Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,768 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: 10,501 out of 12768
  2. Mixed: 1,953 out of 12768
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12768
12768 music reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Snake
    Their equipment may be largely restricted to percussion, vocals, and the occasional embellishment of keyboard, but their ability to fully eclipse these limitations and create music with a strong improvisational pulse and so much vitality is a no small feat, and proves that they are continuing to experiment in magnificent, dynamic ways.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Humbug
    Humbug isn't better than either of its predecessors, but it expands the group's range and makes me curious where it might go next.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories the World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away
    Mew has succeeded in developing a good sound from some of the least hip ingredients imaginable, and No More Stories... feels like a consolidation of every stride they've made to date.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    He Was King
    Unfortunately a whole album of similarly DJ-pitched material, all the quote-unquote pop frills shaved off, wouldn't have allowed blog readers to devote the few days their attenuated attentions can muster for He Was King's singles, before the next this-is-kind-of-okay-I-guess electro-pop album arrives to distract them.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    My Guilty Pleasure
    It's a sad case of an artist forgetting what makes her great, settling for what makes her merely good instead.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Television
    The results are perfectly pleasant but rarely inspiring, hardly sterile but at the same time too smooth.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Memoirs At The End Of The World
    Yehezkely, with her limited range and slightly detached delivery, effectively bridges that gap between the music's indulgent/escapist tendencies and our desire to connect with it despite that distance.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    My Dusty Road
    By dividing the sessions into what amounts to an overview of his career, My Dusty Road detracts from the recently discovered source material, making it both an incredible find and a missed opportunity.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Origin: Orphan
    That mischief is largely missing from Origin: Orphan, and the lack of lyrical cleverness seems to have infected the music as well, making for a mostly cloudy listen from a formerly sunny-day band.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Everything Is New
    It's wide-eyed pop minus the fizz, demonstrating that sizzle can still be subtle.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Speech Therapy
    Fortunately, whether she's sifting through the anguish she's caused her mother and the trouble she's having finishing her album, or realizing that good sex can make for bad boyfriends and that even sucky jobs serve some cosmic purpose, she generally cuts through the crap without pretending to have easy answers.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Old, Familiar Friend
    Benson emphasizes the raw power of his riffs instead of polishing them into a smooth sheen. It's not as DIY charming as his earlier works, but it's pretty darned effective.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Welcome Joy
    The Cave Singers' mild, moseying tunes aren't without their minor charms, and they're unfailingly good at conjuring images of wide-open fields and dust-caked lanes, but nobody wants to walk down the same road all the time if they can help it.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Hospice
    Hospice answers silliness with solemnity, jitters with nerve. Their band name simply describes their music: a delicately branching instrument of force.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    King Of Jeans
    King of Jeans successfully consolidates these two strengths, harnessing the earlier record's sometimes directionless fire-extinguisher splatter into shake-appealing rock action, and cohering Korvette's ramblings into a more complete picture of wage-slave misanthropy and alpha-male inadequacy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Luminous Night
    Luminous Night doesn't challenge "School of the Flower" or "The Sun Awakens" for Six Organs' best albums, but it is a solid addition to a big catalog that gets more interesting all the time.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Wind's Poem
    Phil has moved well beyond the often formless experiments of the early Microphones releases--this is still by no means a record to be digested lightly. And thank goodness for that.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 44 Critic Score
    You Can't Take It With You
    As overblown as You Can't Take It With You is musically, Nigro's not one to be upstaged by guitar pedals.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intuit
    They're like a combination of Where the Wild Things Are, a fever dream, a pagan woodland ceremony, and a notebook doodle. The music is worth taking in, too, over and over again.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bay Of Pigs [EP]
    I'd assume Bay of Pigs' disco diversion to be just that in the long run, but after the relatively wagon-gathering summary of "Trouble in Dreams," this certainly feels like a break and, perhaps, the first blush of something new. Cheers to that.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Season Dreaming
    Season Dreaming is the sort of record that could, in the wrong hands, easily drift off into formless bedlam, but the group's employment of simple melodies and tunefulness when needed keeps that from happening.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Alien In A Garbage Dump
    It's chewing up something familiar and making it weird again. Life gives you lemons, so you make Alien in a Garbage Dump.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Broken
    Too often its soundtrack atmosphere is too thick, its arrangements as obvious as a painted backdrop.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Solo Electric Bass 1 [Live]
    It creates an album weighed toward showcasing masterful execution that leaves a pretty muted general impression. Unless you're predisposed toward technical prowess and solo bass recordings, it's probably going to come off as more of a clinic than a collection of great songs.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    The Bachelor
    The Bachelor most damningly lacks the charm attendant with any of those character descriptions, continuing Wolf's ability to please one's inner music critic, but too often ignoring any sort of pleasure principle.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Braveface
    Pop singers certainly don't need to reinvent music production to be gripping, but Esser's debut doesn't strain or stretch creative boundaries or hit that perfect balance between playful and experimental in the same way that contemporaries like Micachu and the Shapes do.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    Woodstock--40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm
    There are other moments of inspiration--maybe about a CD's worth, all told.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Elephant Jokes
    Elephant Jokes just has a good feeling about it, as if Pollard really liked this batch, so that's why he deigned to play an instrument on it, maybe, and why he slips a little intro in and closes it out with the very final-sounding 'Architectural Nightmare Man.'
    • 77 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Waxing Gibbous
    Waxing Gibbous is a good, if occasionally overdone, album that proves that his musical imagination is still a fertile one.
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