The Independent (UK)'s Scores

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For 2,310 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Middle Of Nowhere
Lowest review score: 0 Donda
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,261 out of 2310
  2. Mixed: 1,019 out of 2310
  3. Negative: 30 out of 2310
2310 music reviews
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Here
    Alicia Keys’s musicality is far superior [than Solange's]: whether developing swaying gospel fervour on “Pawn It All”, threading balofon through the two-part reflection on African-American queens “She Don’t Really Care/1 Luv”, or riding a perky Latin shuffle for “Girl Can’t Be Herself”, her work is grounded in a melodic appeal that’s almost magnetic.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blackstar
    David Bowie releases the most extreme album of his entire career: Blackstar is as far as he's strayed from pop.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ventura
    [Ventura] streamlines .Paak’s sound, making for a tightly packaged, melodic and danceable album.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Seasons of My Soul
    There's a maturity about Rumer's delivery that sets her apart from all the Duffys and Adeles.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    John Wesley Harding
    Thea Gilmore's 70th birthday tribute takes the form of re-recording her favourite Dylan album in its entirety, triggered by her acclaimed 2002 cover of "I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine", which sustains its solemnity despite the inclusion of congas.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Slept on the Floor
    I Slept On the Floor is a marvellous, and intense, debut.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Merrie Land
    For all its gloom, Merrie Land is an entertaining and theatrical album, with vocals that capture the social observation of early album Parklife. It’s also an immensely clever feat of word painting, never relying on lyrics alone to reflect the sense of anxiety.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Republique Amazone
    It’s a proud, forceful demonstration of the strength and variety of modern African music, brilliantly combined by producer Liam Farrell into arrangements where funk, afrobeat, desert-blues, dub and congotronics swirl infectiously around the women’s voices.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Natalie Prass
    Prass confirms her unique, tremulous contralto mining depths of despairing devotion on songs clearly triggered by romantic crisis.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    BRAT
    BRAT is a hedonistic, ultraviolet collection of songs whose thumping – slightly disorienting – club beats more than succeed in their aim of “capturing a feeling of chaos”.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Buddy and Jim
    It's all delivered with customary warmth and swing from Miller's home studio.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lately I Feel Everything
    Smith’s new record does feel like her most personal. Her lyrics have a stream-of-consciousness style, as though she’s in the middle of composing a message to a friend or partner. The delight she takes in performing these songs is palpable.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rough and Rowdy Ways
    His richly soporific new album – his first new material since 2012’s Tempest – plays like an extension of that [2016 Nobel Prize acceptance] speech: a folksy recitation of literary and pop references sprawling over long, ramshackle songs with minimal (mostly acoustic) melodies that sway back and forth behind him like curtains in a light breeze.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey Clockface
    Costello has always been an exceptional storyteller, and this is one of his most evocative albums.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Two of Everything
    With Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys co-producing, Olive has captured the flavour of 1960s Brit-blues on the cusp of spreading into druggier, more exploratory areas.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    F-1 Trillion
    Although this album loses some of his distinctive sound – and has none of the cool experiments of Beyoncé’s record – it also showcases his undeniable song-crafting chops.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Late Night Feelings
    The emotional cohesion the record loses in its shifting cast of singers/songwriters/genres it makes up in DJ-savvy textural variety.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Head and the Heart
    The UK edition of their debut has three extra tracks recorded in a church, which damps things even further. But there is still much to enjoy here.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Two Ribbons
    Two Ribbons is another milestone for the duo. Their third record finds the inseparable pair separated. Written mostly individually, it explores the small fissures beginning to show in their friendship as they’ve grown up and grown apart. The result is remarkable.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Psychedelic Pill
    Young's best album in some while.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Collections from the Whiteout
    Instead of a too-many-cooks situation, which this easily could’ve been, Dessner and Howard find cozy nooks for everyone. The singer’s reedy voice is the drawstring that ties it all together.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Can We Please Have Fun
    It’s a happy surprise to find a fresh, shiny energy-driving CWPHF. The tunes are sparkier, tempos more varied and the sonic textures cheerier, as though the band were given a clean shave and a hot lemon-scented towel.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Romance
    Breezy, Smiths-esque indie folk closer called “Favourite”, featuring a guitar riff that could’ve fallen off Viva La Vida…, evinces the depth and richness that new producer James Ford (replacing Dan Carey) has brought to the band on a record that leaves post-punk in its dust and roars off into broad new horizons. Potential fulfilled.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kiwanuka
    The record is an introspective mix of psychey soul, blues, rock and funk, which skips and strolls and swaggers through its 13 tracks – but it is not simply an exercise in nostalgia. Its influences span decades; Gil Scott-Heron, Fela Kuti, Kendrick Lamar and Bobby Womack are all recalled.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Orangefarben
    Standouts include a heartbreaking cover of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and the haunting murmur of "More".
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Early Takes, Vol. 1
    There's a simplicity about these previously unreleased demos that's utterly beguiling, the spare settings allowing the sweeter side of George Harrison's character to shine unencumbered by studio blandishments.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beulah
    On John Paul White’s Beulah, the dark emotions of tracks like “Fight For You” and “Hope I Die” mingle with the bitterness of “The Once And Future Queen” and the low self-esteem of “I’ll Get Even” to create a strangely subdued portrait of emotional turmoil, couched in Southern folk and country modes.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Deadbeat
    Deadbeat starts intimate and confessional, with what might be the best opening track of the year. .... From there, the tracks flow and blend hypnotically, tied together by the piano. Sometimes a song’s coherence is sacrificed to tranceyness, but hooks keep bobbing to the surface like lava lamp bubbles.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Livin' in Elizabethan Times
    Great fun, from first to last.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Punisher
    Punisher ends with a thunderstorm of manic, discordant brass and drums and a pained scream, the physical culmination of the undercurrent of doom that has lurked throughout. But you emerge feeling not deflated but purged. Punisher has the effect of a particularly pummelling massage.
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