Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,703 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: 10,440 out of 12703
  2. Mixed: 1,949 out of 12703
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12703
12703 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Love Is Hell, Part 2 [EP]
    The sad fact is, no marketing strategy, no matter how savvy, could conceal this collection's bathetic, overwrought travesties and gruesome failures.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Tasty
    With Tasty, Kelis has left the roller-rink, returned from outer space, and she's back on her own two feet on terra firma-- unfortunately.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 32 Critic Score
    Democrazy
    He's already recorded such a wealth of great material that no mystique remains, leaving no real reason for anyone-- including the most dedicated fan-- to seek out these poorly produced musical shreds.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Atlas
    Electronic music that genuinely rocks.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    This Is Not A Test!
    It's the album's end-to-end strength that speaks the most-- against hip-hop artists who fail to make solid albums and those rock idiots who say it can't be done.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Maryland Mansions
    So perhaps it's about time that we stop calling Cex a wunderkind: He may be barely 25 but with the introspective yet exuberant Maryland Mansions, he's officially grown up, establishing himself as a performer to be taken-- yikes!-- seriously.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Let It Be... Naked
    Ultimately, Naked is not essential. Unlike scattered moments in the Anthology series, this music (though immaculately presented) doesn't really expand on either the music of Let It Be, or The Beatles' legacy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Black Album
    Even in falling short of Jay's classics, Reasonable Doubt and 2001's The Blueprint, it manages to eclipse 1999's brilliant Vol. 3: Life and Times of S. Carter as his third-best album-- which in itself still makes it one of the year's best.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Spokes
    Indeed, there are some dull moments on Spokes, but plucking tracks from the record and turning them around under the magnifying glass probably misses what Plaid intended (this one seems meant to be listened to in succession).
    • 77 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Pieces of April [Soundtrack]
    The new Magnetic Fields songs will, thankfully, not raise any eyebrows; the enthusiasm and sparkling spontaneity is, like always, pressed into ukuleles and tucked into preposterously addictive Yamaha sound settings circa 1985.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Dangerous Magical Noise
    Stubbornly lo-fi and expectedly scrappy, the album is also tremendously listenable, a rhythmic, leg-flailing romp through vintage soul cool, glam boogie, classic rock thrash, and punk bravado.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 31 Critic Score
    Love Is Hell, Part 1 [EP]
    A collection of preposterously cheerless (and charmless) songs that try much too hard to achieve a poignancy-- or anything, really-- that might hide their complete insignificance.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ghosts Of The Great Highway
    For the first time, Kozelek has put out an album whose meticulous sequencing yields more than just a random scattershot collection of great songs, but rather a complete cohesive musical statement.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 29 Critic Score
    Rock'n'Roll
    It's not so much that Rock N Roll is incorrigibly written as that the record is unforgivably careless, unwilling to commit to anything including itself.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 41 Critic Score
    Skull Ring
    Overproduced, under-written, swaggering nonsense.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
    One of the most impressive aspects of The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place is that it feels constantly in flux, growing and transforming with every note.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    So Much For The City
    The Thrills' external, sometime vaccuous pinching is clearly self-conscious, a carefully premeditated breach of expectation that causes more of a wince than a flash of pleasant surprise.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Per Second, Per Second, Per Second... Every Second
    Thankfully, the band is up to the challenge of turning up the spotlights and the volume, and they crank out a solid batch of insanely catchy, pristine pop songs that'll crawl inside your brain and die there, only to come back and haunt you at the oddest times.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Instinct
    Despite the production and sonic sweep, this is a standard rock band working within an oft-stated, faux-experimental dream-pop realm.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Room On Fire
    That there's nothing new or innovative to be found here is sure to be a common complaint, though only those who prize evolution over knowing one's strengths will cry fraud.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Wig In A Box: Songs From & Inspired By Hedwig & The Angry Inch
    Anything that keeps this compelling musical in the foreground of popular consciousness is worth something, and if a fan of Hedwig happens to be an indie rocker as well, this compilation is a delightful wedding.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Today Is The Day [EP]
    Yo La Tengo are still one of the most talented acts going, and whether they're maturing or simply cooling off these days, they're still evolving.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Dead Man Shake
    Ramshackle, jumpy and curiously charming, Dead Man Shake is full of Westerberg's trademark spastic vocals and nimble guitar work, only now determinably fuzzed up and shrouded in Sun Records spunk.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Kish Kash
    Some of the most propulsive, ferocious music of the year as well as some of the most poignant.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Wherever I Am I Am What Is Missing
    Ultimately, Laika make pleasant music that's difficult to be passionate about.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cedars
    Throughout Cedars, Clearlake continually find beauty in melancholy and melancholy behind beauty, while raising your hairs in reverence with occasional guitar squalls.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 51 Critic Score
    Logic Will Break Your Heart
    The Stills are what The Posies were in their day, and what The Libertines were a few minutes ago: stuck in a phantom zone called "not there yet," and possibly because the personalities of their influences eclipse any sense of identity they could muster.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Come Feel Me Tremble
    Come Feel Me Tremble suffers for its lack of cohesion.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    Streetcore
    While the record fails at living up to the hyperbolic critical proclamations of London Calling's second coming, it does make for a pretty decent, if somewhat unexpected, sweat-soaked finale for The Clash's legendary golden boy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 89 Critic Score
    Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?
    They rival The Shins, or The Magnetic Fields, or any of the innumerable indie touchstones, but what truly sets Who Will Cut Our Hair apart is the near-total absence of traditional verse/chorus/verse framework in their songs; to nail beautiful, memorable lines with such remarkable ease is a feat unto itself, but to do so in essentially formless compositions is a different class of achievement entirely.
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