Pitchfork's Scores

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For 12,704 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: 10,441 out of 12704
  2. Mixed: 1,949 out of 12704
  3. Negative: 314 out of 12704
12704 music reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Somewhere
    Somewhere is as its best when Garvin bares her teeth and uses her sense of humor to talk about what is haunting her, be it spending far too much time alone, or trying to find your place on new ground.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    The Album
    It sags in the fourth section, where Taylor perhaps overcompensates for the brevity of K.T.S.E. with one too many ballads. Still, for an album that lives mostly in the slow- and mid-tempo, it frisks and frolics.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Drop 6 [EP]
    Confinement prevents the EP from reaching GREY Area’s heights, but Drop 6 still contains deeply affecting moments.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Tearless
    Where Another Life felt bright and alert, shimmying towards oblivion like lemmings in a conga line, Tearless is burned out and overwhelmed. This is ugly music, even at its most melodic.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Planet's Mad
    Planet’s Mad careens through its bungled cyber narrative, tingling and whirring, daring you not to take it seriously. The planet warms, the pop stars reel, and we’re still trying to dance.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Shadow Offering
    The band’s effusiveness often feels torrential, which makes its more inane moments come off as collateral damage. On Shadow Offering, Braids isn’t afraid to steer dangerously close to the eye of the storm.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Punisher
    Her music never sounds alone. The record glows with this strange self-sufficiency, an instinct to push forward against bad odds.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rough and Rowdy Ways
    It results in a gorgeous and meticulous record. The lyrics are striking—dense enough to inspire a curriculum, clever enough to quote like proverbs.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ChangesNowBowie
    Unlike other Bowie live albums, this doesn’t document a specific tour or phase. It’s just a quiet, pleasant footnote to a busy era.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Out in the World
    With the closing “You Make Your Own Luck,” Watson effectively distills GUM’s whole essence into a two-part mini-suite: one half nocturnal cosmic ballad, one half sunrise-summoning soul-jazz groove, the song reaffirms Watson’s ongoing mission to find the elation in isolation.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Room for the Moon
    Alongside a cast of musicians who help bring her kaleidoscopic world to life, NV emerges with a visionary avant-pop record that offers an escape from gloom.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wicked City [EP]
    Ellery and Skye are in their fourth year of music school—and they are still finding their way. But when they nail it, as on “The City,” their first-thought-best-thought creative bursts sound not just thrilling but genuinely new. For a group so steeped in retro modes, that’s no small thing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    Annual
    Despite its misfires, the ambitious scale of Annual’s song suite is another step forward for a young group evolving at an unnaturally fast rate.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Invisible People
    While they may have shed some of the quirks that made them unique, Invisible People is far and away Chicano Batman’s most accessible record, with big, clean hooks to match definitive statements. A decade into writing songs together, they sound stronger than ever.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    Survival
    Wares are ultimately less concerned with craft than catharsis, no matter how messy it gets. Hardy’s irrepressible personality abounds even in the album’s more delicate moments.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Godfather 3
    At 22 tracks, it’s a little bloated—but with most songs barely scratching the three-minute mark, it zips along at a pace reminiscent of the radio sets and stage shows that the sound incubated in almost two decades ago.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    To Love Is to Live
    This is an imperfect, imprecise project—but that’s the beauty of it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Startisha
    This album is more for Naeem himself than any listener. And when it hits a sweet spot, drifting somewhere between manic experimentation and somber fury, Startisha shines.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 59 Critic Score
    MTV Unplugged [Live at Hull City Hall]
    The Liam-written songs are largely a drag. ... But a few of Liam’s clunkers are elevated in the live format, helped greatly by the Hull crowd, recorded high in the mix.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Plays the Songs of Daniel Johnston
    Martsch misses the opportunity to commune with Johnston’s music, or to do anything with it, really. On the 11 songs here, he resists the urge to plug in his distortion pedals and sail away.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Nomad
    What makes Nomad instantly compelling is the way it both reflects and celebrates the feeling of a peaceful morning walk.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Your Hero Is Not Dead
    With the help of Nathan Jenkins, aka producer Bullion, Westerman achieves a synthesis of these previous experiments, fusing together whimsical curiosity and technical proficiency. Over a backdrop made of the sounds of the past, his lucid yet uncomplicated lyrics interrogate the uncertainty of the present.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    Contact
    Though Contact is mostly a one-man endeavor, the music generates a sense of proximity, of presence. That tension feels both like an ironic reminder of our current isolation and a gesture toward a more communal future.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    1988
    While the loops and beats of 1988 are as hypnotic and outre as ever, other than the cleared samples and elevated sense of personality, there’s not enough about 1988 that distinguishes it from, say, WT15.8_, released a week before, or that rises to the devil-may-care attitude of Knxwledge’s Vimeo page.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Descendants of Cain
    It includes some of the most striking writing of Ka’s career—the knottier verses and the blunter ones, too—and is utterly immersive, whole lifetimes of fear and pain and death and regeneration condensed into 33 minutes.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    Que no iban a salir
    The record plays quick and dirty, with uncharacteristically crunchy production value and lo-fi aesthetics. ... Lyrically, LAS QUE NO IBAN A SALIR mostly sticks to Bad Bunny’s trademark sex flexes and party jams. But even in tossed-off mixtape verses, he retains a goofy charm.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Acquiesce
    Acquiesce always goes deeper rather than bigger. TALsounds has always been an inwardly focused project by nature, but these songs feel uniquely designed to pull you into them. The album grows darker in its second half, but there’s a warmth and safety there just like the dimly lit shot of the bedside table on its cover.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 77 Critic Score
    All Things Being Equal
    It’s both solipsistic and psychedelic, urging listeners to travel into their own depths and welcome the joy and despair they might find there.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Prettiest Curse
    They may have slightly diluted their sound this time around, but at least they’re struggling on their own terms. The highlights suggest there is an arena-friendly Hinds out there, still waiting to emerge in full.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 71 Critic Score
    The Bowie Years [Box Set]
    In addition to remasters of The Idiot and Lust for Life, Pop’s new boxed set loops in the decent if not great TV Eye Live (a live album originally released in 1978 to free Pop from his RCA contract), a disc of alternate mixes and edits, and three live discs all recorded in 1977, featuring Bowie on keys and with very similar tracklists—a show of excess for anyone but the most ardent completionist fascinated by the variations in delivery and ad-libbing from different performances on the same tour. [Grades for seven discs: 86, 90, 63, 50, 74, 72, & 63]
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