Record Collector's Scores

  • Music
Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Atomic
    Writing to script, the Scottish post-rockers have produced a powerful and fitting score, though as an album in its own right, it lacks the cohesion of their previous soundtrack, to French drama Les Revenants. It’s no cause for dread, but it’s one that doesn’t quite live up to its promise.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pennied Days
    The weakest tracks on the album somehow resemble Kings Of Leon B-sides echoing up from the bottom of a bottomless dark well. But taken all together, the sun-kissed synths and woozily inventive guitar work on Pennied Days does just enough for Night Moves to win the day.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Hope Six Demolition Project
    On this album, Harvey is again sweeping up sonic history and weaving it into a pattern of her own making, but it’s more relaxed and more raucous, its reference points less, appropriately, English. It’s a deeply melodic record.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything You've Come to Expect
    When this is good, it’s properly great.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We Disappear
    We Disappear is the brashest, most mainstream-sounding alt-rock record The Thermals have pulled off to date. It rarely pauses in its pursuit of hook-laced, punk-pop anthems such as The Walls and the bittersweet Thinking Of You, but it sounds especially jubilant on the best of its Grim Reaper-related numbers, Hey You.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stiff
    It’s a bracing listen then, and one that forces you to suspend belief as it whips past. But just as with each and every White Denim record, it’s wholly rewarding, repaying repeated listens, letting you check off things you hadn’t heard in it before.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anvil Is Anvil
    Thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end, the band have stuck to their formula and produced another decent if less-than-outstanding record.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Architecture of Language: 1979-1982 [Box Set]
    Architecture Of Language manages to redeem itself with its final disc, Architectural Salvage. Though an apparently randomly sequenced grab-bag of rarities and outtakes, it’s actually a pleasantly consistent experience.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Narrows
    The music is played with laidback precision, immaculately arranged and produced with a consistently warm vibe.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Funs Cool
    A mixed bag, but when they’re good, they’re great.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Girl at the End of the World
    One forgives most of Booth’s excesses and there are plenty on the oddball chanson tracks Alvin and Waking. It’s an anything-goes approach.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Luneworks
    Luneworks works best when the Rhodes, laptop and ennui work in harmony, seemingly unguided, providing moments of pure blissed-out release.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Palomino
    Palomino is by no means a bad album--the songs are well constructed, everyone plays well, the harmonies are tight and accurate, it’s delivered with heart--though it does sound slightly as though it has been recorded in a box. The trouble is, it does not bring much new or original to the party.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Old Magick
    Ideas reaches out rather more, while French Drop is a sleight-of-hand piece that works on several levels.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    K-X-P III, Pt. 2
    Toxic synths and an undeniable sense of occasion pervade, the record sounds appropriately big and it just about steers clear of unwanted pomposity.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Abbar El Hamada
    Third album Abbar El Hamada continues that [broad musical] path, though it eschews the largely acoustic nature of Soutak for a more electrified outing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dying Surfer Meets His Maker
    The significance of the LP title is never apparent--this is the most land-locked album imaginable. Still, here’s an invigorating enough noise to ward off the demons.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Heron Oblivion
    The songs aren’t always resolved and have an element of hit-or-miss jam around the edges, but they are thrilling at times.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    You Can't Go Back if There's Nothing To Go Back To
    Beautifully played, arranged to perfection, crystal clear recording and production with the vocals to the fore, but cushioned by immaculate musicianship. A classic of the genre.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Grapefruit
    He cites everyone from Shellac to Boredoms to Kate Bush as influences, while quoting feminist psychoanalyst Nancy Chodorow and Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. It takes big balls or hilarious self-delusion to do this, but Grapefruit, pitched somewhere between those two states, just about justifies the aplomb.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Visions of Us on the Land
    It’s the real deal, the meat of his canon and bearing rewards for fans old and new.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Distance Inbetween
    Distance Inbetween may not sound entirely like they are back on top form yet, but that’s not to suggest they’re far off.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Moogmemory
    The gamut of textures and patterns he produces might be surprising, even off-putting, unless you’ve heard Bourne’s treatments of piano and cello on his beguiling debut studio effort, 2011’s Montauk Variations.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stranger Things
    The mild and tepid Swirling soon becomes rather repetitive, and Like A Moth gets stuck in its own saccharine, twee groove, but the majority of these eleven tracks find the band back on the right, fizzy, fuzzy, frazzled track.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Victorious
    The overall impression is of vintage music given a modern snap and kept short and simple for maximum effect.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    ATGCLVLSSCAP
    The unorthodox means of composition ensures that the material on ATGCLVLSSCAP feels alive; blessed with some formidable grooves it retains a freshness and zeal that might have proved elusive if it had been recorded as a conventional studio album.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    White Bear
    Enjoyable to the core, but not to be taken too seriously as there are so many other bands doing exactly--exactly--the same thing.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Holdin' the Bag
    The follow-up to 2014’s Get To Hell sees the band further exploring the country element which has always underpinned their music, resulting in a compelling set which effortlessly tramples many of the more buffed-up new bands pulling from the same well.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Human Ceremony
    Singer Julia Cummings’ saccharine vocals overpower as they search for meaning and purpose. Sadly, they end up being somewhat more tepid and irritating.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Meet the Humans
    The element of smoothness cloaking the emotions could either impress the listener with its beauty or wash over them completely. The hit rate here perhaps isn’t quite high enough for the former, but the album deserves some attention for illustrating the exuberant joy of the black dog turning away from one’s door and walking on down the street.
Page: