The Boston Phoenix's Scores

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For 1,091 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 34% 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 Pink
Lowest review score: 0 Last of a Dyin' Breed
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 956 out of 1091
  2. Mixed: 88 out of 1091
  3. Negative: 47 out of 1091
1091 music reviews
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Fountain
    The Fountain reveals that the magic of yore is still there.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    VI
    These tunes shred as po’-facedly as any the Champs have recorded.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Garden Window
    This barrage of relentless noise and pummeling rhythms, when coupled with Garden Window's amorphous arrangements, can make the album claustrophobic, monotonous, and overwhelming. But the record's redeemed by its range.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Clinging To A Scheme
    If Clinging is at all a departure from the Radio Dept.’s previous pleasantries, it’s along the two most valuable vectors: outward and upward. Although their sound has always seemed certain, it’s never been this clear.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Normal Happiness
    Normal Happiness... could be one of his most satisfying sets.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Happy Hollow
    In the end it’s the guitars, which alternate from restrained, melodic jangles to serrated feedback screams, and the general sense that Happy Hollow chronicles life during wartime that hold these 14 tune together, hymns or otherwise.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Light At The End Of The World
    Erasure remain A-level, mid-tempo melody makers, crafters of classic romantic pop songs with electronica serving as the template.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Everybody
    You pretty much know what to expect from a new Sea and Cake disc: breezy lounge-pop tunes embroidered with sleek keyboard blips and gentle drum-machine pitter-patter.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mission Control
    The 11 songs here clock in at a tidy 37 minutes--plenty of time to flavor the straight-ahead rock jolts with spaced-out country-rock ballads and pop-flavored rave-up replete with a horn section.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails
    The smart, funny, fanclub chants herein, each as catchy as Willie Mays in the ’54 Fall Classic, are gemlike tributes to the characters who’ve made that diamond shine, from Satchel Paige to Fernando Valenzuela.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    New Maps of Hell
    'New Dark Ages,' with its layered background harmonies, wall-of-sound instrumentation, and quietly propulsive drumming, is a 27-year career in a nutshell.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pedestrian Verse
    The Scottish outfit have delivered again with jangly pop full of skittering guitars, self-flagellating lyricism, and whimsy under a pall of darkness that no amount of the big spotlight can dispel.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    One Second of Love
    One Second of Love is artfully crafted.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I Will Be
    Mostly, though, I Will Be is a flawlessly light album that floats to the top of a lo-fi pond overcrowded with sinking debris.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Last Days Of Wonder
    If the lyrics weren’t so surreal, you could imagine yourself dining with George and Tammy before a Grand Ole Opry performance.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Apparitions
    Apparitions is a solid debut that both emulates the band's contemporaries and revisits a once influential genre that most of that peer group have all but abandoned.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Orchard
    The Orchard cracks open a window to dreamy possibilities.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hush
    Hush quells qualms with the relaxed assurance every third album should carry.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mine Is Yours
    On Mine Is Yours, everything is bigger. King's reverb-tinged production puts the focus on the band's surprisingly tender melodies and slow-burn rock arrangements; the result is 11 melodic, economical tracks that deliver huge hooks without sacrificing instrumental dexterity.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Broken Hymns, Limbs, And Skin
    When it comes to production values, Broken Hymns is a marked improvement from 2005’s self-financed "Head Home." Still, songs kinda meant to evoke the 1930s aren’t necessarily better or worse off with snazzier studio treatment.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Waiting For The Sunrise
    Perhaps in the winter this will all seem a lot less charming, but right now, it’s a nice soundtrack for a drive out to the coast or for porch sitting late in the evening.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    No Kings
    The songs justify further replay and analysis just because the group knows how to deliver consistently smart, compelling imagery.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sweet Warrior
    Sweet Warrior finds him spinning epic yarns instead of heroic solos.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    There Is Love In You
    This new release is a work of subtle majesty, sidestepping whatever you might think of as "folktronica" while still keeping everything from running into the red.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Two Dancers
    Two Dancers is expressive without being effusive, polished without sounding stilted, and provocatively playful.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Marry Me
    This disc is both violent and romantic, offering warm singer-songwriter torch songs and jagged avant-noise frays with large-hearted choral flourishes.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ouliposaliva
    What makes this inspirational lyrical gimmick work is the quality of the songs and the sure-footedness of Mottet's approach to sound, a not-so-distant European relative of the Elephant 6 palette.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Researching the Blues
    Embracing those basics of simplistic pop, the kind that doesn't need to be over thought, works nearly all of the time, and though a little bit of depth to the proceedings would have been nice here and there, a robust hook will do just as well.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ancestral Star
    It's an atmosphere-setting collection, with little in the way of memorable riffs or melodies. But that's the point: Earth has needed to slow its roll for a minute now. Here's the inspiration.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Farm
    Mascis's unique talents have ossified into a signature, so discerning any difference between this set of tunes and, say, his solo albums of the early oughts or latter-day Dinosaur Jr. albums is tough work. If, to you, that means more awesome Mascis crunchwork, then be psyched, because this record slays, the rocking is sloppy-yet-tight, and nothing on here would sound like a drag if tossed into a setlist amongst older classics.
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