Record Collector's Scores

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For 2,550 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 Doctrine Of Love
Lowest review score: 20 Relaxer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,695 out of 2550
  2. Mixed: 849 out of 2550
  3. Negative: 6 out of 2550
2550 music reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Witness
    Witness is the work of a singer equipping himself for the long haul.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Optimist
    It is not that The Optimist is awful, exactly--just uninspiring.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Relaxer
    Alt-J’s retelling of this age-old tale of ill repute has less edge than a mesh sack of Babybel cheeses.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Other
    The 80s traditionalists will delight in the euphoric synth-pop of Happy Giddy, but this is a far more ambitious delight than that. Her voice might have got her noticed, but her songwriting’s proving the most extraordinary thing about her these days.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Party
    Harding’s delivery is unique, her range from the deepest velvet to the most discordant cry; her enunciation infusing every syllable with her tortured soul. ... Simply stunning.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Murder of the Universe
    The Tale Of The Altered Beast: Part 1. A New World could have easily sat on Blake’s New Jerusalem before the guys drag it into highspeed psychedelic punk insanity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Samba
    Slick yet lively, powerful yet clear. Samba (“second-born” in Songhai) showcases Touré’s step up towards the mastery of his famous father; he is now an accomplished bandleader, singer and songwriter, to go alongside his obvious talents with the six-string.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Towards Language
    If you’re looking for glacial Nordic chills, Arve Henriksen’s hauntingly beautiful Towards Language will do the trick.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Platinum Tips & Ice-Cream [Live]
    This blasé bunch of post-modern Gen-X alt-rockers still sound more ramshackle than playing rough demos of Pavement’s earliest material through a faulty boombox while being shoved down a cobbled hill in a wonky-wheeled shopping trolley by the late Oliver Reed. Some might find such slapdashery charming or even exciting. Others, I fear, will be rolling their eyes and reaching for Live On Two Legs by Eddie & The Pearl Jams.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    City Music
    Morby is able to conjure vast stretches of beauty, but can also disrupt them, causing dead ends and roadblocks for a listener. City Songs, while by no means an ugly sprawl, perhaps just needed a tad more urban planning.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    OUÏ
    Rarely breaking into the kind of wryly humourous abandon at which she excels (Twix is the closest anything gets to Music Hole or Ilo Veyou territory), the results are hypnotic, if arguably more short-lived than previous efforts.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Romanticize
    On the whole, I Romanticize is both a simple update of Evans’ versatile songwriting abilities, as well as a grand introduction to his music for newcomers.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cigarettes After Sex
    All the blatantly audible influences become irrelevant, leaving Cigarettes After Sex with a sound of its own, created with scant tools and seemingly minimal effort. Like the best sleight of hand magicians, the trick’s conjured before you, then gone.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crack-Up
    Six years on, Crack-Up is deeper, richer and more literate (starting with the title’s F Scott Fitzgerald debt), overflowing with ideas and destabilising tonal shifts. You might call it challenging, but Fleet Foxes were never likely to settle for anchoring comeback gestures of easy reassurance: rather, Crack-Up re-asserts their exalted tug on the heart by testing it at ever-greater distances from known shores.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Guillotine
    Inspired by acts as diverse as Crass, Fugazi and Fleetwood Mac, The Guillotine is gritty, greasy and macabre, while lyrically engaging and deliciously tuneful. A word of caution, though; these earworms are liable to turn.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Love Divine Degree
    There’s a lot of great, interesting stuff here but the listener will have to indulge him to get to it. If you’re a fan that’s no problem, the more causal listener may need convincing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Counterweight
    Few singer-songwriters in the modern folk firmament are as eloquent and articulate as Oxford-born Gilmore, and The Counterweight can lay claim to being her most perfectly realised album since her 2003 breakthrough Avalanche.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Peasant
    Yet for all the tales of sonic Celtic carnage, Dawson’s sixth solo full-length, and second for Domino offshoot Weird World, is his most accessible to date.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Modern English Decoration
    A tendency to record in sequence brings its problems; a slight mid-album sag might have been remedied by tighter editing. But the end-stretch’s up-swerve in character and definition suggests renewed direction.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wild Imagination
    His latest set sees no let-up on the quality, yet feels a lot more home-made than 2015’s The Boombox Ballads.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sing It High, Sing It Low: Tumbleweed Records 1971-1973
    Sing It High deserves investigation, and LITA do Tumbleweed more than justice, documenting a time when risks were actually backed, regardless of whether they paid off.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'm Not Your Man
    Much of the album’s promise brews in Boyfriend, where backing band The Big Moon’s Radiohead-ish guitar chimes offer suitably insouciant support to Hackman’s take-down of male arrogance. But substance runs thin elsewhere as Hackman seems unsteady in transition, flicking through styles without finding any that thrill in colourless contrast to The Big Moon’s bright vim.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Home Counties
    It’s not that it’s a bad record--it is an enjoyable listen and is successful in achieving what it set out to do, namely to evoke the true sound and spirit of the London orbital world that claims bored teenagers, squaddies and suburban rebels as its own.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thankful Villages, Vol. 2
    Rather than a retrogressive exercise, by preserving these stories Hayman reminds us of some of the things our country has to be proud of; take Norton Le Clay’s tale of a Belgian settler (“Come all you refugees and strays, come all you immigrants and waifs”). It’s stirring, important stuff.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Burials in Several Earths
    Without anything to rein them in, these pieces have a tendency to drift, suggesting that a tighter remit, or more judicious editing, might have had more gravitational pull.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Leftism 22 [Reissue]
    Leftism is dance music history and so deserves the big reissue treatment. Leftfield have addressed the passage of time with an up-to-the-minute roster of remixers for the bonuses. Still, the results are generally pretty disappointing – they all put their own mark on things and leave enough of the original versions in to make the connection, but not many come close to the originals.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Resistance Radio: The Man in the High Castle Album
    Little of the imagination promised by the concept seems to have seeped through into the covers, which are remarkably sedate and faithful for a world supposedly in the grip of two opposing ideological extremes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fresh Air
    After the brutal old school motorik of Lights Flicker (Manning, sax and guitar dogfighting over Zappi’s hypnotic vamp) and Heron reciting over the oceanic swell of Fish, no doubts are left that Faust’s unique creative flame still burns as bright as their social conscience.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Song of Day and Night
    He writes songs that could be straight out of Allen Toussaint and Dr John’s repertoire. It’s intentional--both are touchstones for the cult hero, and he uses them well, conjuring his own sound from them.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [50th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Version]
    The mix is a massive improvement on the stereo that we’re used to--there’s so much more presence here from the off. For an album you know to feel somehow fresh, that’s quite an achievement. Purists may balk at some of the perceived liberties Giles Martin has taken (splitting and panning drum parts or backing vocals for starters), but he’s by no means claiming this is the definitive version of the album, and has clearly acted in the interests of the material.
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