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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harlequin
    There are deft sonic nods to the madness of Harley Quinn – it’s a pity there aren’t more of them.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Saviors
    Tight and heartfelt if ploddingly unoriginal.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ventriloquizzing
    It's still northern Europe that dominates their music.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Born and Raised
    It's all very laidback and earnest, but the endless lo-cal homilies ultimately grate.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pokey Lafarge
    The vibe on this debut for Jack White's Third Man label is pre-rock'n'roll.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Letters
    The sonic thinness which seems inherent to Mount remains his limiting weakness, and modest strength.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pala
    Friendly Fires' follow-up to their Mercury-nominated debut is a huge disappointment.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shawn Mendes
    His impressive collective of collaborators--John Mayer, Ed Sheeran, Ryan Tedder, Julia Michaels and Khalid--all help foster Mendes’ music into a more mature space.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    4
    Overall, the weaknesses far outnumber the strengths. Not, of course, that that will prevent huge sales figures for 4: because those numbers, ultimately, are what it's all about.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Body Music
    The combination works best on the single Attracting Flies; less engaging is the descent to playground chanting on Best Be Believing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pour Une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone
    The more languid, erotic performances are balanced by ones on which Deantoni Parks' drums dictate the mood through their rattling, martial bustle.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Love is Dead
    Love Is Dead continues to ask questions of the world, but realises they’re not always black and white, or in CHVRCHES case, light or dark.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Give Me the Future
    The record itself functions like an escape pod. When confined within Bastille’s catchy hooks and imaginative, era-spanning production, what lies ahead suddenly isn’t so terrible. The future is bright – for 30 minutes’ worth of bops, at least.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    American Utopia
    Combined with the faux-naive, fairytale tone of the narratives, it makes for an irritatingly condescending experience. The lofty aimlessness is matched by musical settings.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Neptune
    Musically, she strays a little too far from her folkie comfort-zone, with varied results
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hell: The Sequel EP
    What a couple of charmers.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mountain Echo
    With her delivery tacking impressively between sweet and smoky, "On the Road" recalls what happened when the Kind of Blue influence hit the likes of Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Portico Quartet
    In places, Portico Quartet's third album recalls old-school jazz-funk, from the chamber-jazz end of the spectrum rather than the party end.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Big Moon Ritual
    With his new Brotherhood, he's finally found the ideal vehicle to indulge his taste for "Cosmic California Music".
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tucson: A Country Rock Opera
    Sometimes, bigger is not better: Giant Sand's Howe Gelb has often been most potent with minimal resources, which may explain why I'm slightly underwhelmed by this major project.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Traveler
    Few musicians ever achieve such complete dominance and superiority on their instrument as Jerry Douglas: not a single voice is raised in challenge to Douglas's mastery of the dobro. This latest, guest-laden album shows why.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dark Black
    The result is an engaging, softly sensuous air of desolation, emotion recollected in tranquility.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mala
    It shifts desultorily from style to style, with songs barely hanging around long enough to state their case.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Edgeland
    It's an album as hard to pin down as fog, but redeemed by moments of transcendent beauty.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Love
    The Birmingham quartet's debut album bears out the promise of their early singles and Delicious EP.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take All My Loves: Nine Shakespeare Sonnets
    All in all, a difficult task accomplished with no shortfall of style and invention.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Angeleno
    He’s helped by the sleek production of Ry and Joachim Cooder, the former lacing delicious guitar lines through Outlaw’s songs while his son adds subtly illustrative percussive flourishes.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Wave
    The album arguably gets worse as he gets better, particularly in “Quicksand”, with its Coldplay-esque promise to “patch you up, we’ll work it out”.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Heavy Meta
    It’s not always pretty--his blast of antipathy “Can’t Stand You” is just relentless disparagement, with none of the subtlety of “Positively 4th Street”; ultimately, it’s small wonder to find him, in “Poor Traits Of The Artist”, caught between loving and hating his need to create.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    You Had Me at Goodbye
    In places, Vanderslice’s more abstruse, jazzier ideas grate with the material--notably the clarinet discords closing the old departing-soldier-boy tale “When The Roses Bloom Again”--but he’s usually on the money with things like the elegiac strings accompanying “Betty’s Eulogy” and the lachrymose pedal steel, vibes and shaker underscoring “Wreck”, a heartfelt plea for a lover who’s “a worker, not a volunteer”.
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