The Independent (UK)'s Scores

  • Music
Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett
    The Cautionary Tales... is wracked with recrimination, remorse and self-doubt. It can be bleak--the electric piano of “Lockdown Hurricane” seems a sound soaked in self-pity--but the intimate beauty of the strings and woodwinds sweetens the pill.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Food
    Though occasionally subdued, Kelis brings a moody character to “Runnin’”, while Sitek offers subtle variations on the funk-soul style, edging into salsoul and swamp-rock on “Cobbler” and “Rumble”.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Smoke Fairies
    Smoke Fairies’ fourth album finds the English duo taking a tangent from their folk/blues approach with the help of a young producer, Kristofer Harris, who gives them a textured sound.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tarpaper Sky
    Tarpaper Sky finds him relaxed and confident in his craft.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Caustic Love
    Caustic Love may be the best UK R&B album since the 1970s blue-eyed-soul heyday of Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Do To the Beast
    While his obsession is sincere, the oppressive weight of the arrangements, freighted with heavy rock guitars and declamatory drums, occasionally fattened by dramatic strings, makes them hard to engage with on a personal level.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Carter Girl
    Carter Girl reaffirms Carlene Carter’s role as scion of country music’s leading family through a mixture of Carter Family classics and original material, plus shaky duets with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hot Dreams
    A bleak but alluring album.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Enter the Slasher House
    Both musically and lyrically, the project cleaves to that kind of silly-spooky, funfair innocence, in a way that lends the album a freakish, cartoon unity denied to some of Tare’s previous projects.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Perfect Contradiction
    It does seem as if Paloma’s sacrificed some individuality for some of that bankable overwrought wailing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shakira
    The drawback of having such a cross-cultural appeal as Shakira is that you’re expected to try and satisfy its every demographic niche, a demand that weakens her first English-language album since 2009’s She Wolf.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Education, Education, Education & War
    There’s a mismatch overall between the angry observations and the pell-mell pop-rock riffing of tracks such as “Cannons” and “One More Last Song”, so eager to curry favour and cajole us into singalong hooks.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Himalayan
    The chunky robot-rock riff [in the opening track] suggests they’re headed to Queens of the Stone Age territory, a route confirmed by the strutting “Brothers and Sisters”; but each track seems to signal some fresh direction.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Odulek
    The result is an ambitious, varied, but largely unlovable work, its individual songs crammed with too many divergent ideas.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Teeth Dreams
    Reconstituted with a brawny two-guitar attack, The Hold Steady return with another portfolio of dirty-realist tableaux in Teeth Dreams.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Symphonica
    Competently organised and confidently delivered, it’s an engaging set, but ultimately, like all live albums, essentially a souvenir.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lost In the Dream
    It retains their signature blend of folk-rock songcraft and miasmic guitar-drone textures, but in a more purposive manner.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sisyphus
    Though the elements don’t always hang together, there’s no shortage of intriguing ideas.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mastermind
    His bland cocaine narratives lack the compelling authenticity of Nas’s.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kiss Me Once
    This isn’t a bad collection overall, if less than the expected redesign.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweet Disarray
    His ambitious arrangements need more disarray, and less sweetness.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dean Wareham
    Wareham’s languid, imperturbable voice and steady-paced music have a familiarly narcotic effect.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Classic
    Too much is still being worked through, though, for this to be the exhilarating, post-depression party its best music suggests.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Letters
    The sonic thinness which seems inherent to Mount remains his limiting weakness, and modest strength.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Take Off and Landing of Everything
    Despite being written by different combinations of the line-up, it’s possibly their most homogenous album, most songs riding gentle pulses of percussion, organ and piano, guitars circling the action.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Holly
    Waterhouse’s own vocals could be stronger, but his throwaway manner has a languid charm.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    English Oceans
    Comprising equal parts Stones raunch and REM-style country-rock, songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley are working at the peak of their powers.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Lights from the Chemical Plant
    Despite his desire to move more towards pop on this third album, Robert Ellis can’t prevent his country roots showing through.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    G I R L
    Like Random Access Memories, it’s an enjoyable dance-pop album lacking a central focus. But one whose diffident charm makes a pleasant change from the overwrought wailing that routinely afflicts R&B.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Present Tense
    “Wanderlust” establishes the overall thematic impulse to live culturally beyond one’s means, but in practice this can lead to the preference for smarts over suitability that spoils a track like “A Dog’s Life”. But there are moments of greatness here and there.
Page: