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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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Contrepoint
    A rich, rewarding indulgence.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Old Adam
    Fay Hield’s singing throughout is open and honest, delivering the stories unencumbered by needless ornament or moralising.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'm a Freak Baby: A Journey Through the British Heavy Psych & Hard Rock Underground Scene 1968-1972
    There’s unintended comedy and a few overlooked gems amongst the lesser lights unearthed here.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Trick
    One step forward, two steps backward: having produced perhaps his best album with 2014’s Carry On The Grudge, Jamie T is at best stationary, and often retrograde, on Trick.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Do Not Disturb
    Hammill continues to explore the hubris of human existence. He’s often best, though, when he ventures off-track into more warmly specific tales.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dorothy
    Genders’ broad northern tones lend an apt rootedness to ethereal observations like “There’s a truth behind illusion, shining there--it’s only light”; and his subtle, detailed arrangements likewise form the most natural bed for them.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo
    [“Monkey Bizness” is] the most animated Ubu has been in ages, with an atmosphere of vertiginous dark energy accreting around the jagged guitar riff of “Red Eyed Blues”, while even the slower, more subdued melancholia of “The Healer” wields a strangely sinister poignancy as a desolate Thomas regretfully confesses, “I see too much”. But what visions!
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ken
    A set of songs seething with dark knowledge, as Bejar peeks behind the curtain of appearances in search of underlying motivations.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Gulp!
    Happy hour at the all-you-can-eat alt-rock buffet is clearly open. ... It’s all delivered rambunctiously enough that it’s easy to simply enjoy Gulp! as the alt-pop pick’n’mix it is. Go gorge.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Age of Pleasure
    Clocking in at a scant 31 minutes, you could call The Age of Pleasure a quickie – but one that more than manages to scratch that itch.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Rip Tide
    The engaging mood is further enhanced by Condon's baffling but beautiful lyrics.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Told Them...
    Warmth rises consistently from I Told Them, with its easygoing mix of Afro pop, rap and R&B. You inhale it – soft, nourishing and moreish as if it’s steaming off freshly baked bread. There are moments of nutty chewiness, but mostly it’s stretches of pleasant, if airily bland, doughiness.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Painkillers
    Fallon is never going to escape the Springsteen comparisons that still cling to him like those Born to Run leathers, but this is solid, genuinely inspired songwriting that TGA fans will enjoy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Magic Mirror
    Magic Mirror is an impressive and mature debut.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Special
    Her rap flow has a terrific tensile strength. When singing, she delivers as both a belter and a breathy balladeer. ... Special is good as hell.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Made Of Rain
    Taking its name from a death-themed poem, Made of Rain is a welcome return to the Furs’ classic blend of aggression, tender melody and brooding ambience. But it’s darker than they’ve been before.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Desire Lines
    Produced in understated manner by Tucker Martine, the songs' clean pop lines are revealed with the minimum of decorative detail.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, Pt. 1
    Merging their asymmetrical early math pop with the deep space atmospherics of Total Life Forever and Holy Fire, plus added innovations – ambient rainforest throbs on “Moonlight”, deadpan EDM on “In Degrees”, Afro-glitch Radiohead on “Café D’Athens” – they’ve created an inspired album of scorched earth new music that, in all likelihood, will only really be challenged for album of the year by Part 2.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998
    This collection of re-recorded themes confirms his keen attention to mood and tonal colour, though the alterations are sometimes irritating--notably the itchily urgent percussion track rattling along beneath the familiar keyboard motif of Halloween.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Clean
    It’s a 10-track album that encapsulates emotions and situations that are as versatile as her sound. Whether you’re reminiscing about late-night make out sessions in high school or surrounded by plenty of “cool” girls in your city, Soccer Mommy’s introspection is something that defies age.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Call the Comet
    This is a record steeped in both the chilly yearning of Bowie’s “Berlin” albums and Ziggy Stardust’s glam apocalypse, as well as the science-fiction paperbacks by the likes of JG Ballard which inspired them.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Holy Fvck
    Holy Fvck, from the title down, then, is a classic shedding-the-pop-facade record, bristling with defiance and real-me rebirth. And, as is the nature of such emancipation albums, it’s extremely horny. ... Amid the buzz-rock howls and air-guitaring, though, there is plenty of space (on a frankly overlong record) for more subtle emotion.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Colour In Anything
    It’s not a perfect album--like so many, at 17 tracks it’s way too long, and there’s too little variation in tempo and mood--but it’s yet another confirmation of what can be achieved when subtlety and sensitivity are the driving forces.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sucker Punch
    Sigrid has a raw energy and emotional briskness that can make you feel like you’re doing aerobics in neon leg warmers atop a pristine mountain. Pure friluftsliv.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Deep Down Happy
    Yes, there are moments when their sound threatens to stir up the ghosts of indie landfill past – his staccato “ah ah ahs” and “la la la” drawls on “The Races”, for instance – but ultimately the charm and unpredictability of their vignettes see them through.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Emancipated Hearts
    Wareham's fragile delivery imparts an eggshell vulnerability to songs that track contemporary anxieties, such as "The Deadliest Day Since the Invasion Began", but finds its natural home in the lilt of the Incredible String Band's "Air".
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Whiteout Conditions
    There’s a drive and urgency about Whiteout Conditions that whisks one along regardless, their usual indie-pop mode here strengthened by layers of fast, bubbly synths and pulsing Eurocentric beats.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Never Let Me Go
    Never Let Me Go expands on the disassociation Molko encapsulated for so many misunderstood Nineties teens, applying it now to the entire human species.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fanfare
    Fanfare offers a classy rumination on modern values--albeit something of a conundrum, in being perhaps the most sophisticated celebration of simplicity ever recorded.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Honeymoon
    In “God Knows I Tried”, a reference to ““Hotel California” conjures up the mood of sun-baked dissipation, while she grudgingly confirms the dead-end revelation of celebrity, “I’ve got nothing much to live for, ever since I found my fame”. It’s a disillusioned rejoinder to the burning urge for fame that stains youth culture in the 21st century, and as such, fits in perfectly with the album’s overall sense of exquisite decay.
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