Stylus Magazine's Scores

  • Music
Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 69 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    To The Races
    To the Races isn’t that bad. Bachmann’s just so much better.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Rehearsing My Choir
    Admittedly, though it’s clunky and overwrought, the real problem isn’t that the story is tedious or that Olga’s voice is awful--it’s actually weirdly thrilling--it’s that the album simply doesn’t feel as well executed as the premise promises.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Threes
    Threes is their most average album yet, sounding similar to their two previous full-lengths but lacking the confrontational loudness of Wiretap Scars or the precision of Porcelain.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
    The album’s stagnant celebrity worship stifles their ironic, so-dumb-its-addictive intentions.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Post-War
    It’s abundantly clear that Ward is an indie-rock songwriter--a pretty good one sometimes--who doesn’t bring a whole lot else to the table.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Goodbye Alice In Wonderland
    We find Jewel going through the motions rather than providing us with a noteworthy movement and in the end these songs here are less artistic pronouncements and more the conclusion of a specific product line.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Heat
    Vulcanized basslines, ice-burn synth washes, and helium-fused guitar lines again serve as his trademarks, and Nguyen has yet to shed his reliance on preset dub-lines to offset his lumpen beats. He may seem a bit more comfortable with English, but his lyrics have waned with his accent.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Candy Ass
    The sparkling electronic/acoustic subtlety of 2001’s The Invisible Man has been replaced here by excursions into poor trip hop, and this low-key solo effort lacks a good polish and a harsh editor.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Timeless
    Timeless falls awkwardly between Buena Vista Social Club and Santana’s latter-day Rolodex albums, deftly combining multi-culti good intentions with the bathos of a great artist aiming squarely at commercial revival.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Monochrome
    For the most part, songs lumber along with little forward motion.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Rotten Apple
    Rotten Apple... doesn’t try to address Banks’ shortcomings, it just buries them under tectonic plates of NYC sturm und drang and more of Banks guffawing end rhymes.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Fragile Army
    The Spree remain a vital, relevant artist only for Volkswagen advertising execs and anyone who takes the last five minutes of “Scrubs” episodes too seriously.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Three's Co.
    It’s a trad, tried, and tested sound that they truck around town, exemplified by guest appearances by Conor Deasy of The Thrills and, a little more inexplicably, Maroon 5’s bass player. It’s the middle ground bewteen these two groups which The Tyde occupy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Turn The Lights Out
    Turn the Light Out scales everything back—the drums, the guitars, the vocals—leaving us with a clean-cut, grown-up Ponys, trying to get comfortable in their own skin when they were just fine in someone else’s.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Todd Smith
    Todd Smith might be the last straw for many fed up with his current direction.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Left
    Hope of the States haven’t completely given themselves up to mediocrity yet, but they’re well on their way.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Kelis Was Here
    Bloated with ideas and parsimonious with tunes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Elegies to Lessons Learnt
    It's not a complete disaster--the songs are still there, shining proud and (far too) loud--but each listen brings a constant, aggravating reminder of the sloppy production.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Press Play
    Press Play is like an episode of My Super Sweet 16: though lavishly decorated and probably an honor to be invited to, there's a megalomaniacal presence that ensures the whole party is about glorification of ego rather than actual fun.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Tree City
    I wish I could critique them for something other than their obvious debt to Spoon. Sadly, that’s the most distinguished characteristic behind the studied, boardroom-designed pop of Robbers on High Street.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    World's Apart
    It’s the tracks that sit closest to the old Trail of Dead that make up a majority of Worlds Apart’s uninspiring moments and also ruin any cohesion that could have otherwise been attained through the heart of the album.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Made of Bricks
    Nash keeps herself resolutely in the background of her songs, revealing precious little of her own personality or emotion, and it’s this reservation that makes her fail as a popstar, at least right now.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Other People's Lives
    The biggest flaw with Other People’s Lives is that the songs play to Davies’ weaknesses rather than his strengths, coupled with overproduction that veils any remaining virtue under a gauzy blanket of unnecessary studio witchcraft.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Inspiration
    The strange thing about The Inspiration is how it's posited as an alternative to the much-bullied "conscious rap," and yet, it's among the least fun albums released this year.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Road And The Radio
    He sounds ragged, out of tune in places. He simply doesn't sing as well as he used to.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Breaking Up
    [Their] debut, a scrappy collection of twee garage-pop, isn’t bad. It is half-bad, though. Which isn’t to say that every song isn’t good—they’re just fine, the emphasis on ambivalence.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Ma Fleur
    Predictably, the Orchestra works considerably better as a symphony band than an orchestral accompaniment.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    You Could Have It So Much Better
    You Could Have It So Much Better... is plagued by the same averseness to surrender that hamstrung their breakthrough eponymous debut.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Finding Forever
    In the act of making himself more accessible, Common’s verbal skills have slid into disrepair.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Amputechture
    It seems to prove a cardinal rule about art and ambition; if you paint in too many colors, you end up with mud brown. The Mars Volta could fill up whole galleries with canvases this color, and with Amputechture, have constructed another monochromatic monument to wild, uninhibited excess.
Page: