say, free jazz listeners than conventional rock lovers. But even if the scratchy destination lacks home comforts, the journey is its own thrill.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight
    Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight escapes as Travis Scott’s best work yet: a combination of elevated significance, self-awareness, and the old trick of spinning something so plain into something so luxurious.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Skeleton Tree
    This great unknowing serves as the album’s guiding principle. In Cave’s wounded voice, you hear him grapple in real-time with the incidental prophecies of his lyrics and his need to get the job done.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Blade of Love
    This time, the inevitable transition from vocalizations to near-unison saxophone shredding doesn’t carry quite the same charge. But on the whole, Blade Of Love shows that there’s plenty of sax-quartet innovation left for these artists to explore.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    AIM
    While she may never have been the most articulate and thoughtful messenger, in AIM, M.I.A. demonstrates her legacy as an artist eager to tackle issues that are volatile and antagonistic. But at this point her music is more potent in theory than execution.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Open Your Eyes
    It feels labored over, and it sacrifices some of the form’s early magic But there's room for this, too, and we need look no farther than Jlin to see the potential in footwork as more heavily produced, personally expressive music.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 44 Critic Score
    Anything but Words
    Anything But Words is the rare side project that might have been better off if both parties had cared a little less.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Away
    Away’s scope may be personal, but its takeaways are universal. It’s a touching album about moving on, about the satisfaction of leaving the past behind before it leaves you.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016
    Acoustic Recordings stockpiles a great American songbook that can endure even after we’re all forced to live off the grid.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    We Move
    The ideas are articulated much more distinctly than on past recordings, bringing added significance to the gorgeous compositions.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Goodbye to Language
    For the most part, the music gives the illusion of being something sourceless, something created without effort--not product, but pure being; not labor, but freedom.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    The End of Comedy
    There’s a newfound focus that was missing even on Salvia Plath’s The Bardo Story and Silk Rhodes’ self-titled.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Schmilco
    Even if Schmilco isn’t Wilco’s most exciting album, it’s among their most consistent and immediately gratifying.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Whole & Cloven
    It’s not his most revelatory performance, but it’s certainly his most joyful.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Killer Road
    One can imagine the project’s subject would have ultimately preferred the more understated tracks, concerted in their muted menace--focused on the task of creating a cinematic impression of the unknowable.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    E-MO-TION Side B [EP]
    That the songs can sound enormous while maintaining this kind of person-to-person intimacy is Jepsen’s particular talent.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    The Sun's Tirade
    It’s a complex portrait of a man in transition. The album is an evolution for an artist who still may have his best in store.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Cosmetic
    Cosmetic’s stewing textural undercurrent intensifies the band’s outer antagonism by highlighting the trembling, deep-seated dread within. It’s riveting and ruining in equal measure.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Trouble
    With Trouble, Russell, Morley, and Yeats have dug one foot deeper into the thick, sludgy, noise-strewn topsoil they’ve long called home. Call it a trench, if you will, but it isn’t is a grave.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    False Readings On
    The sense persists that the more Eluvium piles on, the less unique he sounds. False Readings On is awesome while it’s playing, and when it stops, it’s gone.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Science Agrees
    The album flows well, effortlessly segueing from Achtung Baby-like rock to mechanical new wave like Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys. O’Riordan and Koretsky sing simple lyrics, often repeating the same phrase over and over, allowing alternate meanings to sink in.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 53 Critic Score
    Splendor & Misery
    In its drive for conceptual rigor, the album neglects to engage the listener musically. That puts a lot of weight on the story, which tends toward the abstract.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    And the Anonymous Nobody
    Middle-aged rap has rarely sounded more grown, with all the mixed-blessing perspective that comes with it. Anonymous Nobody is kind of a downer, but sometimes that’s what you need, especially when the optimism’s just below that melancholy surface.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Here
    Even if Here, the band’s 10th album, finds Teenage Fanclub comfortable with their identity and largely uninterested in testing its boundaries, they still find some room for experimentation.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Ultra
    Ultra is also Zomby’s most experimental record in ages.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    My Woman
    Her lyrics have the conviction of someone like Fiona Apple: a profoundly individual presence that centers, above all, on self-reliance, on searing autonomy, on the act of becoming. My Woman does this more vividly and lucidly and daringly than before.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Skiptracing
    While Brettin’s singing is greatly improved--lazy but more present and self-assured--his lyrics are at best inscrutable and in general lacking in substance.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    For This We Fought the Battle of Ages
    This is grand, unapologetic doom metal that should also fit fans of symphonies, post-rock bands, and alt-rock radio. And this is writing so rich that it raises deep, pressing questions about our very existence with richly written scenes and sharply posed worries.
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