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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    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Let Them Talk
    With the slight caveat that Laurie's vocals never quite cast off their Englishness (and why should they?), this is a commendable effort which at its best furnishes considerable enjoyment.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Soft Hair
    At their most normal, “In Love” resembles Prince at his oddest; while the most likeable of a range of silly lyrics offers the promise, “I like to watch you run, but I’ll never touch your bum”.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Piss In The Wind
    Listening to Piss in the Wind can be a pretty gloomy experience, as it piles futility on futility. Ideas and tunes go unfinished. Yet its graceful, open ended melodies and raw emotions also tune into a very human ghost in the machine.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood
    His songs may reference antiquities like Ernest Hemingway, but the drum programmes, autotuned vocals and synth sequences are more modern than the usual country-rock favoured by septuagenarian troubadours.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love at the Bottom of the Sea
    Love at the Bottom of the Sea marks a return to The Magnetic Fields' abrasive electropop, which isn't always to the songs' advantage.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Disc-Overy
    The best tracks are the more thoughtful reflections on youthful memories, such as "Illusion" and "Snap"; the worst is the turgid pomp-rock-rap crossover "Written in the Stars", ominously scheduled as his next single.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Glory
    Although it marks no significant shift in style--she’s still mining the same pop-R&B seam--it’s undoubtedly a better effort than its predecessor.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    1989
    Produced mostly by Max Martin and Shellback, the settings blend twitchy electro riffs with skeletal, scudding beats and understated guitar parts, with occasional details hinting at 1980s influences.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blind Spot [EP]
    Romance remains their core theme, although “Rosebud” strikes out for the harsher terrain of thoughtless cruelty.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Music Complete
    Mostly, the album comprises a series of scuttling bleepscapes lent individual character by unorthodox instrumental detail.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Health
    Everything is more direct: the vocals are bolder and higher in the mix, the instrumentation sharper, the lyrics more personal.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Heroes
    As usual, guests crowd the album... less welcome, though, is the way that vast tranches of the album serve as a showcase for Willie's son, Lukas.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'll Be Your Girl
    It makes for some intriguing collisions of ancient and modern.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Keep Me Singing
    There’s something of the warmth and fulfilment of Tupelo Honey about the album generally.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Head Above Water
    Lavigne might not have found a musical identity that truly becomes her, but Head Above Water is an effective, and occasionally affecting, album.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Listen, Whitey! The Sounds of Black Power 1967-1974
    Listen, Whitey! seethes with righteous anger and revolutionary determination.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Motordrome
    MØ crafts consistently cool grooves but nothing that makes her stand out from the crowd.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vulnicura Live
    It’s hard not to become overly aware of how the similarity of both the musical settings--basically, strings allied to rhythm programmes of skittish or explosive beats--and especially Bjork’s delivery tends to leach the individual songs into one another.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweetener
    Seven of the 15 tracks here have been drowned in producer Pharrell Williams’ bubblemint bounce – at points, it’s in danger of sounding more like his record than Grande’s.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Always Ascending
    Though sharp and sly, too often here there’s a shortfall of melodic potency, and an over-reliance on structures that are methodical rather than marvellous, torpedoed by their own cleverness.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Good Souls Better Angels
    There are moments when it all starts to feel a little bit too doom-laden. But Williams saves not only the best, but the most hopeful, until last. ... An impressive but relentless album.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda
    The results are looser and less formal than might be expected, more imbued with soulful swing, slipping back and forth between the modes and incorporating ecstatic gospel-style call and response passages against a patinated backdrop of shakers, percussion, swooping synths and droning organ.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    CASE STUDY 01
    As a listener you want the artist to sound comfortable in their own skin. But by the end of Case Study 01, it’s hard to be convinced that this is really him.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Suck It and See
    The overall impression is of someone trying to disguise their true emotions with comic bluster: in that sense, ironically, it's a more macho album than Humbug, despite its lighter touch.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Was a Cat from a Book
    The resulting extended instrumental palette has brought a new depth to the arrangements but has added little transparency to Yorkston's often bewildering lyrics.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Autumn Variations
    There’s no standout tune on here to match Elgar’s “Nimrod”, of course, but there’s enough soupy seasonal sentimentality to fill the Royal Albert Hall.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wake UP!
    Wake Up! may tackle weighty themes of capitalism and power struggles in relationships, but the woozy ambience of its shoegaze and Sixties-inspired pop is not exactly going to propel you into an invigorating new way of life.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    For Now I Am Winter
    Olafur Arnalds' third album, For Now I Am Winter, is an exemplary suite of Icelandic music, blending American minimalist techniques with European sensibilities.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Long Wave
    Jeff Lynne's musical memoir of youthful influences, old songs are recast in new lights.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freetown Sound
    Devonté Hynes’ latest outing as Blood Orange takes the soft-soul stylings of 2013’s Cupid Deluxe and mashes them together with African voices and percussion, saxophones and vox populi samples to create a sonic collage that seeks to marry the vision of Marvin Gaye with the methods of Frank Zappa. That’s a considerable ambition, and unsurprisingly it falls well short much of the time.
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