The Quietus' Scores

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For 2,374 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 61% higher than the average critic
  • 8% same as the average critic
  • 31% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 76
Highest review score: 100 Promises
Lowest review score: 0 Lulu
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,109 out of 2374
  2. Mixed: 244 out of 2374
  3. Negative: 21 out of 2374
2374 music reviews
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Escapology
    Escapology is eccentric, full of twists and turns, screechy, glitchy and ambitious – undoubtedly a rare breed. After you complete the final mission, you are finally immersed in the artificial soundscape of closer ‘T-Divine’. The closing credits roll in. You have managed to escape and survive. Ultimately though, the listening experience does not transport me into a hyperstitional future. I feel more catapulted into an alternative past, which was polluted with fragments and ideas from the future we are inhabiting at the moment.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let's Turn It Into Sound
    It’s not just a mongrel mesh of genres. It’s stretching and cracking them into new shapes, creating something fresh, hyperactive, and utterly pop.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mint Chip
    Mint Chip is full of misdirection but never feels contrived. ... Their songs are tightly composed, danceable streams of consciousness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Success
    Oneida prove once again that they can change course anytime they want, and the journey will remain exciting.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Thyrsis of Etna
    Despite the variety of genres and diversity of contributions, Thyrsis of Etna has a distinct sonic flavour. There is attention to balance. Each track has a cocoon-like sound that soothes and sedates a listener. ... Regardless of the names and history, the music has enough to keep one intrigued – or at least entertained.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Reset
    If arguably too one-note to constitute a stone-cold triumph, the album serves as a charming side-bar to two stellar careers. It is a collaboration that soars without ever quite getting so close to the sun that its wings start to melt.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    IM NAYEON
    This is a solid pop album and Nayeon’s charms shine. Her voice, visuals, and sweet attitude deliver a feel-good tracklist full of fluffiness and catchy hooks, but it’s also clear that her own colour still waits to be found.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    NOT TiGHT
    NOT TiGHT is a solid showcase of the pair’s considerable chemistry.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Riderless Horse
    Riderless Horse is quietly redemptive rather than world-razingly cathartic, and despite all the mental and emotional hardship she’s survived, Nastasia remains even-handed and philosophical.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tick Tick Tick
    There’s a cohesion and a vigour to Tick Tick Tick that may make it Mallinder’s finest and most enjoyable record in at least ten years (take a bow Hey Rube’s criminally slept on Can You Hear Me Mutha recorded with Fila Brazillia’s Steve Cobby in 2012).
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Zeit
    Yes, it really does nod towards Sound of Music and backs this cleverly with an illuminating barrage of steely industrial noise. Of course, the album will only truly explode into life when it surges into the live arena. A lavish and unique operatic gothic party that promises, as ever, to be a scream.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Loggerhead
    Life on the whole feels a little more erratic than usual for many of us and in under 45 minutes, Wu-Lu manages to skilfully capture this.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Arkhon
    Her debut album The Spoils felt like a spell thrown into a mirror of static, and more than a decade later, her newest album trembles with a similar sense of rupturing enchantment.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Proof
    Proof serves as a nostalgia trip for long-time fans of the septet and a summary introduction for the curious. With thirty old songs, three completely new tracks, and eleven new versions of well-loved classics, this album marks a satisfying closure to their first nine years as a group.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Emerald Sea
    Despite the high quality of the arrangements, the orchestration and the recording as a whole, it is a bit too much at once. A case of less would have been more.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Up and Away
    This is the pop we need; considered, vital, comforting, spiritual.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ugly Season
    What you will find is an artist keen on experimenting with mood and form. Much of the music probably makes greater sense alongside the dance project, but as a standalone piece of work it offers welcome insight into another side of Hadreas’ artistic temperament.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Amber
    It’s a wonderfully dexterous and developed body of work that gives more of itself with each listen.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Amaryllis
    Although the stylistic variations across the two LPs make it seem as though there is more music here than could reasonably be expected to be contained within eleven tracks, much of it is highly accessible, addictive even.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Belladonna
    The resulting music is stunning, perhaps a little more difficult to get a handle on than Amaryllis, but offering an invigorating glimpse into new territory for Halvorson. Though more abstract than its companion volume, Belladonna’s instrumentation tugs at the heartstrings aplenty.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Super Champon
    A wonderful balance of melody and ferocity, their tunes tap into a wide-eyed joy at the heart of their rage. Serrated guitar noise and complex vocal parts mix with an adrenaline-rush rhythm section in concentrated blasts. It goes straight to your head.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky
    The dark alchemy of Waterslide – named after one of the art-pieces Margolin painted during lockdown – ultimately flows from the manner in which it slithers under the skin even as it engages with that part of your monkey brain that enjoys a zinging pop song. ... As with much else here, the moment is beautiful and ugly and extraordinary.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghosted
    Ghosted is a record which depends on its cumulative effect. And in doing so, it reveals there’s the potential to find endless movement in even the most rigid structures.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Air
    Air feels like a swan song for a gorgeous world in peril.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    WE
    It opens with a piano motif that could’ve come straight from Chris Martin’s candle-scented fingers. The matching vocals are so annoyingly whispered, they practically qualify as ASMR. Halfway through, the song changes tack and starts courting the modern market for anxiety pop. ... More specifically, it makes you think, “Does this sound like a needy Mercury Rev, a ham-fisted Grandaddy, or Wings without the easy-going self-awareness?
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where's the One?
    All the pieces constitute a splendid array of transnational collaboration, a brilliant collage of ideas.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When It Comes
    When It Comes is a very balanced record that shows the artist standing on solid ground, in comfort with herself, and ready for a further creative take-off. A soothing and pleasant listen.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    For You Who Are the Wronged
    One of the purest, most ferocious, most generous albums I’ve heard. A simple offering, and an outright masterpiece of emptiness and full-to-bursting-ness at the same time.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Pearl
    This album is too much of a piece to be picking out favourites, yet it is also one whose subtleties really reveal themselves on subsequent listens. Go on, dive in. Soak up the heat, discover what’s hidden underneath the overgrown foliage. You know you want to.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything Perfect Is Already Here
    Characteristically, she doesn’t offer up any concrete solutions on Everything Perfect is Already Here. Instead, by listening to her music, and how she weighs every element with equal care, we’re able to stop and begin to find gratitude for the moments we might have once ignored, however fleeting they may be.
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