Q Magazine's Scores

  • Music
For 8,545 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 A Hero's Death
Lowest review score: 0 Gemstones
Score distribution:
8545 music reviews
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They are gorgeous recordings, never over-polished but bringing out the bright force of Staples's guitar and the grainy sweetness of his voice. [Apr 2015, p.111]
    • Q Magazine
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's a quintessential extra-curricular album, straining every which way, but an excellent and oddly coherent one. [Apr 2015, p.97]
    • Q Magazine
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Most of what's here is great melancholy rock, but sometimes held back by Wilson's willingness to play the perennial prog-rock boffin. [Mar 2015, p.118]
    • Q Magazine
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Glam folk never sounded such a good idea. [Mar 2015, p.105]
    • Q Magazine
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The star throughout Joyland is Spedding's guitar, but the record isn't entirely all his own show. [Apr 2015, p.111]
    • Q Magazine
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The mix may be familiar but it's still frequently thrilling. [Apr 2015, p.104]
    • Q Magazine
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This time, Lemmy Gurtowsky and Dan Jones are joined by guitarist Zach Brower and drummer Cole Lanier. The pair have slowed them down in a good way. [Apr 2015, p.97]
    • Q Magazine
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ghostpoet's empathy for his characters scarcely makes the narrow emotional bandwidth less oppressive. [Apr 2015, p.109]
    • Q Magazine
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's a sound they now seem utterly at ease with, and the album is all the better for its confident, super-relaxed approach. [Apr 2015, p.111]
    • Q Magazine
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lanegan is among the most pungent ingredients in modern music and these new recipes capture his strength. [Apr 2015, p.105]
    • Q Magazine
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    As ever the brush strokes are broad and the confrontation is intense but it's good to know their fire is afar from undimmed. [Apr 2015, p.95]
    • Q Magazine
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The warm production, matched to their adoption of modern techno aesthetics, has upped the intensity of the sonic kink. [Apr 2015, p.98]
    • Q Magazine
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    If you're eager for a record that eats its influences raw in order to fuel a whole new world you'd better look elsewhere. [Apr 2015, p.112]
    • Q Magazine
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Terraplane pays tribute to the greats and puts 60-year-old Earle's own slant on living with a broken heart. [Apr 2015, p.99]
    • Q Magazine
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nine albums later the sextet's mix of American pop classicism and Khmer-language vocals is ever more indivisible, the melting pot now also including African rhythms. [Apr 2015, p.99]
    • Q Magazine
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Enthusiasts for dooomy extremes will find much to love here. [Apr 2015, p.97]
    • Q Magazine
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    EarthEE finds that magic spot where the feet are grounded but the head's floating on a cloud. [Apr 2015, p.111]
    • Q Magazine
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Snapshots of old stand-bys come through, but it's in tunes such as the disco tribute Rainbow and the clonky piano of The Drifter that his gift for marrying the modern to history, both recent and ancient, really shines. [Apr 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The 11 tracks on Citizen Zombie find these progenitors of the "Bristol sound" in satisfying rude health. [Apr 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There are strong cameos from assorted MCs, particularly Juicy J and Schoolboy Q, but his attempt to talk a girlfriend into a threesome on Story Time is proof there are even worse things in life than dabbling in Eurodance. [Apr 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Clocking in at 23 minutes, they're never in danger of outstaying their welcome, even if raucous blasts such as Misery Factory implode too quickly to become actual songs. [Apr 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The results defy you to even care whether it's real or fake: it rocks, end of story. [Apr 2015, p.107]
    • Q Magazine
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The first few tracks are like The Black Crowes without the cosmic sophistication. [Apr 2015, p.104]
    • Q Magazine
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    [A] coolly unnerving full-length debut. [Apr 2015, p.102]
    • Q Magazine
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    More an EP than an album, it's possibly not for the unwitting. [Apr 2015, p.102]
    • Q Magazine
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Though Gang Of Four are the same bracing proposition as they ever were, 2015's literary imagery and less blokey vibe mark a successful leap sideways. [Apr 2015, p.100]
    • Q Magazine
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The best songs have some serious bite. [Apr 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rebel Heart often strikes a more tentative note.[Apr 2015, p.100]
    • Q Magazine
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It all adds up to an album alive with lyrical purpose, bookended by outright classics, and plenty of interesting moves and grooves in between. [Apr 2015, p.92]
    • Q Magazine
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Revolt may not be the sonic revolution Tinley aspires to but reconfirms him as one of UK dance music originals. [Mar 2015, p.103]
    • Q Magazine
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paring down the roster to give more space to standout performers would have made this hit-and-miss debut fell less like a lucky dip. [Mar 2015, p.106]
    • Q Magazine
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What emerges contains much that's familiar but it's presented in revitalised new settings, with grit, urgency and delicacy in abundance. [Mar 2015, p.117]
    • Q Magazine
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The parts here still speak louder than the whole. [Mar 2015, p.110]
    • Q Magazine
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Canadians [Badbadnotgood] deliver in spades.... Even when Ghostface doesn't bring his A game, he gets by with a little help from his friends. [Mar 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pitched somewhere between James Blake and Erykah Badu, it's a subtly delightful album. [Mar 2015, p.109]
    • Q Magazine
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's uplifting stuff. [Mar 2015, p.104]
    • Q Magazine
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Public Service Broadcasting stitched archive audio footage into evocative instrumentals. [Mar 2015, p.114]
    • Q Magazine
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The technical proficiency can't make up for the uneventfulness of the material. [Mar 2015, p.104]
    • Q Magazine
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Not for the faint-hearted then, but there's definitely something to enjoy in its sheer bloody-mindlessness. [Mar 2015, p.117]
    • Q Magazine
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The '80s influence remain close to the surface secodn time around and Ryan James's lyrics are still hardly full of cheer, but it's a leap forwards. [Feb 2015, p.111]
    • Q Magazine
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hits? Smoke + Mirrors bristles with them. [Mar 2015, p.116]
    • Q Magazine
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's bigger and brighter. [Mar 2015, p.119]
    • Q Magazine
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    If their emergence appears low-key, Everything Ever Written is a quietly triumphant return. [Mar 2015, p.110]
    • Q Magazine
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Garwood's gruff whisper can't touch Lanegan's death rattle, but it lets him slip in the odd love song without sounding like he's sketching a suicide pact. [Mar 2015, p.106]
    • Q Magazine
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thirty-something mother-of-two Giddens's versatility is breath-taking. [Mar 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Creditably, it strives for depth--political, lyrical and musical--but Happy People gets stuck in the shallows. [Mar 2015, p.113]
    • Q Magazine
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    He's less convincing when he rocks, but he understands both depth and beauty. [Mar 2015, p.104]
    • Q Magazine
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This all Peters's show as she shines a light under some very dark roots. [Mar 2015, p.114]
    • Q Magazine
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Aside from 1%'s hushed moments, they're stuck in a rut. [Feb 2015, p.109]
    • Q Magazine
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is an often astonishing record. [Feb 2015, p.112]
    • Q Magazine
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Grote can at times sounded penned in by the relative straightness of the source material, yet this is an enjoyable noisy debut. [Mar 2015, p.106]
    • Q Magazine
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Roberts inhabits this work so entirely you can't really imagine him trudging through the same grey world as the rest of us. [Mar 2015, p.114]
    • Q Magazine
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    [Sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank] are adept at finding new connections, new paths. [Mar 2015, p.118]
    • Q Magazine
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There's breezy charm to much of the music here. [Feb 2015, p.117]
    • Q Magazine
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    By digging deep The Charlatans have made their best album in a decade. [Feb 2015, p.111]
    • Q Magazine
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Full marks for originality, then, but it's definitely something you have to be in the mood for. [Mar 2015, p.116]
    • Q Magazine
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Too busy and extreme for some tastes, this is still a dizzying proposition. [Mar 2015, p.105]
    • Q Magazine
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The odd lapse into trying to show how clever they are aside, O Shudder is the step up Dutch Uncles needed. [Mar 2015, p.106]
    • Q Magazine
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The broadening of the palate is certainly welcome but there still remains a nagging sense that, over a whole album, a lack of emotional heft renders them as frothy as ever. [Mar 2015, p.110]
    • Q Magazine
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    We Are Undone is just a little too well put together to convince. [Mar 2015, p.118]
    • Q Magazine
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is music which feels as though it needs to be tethered down, lest it slip its moorings and float higher than the sun. [Mar 2015, p.115]
    • Q Magazine
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A collection that delves deeper than her previous albums. [Mar 2015, p.111]
    • Q Magazine
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is graceful and elliptical songwriting. [Mar 2015, p.109]
    • Q Magazine
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It might be largely business as usual, then, but for all that A Place To Bury Strangers remain strangely comforting presence in an otherwise turbulent world. [Mar 2015, p.103]
    • Q Magazine
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For its black lyrical humour alone, I Love You, Honeybear would be a winner. The fact that it's matched to towering songwriting makes it masterful stuff. [Mar 2015, p.107]
    • Q Magazine
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    He mostly rises to the occasion. What the vocals lack in beauty, they make up in expressiveness. [Mar 2015, p.112]
    • Q Magazine
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    An intriguing record, it takes bending acid-folk as its base camp but is at its most interesting when exploring more unexpected musical universes. [Feb 2015, p.110]
    • Q Magazine
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Papa Roach may be a band out of time, but there's life aplenty here yet. [Feb 2015, p.113]
    • Q Magazine
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The restless desire to cross-pollinate disparate musical genres doesn't always work. [Feb 2015, p.113]
    • Q Magazine
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unfortunately, there's nothing else that come close to matching its opening statement. [Feb 2015, p.106]
    • Q Magazine
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    G Stands For Go-Betweens accords Forster and McLennan their rightful place as the greatest songwriting duo of the post-punk era. [Feb 2015, p.118]
    • Q Magazine
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shackles' Gift can sound grandly expansive, yet it's also locked into its own little world, thinking global, acting loco. [Feb 2015, p.117]
    • Q Magazine
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's a record that announces its creator as a true force. [Feb 2015, p.113]
    • Q Magazine
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    As an attempt to connect while keeping aloof, it succeeds. [Feb 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's a record that renders previous comparisons obsolete. [Feb 2015, p.105]
    • Q Magazine
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's a diverting blend of gravity and distraction, but at 17 tracks, it arguably commits that historic rap LP crime of filling all available audio space. [Feb 2015, p.105]
    • Q Magazine
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A defiant record from a band who've made a career of doing their own thing: Enter Shikari have upped their game again. [Feb 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    As always, Scott overdoes it--and frequently--but when Modern Blues is good, it's very good indeed. [Feb 2015, p.117]
    • Q Magazine
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The melodic charms are epic, the lyrical insights about romantic disappointment universal. [Feb 2015, p.114]
    • Q Magazine
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Come On Give Up bottles the album's slacker vibe, but Ratworld is more nuanced than most garage rockers could ever manage. [Feb 2015, p.111]
    • Q Magazine
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slurrup follows last summer's Korp Sole Roller and tones down the ornate arrangements for a more straightforward '60s British beat boom approach. The problem is it makes him sound pretty ordinary. [Feb 2015, p.110]
    • Q Magazine
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    At times, effortless winsome... yet it comes with enough textural twitches and scuffs to underline its well-developed sense of wary melancholy. [Feb 2015, p.106]
    • Q Magazine
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    They've deployed four singers, reined in their more cinematic flourishes and gone for a punchier approach. Those four singers inevitably mean a lack of cohesion. [Feb 2015, p.105]
    • Q Magazine
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's not quite the perfect wave that was Tame Impala's Lonerism, but it's certainly not far behind. [Feb 2015, p.113]
    • Q Magazine
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's quite a feat to produce music that works for the mind and the hips, but Ronson has pulled it off magnificently, with virtually every track sounding like a single. [Feb 2015, p.104]
    • Q Magazine
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Made up of Coombes's most beautiful compositions yet. [Feb 2015, p.116]
    • Q Magazine
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghost Culture's self-titled debut often feels like eavesdropping on a late-night confessionary: one where influences such as Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode mastermind Martin Gore and Soulwax are fused into a thundering, fluid whole. [Feb 2015, p.109]
    • Q Magazine
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Melodic and eccentric, this is a multi-layered beauty. [Feb 2015, p.106]
    • Q Magazine
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Newcomers may be amazed that a rock band can still feel so vital. Even diehard fans will wonder at the sheer melodic intensity. [Feb 2015, p.107]
    • Q Magazine
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With the help of Animal Collective produce Ben H Allen, Girls in Peacetime busts the band out of a complacent rut by rendering them in full colour, as a pop group with depth of talent and breadth of vision. [Feb 2015, p.108]
    • Q Magazine
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Club Meds is a bold move from a rapidly developing talent. [Feb 2015, p.110]
    • Q Magazine
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's far from perfect, but if this is Exit The Wu-Tang, they can go out with heads held high. [Feb 2015, p.112]
    • Q Magazine
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At times, it's a touch muted, a little grey-out, but if this is Lennox staring down mortality, he comes out swinging. [Feb 2015, p.113]
    • Q Magazine
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Refreshingly free of focus-grouped compromises, Sucker is certainly full of character. It's just that the character is a cartoon. [Feb 2015, p.114]
    • Q Magazine
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Although recorded at the same time as Mothers, Absent Fathers sounds more cohesive, Earle's vocals stronger, the playing a little more direct. [Feb 2015, p.117]
    • Q Magazine
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    If possibly too shiny for some tastes, the spooked '60s folk of Wounded Heart adds a touch of darkness. [Feb 2015, p.117]
    • Q Magazine
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Balcony is a debut as polite as potpourri. [Oct 2014, p.106]
    • Q Magazine
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's all very valve, very analogue, and Kongos' morality feel equally antiquated. [Oct 2014, p.113]
    • Q Magazine
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's warmth and occasional flashes of wisdom ensure it's a dignified protest at modern life rather than just the mitherings of an old(er) man. [Jan 2015, p.132]
    • Q Magazine
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The album's first half is anchored by the hypnotic undertow of Pulls, but the mood intensifies later with RGB's distortion beats and Bird Milk's cocky electro-strut proving Gallear's at his best when sparring against more robust rhythms. [Dec 2014, p.109]
    • Q Magazine