Sonicnet's Scores

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For 287 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Bow Down To The Exit Sign
Lowest review score: 30 Unified Theory
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 196 out of 287
  2. Mixed: 90 out of 287
  3. Negative: 1 out of 287
287 music reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Live
    Recorded at various venues between 1990 and 1996, the versions of the songs that appear on Live are generally rougher and more expansive than their studio counterparts. And they're not only loud: they're heavy. Mike Inez's bass feels like it's jammed in your spine. Vocalist Layne Staley -- he of the well-documented battle with heroin addiction -- sounds like someone in crisis who may implode at any moment. He grips you, and you lose yourself in his struggle. All of this helps make these performances vital.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Everything & Nothing
    Another quality installation from an artist who views his entire oeuvre as a work in progress.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    God Hates Us All
    Slayer return to the knuckle-busting fury of their demonic 1986 speed metal classic, Reign in Blood, while still somehow managing to spike their sonic mayhem with some catchy riffing and the odd melodic vocal line.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The "W"
    It's about as good a hip hop album as you will hear this year. Correction: Make that great.... It's hip-hop that plays to the streets and the suburbs with equal intensity, intelligence, insanity and integrity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Private Suit
    Private Suit finds them more in command of their craft, filled with less fury, but no less skilled at crafting sublime pop ditties.... Though there are a couple of misfires, it's their most confident effort since their debut.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mama's Gun
    But what makes Badu a source of deep pride for her black audience (and intriguing puzzlement for her ever-growing white one) is that her mysticism produces its most compelling poetry when set against gritty realities such as drug-dealing boyfriends, jealous neighbors, ghetto etiquette, and the constant war on poverty. As a songwriter, Badu's particular gift is being able to work such everyday touchstones into sublime allusions of spiritual rebirth.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    With Ghost
    At times, Yang's ethereal monotone is the attention-getter. Elsewhere, the music takes over, often in the form of lengthy guitar solos and a slow, bittersweet weaving of instruments traditional... and otherwise.... This is smart, deep-thinking slowcore.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ancient Melodies Of The Future
    Ancient Melodies... acknowledges the importance of ongoing adult relationships. This may reduce the music's hipness quotient, but it greatly increases its emotional resonance.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sound of Water
    Although Sound of Water, Saint Etienne's fifth album, may not be as overtly clever as 1991's Foxbase Alpha or as thematically consistent as 1998's Good Humor, it is as subtle as an Antonio Carlos Jobim tune and as mysteriously satisfying as a lazy summer night.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    American III: Solitary Man
    When a tune falls into the jurisdiction of the venerable country-folk troubadour, the accumulated details of any previous readings or associations are stripped away, and its core brilliantly revealed.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
    They may not always transcend their influences, but even when they don't, they make wallowing in them a helluva lot of fun.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All That You Can't Leave Behind
    U2 albums are generally slow growers, so it's much too early to label All That You Can't Leave Behind a classic. One can say with reasonable certainty that it's their most vibrant offering since Achtung Baby, their hardest-rocking one since The Joshua Tree, and their first true soul recording.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In The Mode
    Rather than an abdication, In the Mode is a defiant and defensive statement.... This bristling new approach pays off well for the most part. As on New Forms, some of the best moments come when the crew mixes some soul and R&B stylings into the proceedings... At times the determination to keep the beats pounding hard and heavy leads to a slightly generic feel, especially on the instrumental cuts.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crossing Muddy Waters
    Hiatt holds down the drummerless rhythm with his acoustic six-string and a National resonator guitar. The boisterous atmosphere (everybody hoots and hollers) evokes a back-porch picking session, and Hiatt's songs draw from similarly down-home sources.... a recording that reflects the spirit of musicians who live to sing and play.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    13
    Methodical, often sprawling and sonically messy, 13 isn't a charmer, but it is awfully seductive.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beaucoup Fish
    Unfortunately, the obtrusive vocals mess up the vibe like an unwelcome party crasher. Underworld's experiments with electronica, vocals and rock are dismal failures.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    lemonjelly.ky
    Lemon Jelly's groovy, Technicolor music exudes a warmth and sense of fun that predates samplers, sequencers and the concept of the DJ-as-auteur.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fan Dance
    Whenever the delicious sensuality of the music threatens to take over, the anxiety and restless intelligence that drive it return to the surface, creating a quietly riveting tension. Fan Dance could be Sam Phillips' best album yet -- and that's really saying something.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    When The Pawn...
    When the Pawn Hits ... is so good that the next album could have a 900-word title and I wouldn't even scratch my goatee.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Renegades
    From a pounding rendition of "Pistol Grip Pump" by West Coast hip-hoppers Volume 10, to a snarling, grunged-up assault on Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm", singer Zack de la Rocha and company deliver atomic thrills with revolutionary fervor. Still, anyone hungry for new insights into this uniquely righteous band, or looking for evidence of risk-taking, may feel shortchanged.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gold
    A curious time warp of a recording: loud, soft, tender, mean, thoughtful, reckless.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rancid [2000]
    In an age of "been there, done that" cynicism, Rancid come across like true believers...
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lovers Rock
    Lovers' Rock ranks among the finest albums of the year, as Sade, nimbly utilizing that distinctively smoky, vulnerable instrument that is her voice, weaves gentle yet insinuating odes to love and loss.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Now
    Now is Maxwell's best album, because he's learned that while soul can be suggested by a good groove, it really lives in a song.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP
    The problem is, as the album drags on, young Master Mathers wastes his considerable wit and opts to grouse in the guise of a rampaging reactionary. Song after song finds Eminem viciously baiting real and imagined enemies, as if that's all he knows how to do.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Revelling/Reckoning
    Revelling/Reckoning is a dense, daunting work -- and, quite possibly, her strongest one yet.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Songs In A Minor
    It sounds like she couldn't care less if anyone's listening.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Feminist Sweepstakes
    Feminist Sweepstakes does occasionally stumble.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Friends of Rachel Worth
    The Friends of Rachel Worth is the first new Go-Betweens album in a dozen years, and, remarkably, it's as if they were never away.... an ever-so-slightly-updated sound with a hint of lo-fi -- something the Go-Betweens pioneered on their earliest albums, before they found their more renowned intimate style.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Art and Life
    The result is entertaining but so bound by the requirements of Jamaican and American clichés that there's not much room left for his own personality to come through.
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