Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,711 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: 10,448 out of 12711
  2. Mixed: 1,949 out of 12711
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12711
12711 music reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I'll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground & Nico
    While it’s hard to imagine how anyone involved with the VU’s album would feel about this tasteful tribute, its very existence still speaks to the force of the original vision. After all this time, artists are still peeling back layers of the banana.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Remember Her Name
    At its best, Remember Her Name captures her steadfastness and grace in equal measure.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Year of the Horse
    Just as this band once broke the rules of hardcore, they have also reinvented the concept album, transforming the most indulgent exercise in the classic-rock playbook into an egalitarian, community endeavor.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    By The Time I Get To Phoenix
    On By the Time I Get to Phoenix, they reintroduce themselves as wide-eyed explorers, a rep that suits their fascination with rap’s mechanics, its margins, and its future.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Dawn of Chromatica
    The most memorable revisions on Dawn of Chromatica create new links to other standout moments in the Gaga discography. ... A few other highlights tilt in the other direction, teleporting Gaga into established worlds of sound with satisfying results.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    goldilocks x
    There’s a thrill in watching a talented artist reach beyond her comfort zone, but the result is disappointingly flat. When she’s in her element, though, she’s singular and sparkling.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Black Encyclopedia of the Air
    Black Encyclopedia of the Air is another withering salvo in Moor Mother’s lifelong war of attrition, expertly disguised behind the shadow of a white flag.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Beautiful Life
    A Beautiful Life is her best album as a vocalist, as she finds new ways to bend her voice to different styles and sounds.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Silence
    Dispensing with the irony and bombast that always seemed essential to Hot Chip’s work, this solemn collection places the onus on Taylor’s singing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Montero
    Even with occasional missteps, the album fulfills the promise of a new kind of pop star: an out, Black rapper and singer who combines his omnivorous, genre-hopping music, forthright lyrics, and social media savvy to triumph in an industry that threatened his authenticity from the jump.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 64 Critic Score
    The Melodic Blue
    While The Melodic Blue is indeed flecked with more intimate writing than usual, it isn’t exactly a confessional. Instead, Keem uses the opportunity to expand his well-established fascination with trap and melody to feature-length—with mixed results.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 61 Critic Score
    Texis
    No matter how much command and charisma Krauss brings to Texis, it still sounds quaint, not necessarily catchier than any number of contemporary bands who don’t face the same hang-ups from indie listeners.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lindsey Buckingham
    Lindsey Buckingham manages to be his best solo effort since 1992’s Out of the Cradle. No dilution of his composing or his production sorcery here: Buckingham, all by his lonesome, has recorded an album whose insistent, almost irritating knack for melody suggests a resurgent talent for making his insularity accessible.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Antiphonals
    Throughout Antiphonals, Davachi smooths out recognizable elements until they blur into the sonic landscape. Compared to the orchestral ensemble recordings of earlier albums like 2018’s Gave in Rest, these eight songs sound subdued and solitary. However, there are moments when individual instruments receive a moment in the spotlight.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    K Bay
    The sound of K Bay is so good—so plump, so crisp, so tapered and whooshed—that White can seem like a studio hermit whose talent keeps thwarting his solitude.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Before I Die
    At its best, the album explores the contours of an emotional journey in space and time. Occasionally, though, scattered moods and unfocused songwriting blunt the record’s impact.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Comfort To Me
    Comfort to Me transports us to a familiar, paradoxical world: uncertain, harsh, and magnetic.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 69 Critic Score
    I've Been Trying to Tell You
    I’ve Been Trying to Tell You feels passive, lost in nostalgia for an age it hasn’t fully reckoned with. Bet it sounds gorgeous on the radio.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Metallica Blacklist
    The Black Album launched Metallica to superstardom because of its approachability, but in its attempts to offer something for everyone, Blacklist spreads itself too thin.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Hey What
    If Double Negative was a thrilling and uncertain expedition, bringing an alien landscape into focus for the first time, HEY WHAT demonstrates Low’s newfound mastery of the terrain.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Star-Crossed
    Its seams show at every moment, in ways that feel artful—spoken interludes, thematic callbacks, a disorienting cover of Violeta Parra’s eternal “Gracias a la Vida” that shifts between settings like the grand finale of an Oscar-bait drama—and others that feel forced.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    History of a Feeling
    She makes even the most immovable feelings open up with just a little time and space.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    Mirrors
    What Jakobsson has always tried to accomplish with DJ Seinfeld was to try to tap into some grand universal emotion, a sense of want inside us all. This time, he finds it in joy instead of grief.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Everything
    Everything is a beautiful record from wall to wall, comfort food for heartbroken insomniacs. But it also arrives with a tragic background that casts an entirely different kind of shadow over the evocation of an empty bedroom.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Witness
    The Witness unlocks a parallel universe for the band, and though Suuns are still sculpting monoliths to paranoia, to hear them chipping away with such steady hands is a welcome treat.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    Certified Lover Boy
    With much of Certified Lover Boy, Drake seems to be doing what he thinks Drake would do, and ticking the box is taking its toll.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    The Mutt's Nuts
    While The Mutt’s Nuts was never going to slot perfectly into place for anyone looking for Speed Kills 2, a suite of three songs on the B-side scratch that itch. All under two minutes long, they implement the same wildness and breakneck pace that defined their first album.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Senjutsu
    At this stage, they sound both comfortable and ambitious, settling into their familiar chemistry while adding new chapters to a story only they can write.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
    This is the sound of Simz reconciling with Simbi. And it sounds great. Cue the ovation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Only Up
    At its best, Only Up evokes a communal feeling of watching a band utterly locked-in, their intertwining parts echoing across a large, open space. Korody never quite conjures the chemistry necessary to transcend his influences, but, like a teenager decorating his bedroom wall with torn-out tabloid photos, he creates a messy, lovable collage.
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