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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    • 82 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Tongues
    In these songs, that ravenous, sinuous jumble of muscle and gristle swells within Tagaq’s body. It is a fearful presence, but a righteous one. It speaks with a strength that the young girl at that long-ago house party did not yet know how to wield. The violence this being threatens is the protective kind. But there is room, too, for tenderness.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    W
    Takeshi, Atsuo, and Wata have reflected abstract magic on W. Like a port in a storm, the foundations may occasionally shake, but, for the duration of the record, it feels like the safest place to hide.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Earthling
    He’s lither; he sings with a spring in his step, trusting the deepened range of his indignant burr. After several Pearl Jam albums of material pounded into meat sauce, the airier delights of Earthling’s end run let Vedder stretch—cautiously.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    IRE
    On IRÉ, Combo Chimbita don’t just herald the coming of this future; they usher it into existence, note by electrifying note.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Highest in the Land
    The Highest in the Land, a just and honest headstone, captures the substance and self-definition of a singular songwriter where words and labels fail.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
    Dragon is as heavy in its lyrical concerns as any previous Big Thief record, and more ambitious in its musical ideas than all of them. But it also sounds unburdened, animated by a newfound sense of childlike exploration and play.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    C91
    Rather than the winners, C91 is musical history written by the also-rans, kind-of-weres and might-have-beens. And it proves far more interesting that way.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Ants From Up There
    Knowing how it all ends does nothing to detract from the joy Black Country, New Road have poured into Ants From Up There—not when they spend every second reminding us of why we let ourselves get swept up in these beautifully doomed fantasies to begin with.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Few Good Things
    He continues to split duties on keyboards, guitars, bass, and drum programming with longtime producing partners Daoud and daedaePIVOT, and at its best, the music splits the difference between carefree and careworn.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Pompeii
    Le Bon’s creative power remains in the circuitous jaggedness with which she navigates pop and poetry, uncertainty and revelation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    Let the Festivities Begin!
    Let the Festivities Begin! is music to dance to, to roll a joint to, to solve a decades-old mystery to, but it isn’t a masterwork that unfolds with multiple listens. It’s exactly what it promises, and that’s a party.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dissolution Wave
    Dissolution Wave crystallizes Cloakroom’s strengths while refuting the idea that concept albums are always bloated and pretentious.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    Dope Don't Sell Itself
    The songs here are serviceable, thanks to 2 Chainz’s ear and charisma. But they’re more like templates than novel creations, far from his days of sampling Hall & Oates or trading verses with Kendrick Lamar over a Pharrell beat seemingly constructed from cutlery and trash cans.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Time Skiffs
    With its inviting ambiance, unhurried vibe, and ebullient group harmonies, Time Skiffs readily conjures warm memories of AnCo’s late-2000s halcyon days. But the album possesses a personality and methodology all its own.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    11:11
    11:11 is replete with pilots asleep at the wheel and elected officials ignoring the obvious. Yet the record’s most compelling figure is that dazed child on the beach, vomiting sand and seawater, insisting, “I want to be alive.”
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Live at Montreux Jazz Festival
    Though Live at Montreux is an inviting survey for newcomers, it's also worth hearing if you’re already familiar with the source material. Some songs, like “Pomperipossa,” are reworked for maximum force, but the greatest rewards are subtler.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Metal Bird
    Metal Bird feels blissfully unmoored from any sense of time and space, its astral Americana hymns hovering somewhere between the dirt and the stars, between a bygone golden age and our tense present, between raw intimacy and dreamlike splendor.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    The Runner [Original Soundtrack]
    The soundtrack succeeds with taut moments of electronic beauty, but it just as quickly slips into a frustrating, self-defeating insularity. While the precise formula of Boy Harsher’s music hasn’t faltered, The Runner’s soundtrack lacks drive, or a deeper expansion of their sound: It feels more like the musical equivalent of an engine idling.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Laurel Hell
    To say that it is the least compelling of her Dead Oceans records is also to acknowledge the stratospheric standard she has set. Laurel Hell still has wrenching lines and artful melodies, proof that Mitski’s every move operates at a baseline level of virtuosity. The existence of the album in and of itself feels climactic.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Motordrome
    In her raw, rollicking delivery, MØ does sound comfortable in her skin again, giving the lyric a genuinely openhearted turn. Motordrome occasionally passes through such exhilarating moments, but faceless production too often spins its wheels, making it seem as though MØ is still in search of a sound to match the bravado.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) [OST]
    It’s alarming how many of the issues cited by artists and presenters persist today—police violence, systemic racism, poverty, cultural erasure—yet that makes the music sound fresh, lively, relevant in its celebration and commiseration. Both the film and the soundtrack bear that weight of history gracefully and jubilantly.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Island of Noise
    Its songs are subtly overstuffed, brimming with layers of luxurious melody and imaginative variation.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Strictly a One-Eyed Jack
    Despite the overt bleakness, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack shines when Mellencamp invites other people into his world—proof that he can still surprise us this deep into his career.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 56 Critic Score
    Shoals
    Leo Abrahams’ stylish production steers the discussion toward his previous work with Brian Eno and Jon Hopkins, even if Shoals just as often makes me think of a weighted blanket or paint roller soaked in aloe vera.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Anaïs Mitchell
    There are no great musical innovations here, but that’s not to say the songs aren’t affecting: Anaïs Mitchell is a compelling, earnest rumination on the desires and possibilities that arise when you start looking for significance in small moments.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Three Dimensions Deep
    Energetic, lush, and measured, Three Dimensions Deep is a cohesive debut from Mark that doesn’t lose sight of the bespoke sound that she’s developed over the years.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    DS4EVER
    Too many songs feel like items on a checklist. The mandatory back-and-forth with Lil Baby proves their chemistry hasn’t waned, but the formula to their joint tracks is due for an update.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Optimism
    The album feels about five times larger with the inclusion of “Jordan,” its first single. Whereas the rest of the record sounds homey, “Jordan” surveys alien territory.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Havasu
    For the most part, Havasu strives to build on Phoenix, a continuity that enriches itself and its predecessor and deepens Pedro the Lion’s backstory.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 52 Critic Score
    on to better things
    Dior stays vague and vacant throughout the album, invested in his feelings but short on interesting ideas.
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