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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    • 86 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective
    Nothing to Fear might be the surprise highlight of this collection, even accounting for all the classic stuff on the first disc.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Sun & The Neon Light
    What the title describes is just as ineffable as their sound: you can see it coming down, but somehow it fails to leave any tangible impression.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fire On Corridor X
    What All the Saints lack in rhythmic variation, they make up for with absorbing atmosphere--their sound truly is subterranean, a dimly lit, cavernous rumble that gets more suffocating as the album progresses.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    No Way Down [EP]
    Their sources are varied, yet the pleasure isn't recognizing the different sonic elements, but in relishing their almost supernatural co-exist
    • 58 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    Anywhere I Lay My Head
    On several songs, Johansson gets lost in Sitek's swelling production, which may suggest a weak interpreter or a dearth of vocal personality but adds to the album's pervading dreaminess.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Lucky Ones
    No envelopes are pushed on the quartet's latest, The Lucky Ones. But there's an increase in firepower that makes it their best effort in a while.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Arm's Way
    These songs may be less immediately catchy, but all of them have a moment in which they break away from their straightforward guitar-rock underpinning and allow strange, spacious moments to burble up from within.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    II Trill
    II Trill is a solid and occasionally great record, an album more directed toward car-stereo utility than bedroom contemplation.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    No, Virginia...
    In a way, they don't even try to [reconcile their spotlight-swallowing energy], and that makes No, Virginia... an album on par with the Dolls' two fully conceived LPs.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Re-Arrange Us
    Unfortunately there aren't a lot of opportunities to get caught in that lovely crossfire on Re-Arrange Us, a record that, for all its lush bells and whistles, finds the pair sounding as bare-boned and sparse as you'd expect a two-person band to be.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Freedom Wind
    Freedom Wind includes three of the four songs on the Explorers Club's original EP, and it partly fulfills that record's promise.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Lie Down In The Light
    Lie Down may be Oldham's most country record of new songs in years, and it's also one of his most accessible and least academic records.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    El Rey
    El Rey has its share of surprises, mostly in the vein of its particular subject, which is the cruelty older men visit on younger women, and vice versa. But mostly it's merely another Wedding Present record: witty, randy, guitar-heavy, and not quite satisfied.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Swimming
    Trading layers of mood and melody and meaning for layers of Pro Tooled artifice, French Kicks have razored off the bullshit, leaving a core of beguilingly honest tunes.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 57 Critic Score
    Inherit
    Unfortunately, Inherit tries to give the listener both of these great tastes at once, resulting in a combination that's less like chocolate and peanut butter, and more like toothpaste and orange juice.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 53 Critic Score
    Brain Thrust Mastery
    As far as mainstream pop-rock records go, Brain Thrust Mastery occasionally gets the job done.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Narrow Stairs
    At times, the maturation feels forced; the more adventurous moments here are experimental only for such a high-profile group, and they don't play to Gibbard's sentimental, word-weighing strengths.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Thing Of The Past
    Thing of the Past is a perfectly pleasant, well-produced album that offers an authorized version of what Vetiver fans already unofficially know about the band.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Directions To See A Ghost
    If you isolate any random 45 seconds of Directions to See a Ghost's 70 minutes, you'll definitely be compelled to listen for another few minutes--after which time you'll probably start waiting for a solo or a shift in tone that might not even come.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Twelve Angry Months
    For what is in essence the ultimate expression of inadequacy, self-loathing, failure, and impotence, 12 Angry Months is a tough little thing.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Fern Knight
    Throughout the album, glimmers of invention and humor are allowed to shine through.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 55 Critic Score
    The In Crowd
    With their frantic, rushed rhymes, and beats which are a bit too eager to please, the Kidz may be popular. But if they want to any cred they're going to have to learn to be themselves.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Way
    Way is a humble first step in what sounds like a glorious new trip, where the really well played guitar becomes something else entirely.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Time Traveller
    What it lacks in a unified style it makes up for in a referential (and reverential) enthusiasm that anyone with a subscription to Wax Poetics should recognize as an individualized, well-crafted love letter to funk gone by--and funk yet to come.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    All We Could Do Was Sing
    The good news is that the band's official debut (following the 2007 collection "Wind And The Swell") is still a solid art-pop album at its core, and importantly, more "American Gangster" than "The Crane Wife."
    • 85 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Airing Of Grievances
    On a lyric sheet, Titus Andronicus may appear to espouse the sort of wrist-cutting histrionics emo's typically lambasted for, but the magic lies in the band's oddly enthusiastic grass roots delivery.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Couples
    In an attempt to be taken seriously, they've sacrificed too much of their effervescent appeal--after all, enthusiasm and artfulness need not be mutually exclusive.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    The Age Of The Understatement
    So obviously the biggest difference between the Last Shadow Puppets and Turner's main gig is in the lyrics. Though less immediately noticeable than the majestic production, the change in the scale of Turner's songwriting is ultimately more profound.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 92 Critic Score
    Nouns
    Nouns is so cacophonous, so fertile, and so ripe with sound that parsing out the samples and effects and various layers of guitar is nearly impossible; besides, it's way more satisfying to just close your eyes and just enjoy it.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Supreme Balloon
    In the end, those appearances [by Keith Fullerton Whitman, Jay Lesser, and Sun Ra Arkestra's Marshall Allen] point to the album's only downside, which is the nagging sense that there's too much straight homage/pastiche and not enough of Matmos' considerable cleverness on display. Ultimately, though, it's a minor quibble.
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