Stylus Magazine's Scores

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For 1,453 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 Fed
Lowest review score: 0 Encore
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 987 out of 1453
  2. Mixed: 361 out of 1453
  3. Negative: 105 out of 1453
1453 music reviews
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    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
    It’s hard to say that Andrew Bird is anything but a master-songwriter, capable of penning a song for any sort of occasion. It was the hardest challenge, however, for Bird himself to understand this power and to control it. He’s finally tamed that quivering urge and, in the process released one really long perfect moment in adult contemporary pop.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Reunion Tour
    Their steadily, sturdily conventional rock and roll is more compelling and rich than most people would admit as they're busy gawking at the sight of the Amazing Lyricist and his Kinda Weak Voice.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Pretty Little Head
    It's the same McKay on Pretty Little Head. Still the same pretensions, still the same confusions, still the same ability to overcome her own self-imposed handicaps to put out an absolute killer of an album.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse
    So sure, yet another band of bombast, largesse, room-sound gone cathedral, but either way the Besnard Lakes have mastered their songcraft with this psychedelic oddity, which fits all too well with other wintry early-year indie releases.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Suckfish
    By refocusing outside of dancefloor functionality for Suckfish, Dear invests in his material enough to give it a weight beyond the novelty of sensationalized titles set to jacking tracks.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Doctor's Advocate
    For the most part Game sounds desperate, raw, and ravenously hungry.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Lullabies To Paralyze
    If this is what treading water sounds like, I'll take it.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Letting Go
    It’s been years since he sounded this responsive and attentive.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    In Our Bedroom After The War
    In Our Bedroom After The War is Stars' most consistent, nuanced album, and says good things for the future, but Campbell and Millan won't write a perfect record until they learn what their songs need, and abandon the inevitable few tracks on which it's refused.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Return Of The Mac
    The main draw here is in Prodigy rediscovering his way with words.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Eyes Open
    Eyes Open is composed of broad, obvious songs with broad, obvious hooks, aimed straight for the hearts of as many people as the band can manage. All of this would be bad, horrible even, if it didn't work. But it does.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Friend And Foe
    There are subtle shifts at work with the band, and most allow their shady songcraft to emerge from overt experimentalism--perhaps too aware of its own inventiveness--into the realms of "art-pop."
    • 65 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Planet Earth
    Planet Earth marks a slight improvement on that one ["3121"], which is progress of a sort, but incremental advances like this almost guarantee that the marketing hoo-hah will get more attention anyway.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Broken Social Scene
    Though it loses its momentum in the final few tracks, and prevents me from giving it the downright slobbering it might otherwise deserve, Broken Social Scene, much like its release day partner, You Could Have it So Much Better..., is a cinder in the eye of all the indie-haters.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Love Is Simple
    Love Is Simple is Akron’s most streamlined album, one that bridges their multitudes and, finally, puts forth a series of discreet songwriting ideas rather than merely splashing about in genres.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Show Your Bones
    The few tracks on Show Your Bones that sound like they might have fit on Fever to Tell clearly constitute the new album’s weaker links.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Knives Don't Have Your Back
    Knives is a quietly simmering LP.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Pixel Revolt
    Pixel Revolt is the sound of a man trying to come to grips with the larger questions--the "why?" questions--and, if nothing else, the sheer attempt makes this an essential album for our troubled times.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Year Of The Dog... Again
    Crucially, he shows all the sides of his personality, making this one of hip-hop’s most well-rounded albums of recent vintage.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Asa Breed
    Dear’s third album proves a wealth of open-window micro pop fit for summer gusts and unexpected flints of lightning.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Outside Closer
    It's a beautiful restatement of the group's strengths--and a consolidation of the gains made on Cold House.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Out-Of-State Plates
    All of the bands calling cards are present—they’re just scribbled down on the back of a phone bill, rather than printed out professionally then laminated.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Derdang Derdang
    ABO keep the music tight and enclosed to match the lyrical mood, making Derdang Derdang a succinct, purposeful statement.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Return To Form Black Majick Party
    [Levi] has an impeccable ear for a hook and packs his album full of them.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Person Pitch
    It’s easily the gentlest, brightest record to be associated with the Animal Collective.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Grass Geysers...Carbon Clouds
    They’ve evolved into a tightly wound and grotesquely attuned power trio; and nowhere is that more evident than on the hyper-bpms of Grass Geysers.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Demon Days
    A much more consistent and coherent album, equaling Gorillaz’s high points and easily besting its shortcomings.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Destroyer's Rubies
    Bejar is so wound up in his own idiosyncratic mythologies, so hopelessly himself that some fans have already said it sounds like a greatest hits record; appropriate that a meta-rocker’s final frontier is his own reflection in the mirror.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    New Moon
    You’d hardly expect songs as strong as these to be in anyone’s wastebasket, but with only a few exceptions the material assembled here is just as, if not more, intimate and honest as anything on those proper albums.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Liars
    If Liars have reached the post-masterpiece phase of their career where they hone their craft to a needle’s point, Liars is an absolutely brilliant jump-off.
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