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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    • 67 Metascore
    • 47 Critic Score
    Evil Urges
    There are few fiery guitar freakouts, folk-influenced melodies, soaring space-rock bridges, or psychedelic flourishes here; instead, the empty space is mostly filled with serviceable falsetto funk and glassy-eyed yacht-pop.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Robert Pollard Is Off To Business
    Although Business ultimately ranks as yet another less-than-legendary offering from a living indie legend, its shortcomings are much more nuanced than typical Pollard releases.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Tha Carter III
    Instead of hiding his bootleg-bred quirks in anticipation of the big-budget spotlight, he distills the myriad metaphors, convulsing flows, and vein-splitting emotions into a commercially gratifying package that's as weird as it wants to be; he eventually finds his guitar but keeps the strumming in check.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 36 Critic Score
    Here We Stand
    The Fratellis have comfortably nestled themselves among the ranks of British rock's most besotted, but even relative to their contemporaries they still manage to come off sounding bored, tired, and downright silly.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 46 Critic Score
    Seeing Sounds
    Like its unexpected stylistic kin My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges, Seeing Sounds finds its creators partaking in the subversively phallocentric narcissism of staring at their CD collections, confusing music listening with music understanding rather than enjoyment.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    To Survive
    It starts strong (with the pensive 'Honor Wishes'), and ends on a high note (with the title track leading into 'To America,' Wasser's duet with Wainwright). Unfortunately, the middle of the album, burdened with turgid low points.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 36 Critic Score
    The Dream
    Ultimately, this particular dream is less one of flight or past glories, and more one of going to work and finding you've forgotten your trousers.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Parallel Play
    Even those accustomed to Sloan's effortlessness will find the first half of Parallel Play almost flawless. There's still little in the way of artifice or innovation, but it's still easy to admire the architecture.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Los Angeles
    With its accomplished fusion of debris and warmth in a place somewhere between b-boy head-nod and laptopper experimentalism, Los Angeles is a big step forward for a still-young career, an album well worth revisiting years from now--preferably on vinyl, where the pops and clicks can only multiply.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill
    Dead Deer is druggy and sexy and arty and pretty, but never pretentious.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 44 Critic Score
    Exotic Creatures Of The Deep
    Virtually every song enunciates its central joke, then repeats it and repeats it and repeats it. And repeats it. And repeats it. And so on, with the repeating. (And repeating.)
    • 67 Metascore
    • 19 Critic Score
    The Beautiful Lie
    The brio of an amateur would almost have to be preferably to the overzealous professionalism of Beautiful Lie, whose frilly "classicist" pop gets all dressed up to go absolutely nowhere.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    We Started Nothing
    Maybe once the Ting Tings stop trying so hard to convince everyone they're having a good time and start actually having a good time, these cute little ballads will no longer be their sole redeeming quality.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Takes
    His evident love of his source material and the material's alternative-era continuity make Takes a vanity project that's much better and more universally appealing than what we usually mean by the term.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    This Is Not The World
    While neither as frenetic as the group's debut or as stylistically curious as Tributes, World boasts smart pop sensibilities all the same.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Exiting Arm
    The album boasts the most opaque lyrics in Subtle's catalog. But put the record and the website together, and the big themes become clear.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Velocifero
    Even with a somewhat diminished speaker-filling capability and a couple of songs that seem to have less actual energy than they should, Velocifero's subtlety will eventually reward further listens.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 47 Critic Score
    Weezer (Red Album)
    Like the YouTube culture the "Pork and Beans" video depicts so well, the song--and this album--relies on a high quantity of short-lived pretty good ideas to distract from a shortage of great ones.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fleet Foxes
    What follows is surprisingly full and wide ranging, almost as much as the Bruegel painting that graces the album's cover.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rook
    As impressive and uniformly gorgeous a record as Rook is, the band's best work is likely still to come.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Watershed
    Watershed has friction, and friction brings heat. Those left cold by metal's po-faced tendencies might well warm up to it.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    The Bake Sale [EP]
    The Bake Sale is the first commercially available product from a group that's built its rep via MySpace and live shows, and most of these tracks have been floating around the internet for a long minute. But it makes for a great little introduction to two guys who know exactly what they're doing and who do it well.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Real Close Ones
    Following their first two crunching and careening albums, it may seem as if the M's have lowered the bar for themselves, but through all the detours they've made an album that sounds more like themselves than any previous work.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Life...The Best Game In Town
    The best executed Harvey Milk album to date, and one of the most accomplished metal records you'll hear this year.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    This Is Alphabeat
    This Is Alphabeat feels labored, sacrificing identity in its endless eagerness to please.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Lay It Down
    Yes, it's a pleasure to hear Green articulate romantic satisfaction, and good for him if he's satisfied. But the grain and pull of his voice is all about longing for both flesh and spirit, and it doesn't quite fit here.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Songs in A&E
    Songs in A&E is certainly Spiritualized's best work in 10 years.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Dystopia
    The kicker is that, without their live/electronic shtick to distinguish them, Midnight Juggernauts don't seem to be anything other than gifted mimics.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Health//Disco
    Never merely meager, this project delivers, both when you're waving your orgy-snorkel all blotto on-the-town, and for a soundtrack to serious rumination at your midday desk of harsh reality.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Welcome
    It's hard to actually consider Welcome a bad album, mostly because it has this inexplicable likability: It's bizarrely comic without coming across as cheap irony, and it's pretty clear Pants lays down these semi-instrumental jams because he wants to have fun and make noise with some once-expensive, now-dated (and, subsequently, currently underheard) musical machinery.
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