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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    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cavalcade
    Each track is a universe of its own, doing what art should do: using its own virtual space as an experimental testing ground to try those limits of taboo and impossibility that remain limited IRL. ... Cavalcade may prove to be one of the most accomplished albums of 2021; future classic of a happily undefined now-core genre. Humanity, level up. If they are giving us any taste of the immediate future, let the roaring twenties roll.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alasdair Roberts
    Alasdair Roberts is not quite the equal of Spoils in terms of songwriting and is hardly as colourful as A Wonder Working Stone, but it is perhaps his most relaxed and effortless album to date.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Armed Courage
    It doesn't necessarily break down the boundaries of rock music, but it sure gives them a good kicking.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    -io
    This is a brave album about how to move on from grief. It’s challenging but totally compelling.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Put Your Back N 2 It
    If Learning was a private primal scream, Put Your Back N 2 It is Mike Hadreas' first public display of his escalating talent.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ocean to Ocean
    This is a gauzy and sometimes deceptively accessible album about falling all the way to the bottom and wondering if there’s any way back.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beware the Fetish
    This is an album that resists being the Other, but also resists even entering into a discourse that would consider that the only position. It is music innately of itself, and a privilege to hear, even at a considerable distance.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Magic Whip
    While not quite the gang of four of old, they are all pulling in the same direction and, even for the most casual Blur fan, that is a glorious thing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Awake in the Brain Chamber
    As a whole, the record achieves something remarkable: a comeback record that overcomes the fractures and scars of its creation without trying to ignore them, a near-complete revival of the band’s former powers, and a bold delve into epic new territory.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Back Home
    Throughout these thirteen songs, Big Joanie leave no stone unturned sifting through fresh backdrops in which their ethos resonates. And for the larger part, they brandish vision and resourcefulness aplenty in this all-embracing quest.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Night CRIÚ
    Across seven songs, she builds an intimate ecosystem of sound: an act of re-inhabiting the body through vocal layering, breath and harmony.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Yuck
    I hated this kind of Lemonheads-lite, floral-dressed, clompety-booted, neurotic ninny inanity the first time round, I have absolutely no idea how anyone could be arsed to expend the (admittedly small) effort it takes to produce such a pointless photocopy ... [but] not even I can find it in my bitter heart to hate the Nickelodeon-Dinosaur Jr bounce of "Georgia" or the honey-toned amble of "Suicide Policeman".
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Glowing Man
    Much like religious experience, the constellations of songs here (and their brethren on the two prior albums) rely on an intensely relatable core, a simple idea or feeling sizzling at the center that anyone can attach to. From there, the instrumentalists ripple out in meditative layers, never covering over or distracting from it, but rather reinforcing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ghost Culture
    There's such a beautiful combination of elegance and exploration in this debut--Greenwood has created one of the best and most confident debuts in years, and you'd do well to bend your ears around it's intricate and delightfully planned out wonder.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Common Turn
    From start to finish, A Common Turn takes you through Savage’s liberating highs, all whilst throwing you her turbulent lows – a raw and emotive album, to say the least.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Transcendental Youth
    On the whole, though, call Transcendental Youth a stumble and wait for the next Mountain Goats release next year.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sleeping Through the War
    Sleeping Through The War is a slow burning experience but once that fire is lit then there’s no putting it out.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On All Fours
    The thirteen tracks that make up the album are wonderfully wonky. They are also incredibly catchy, with subtle sci-fi tinges to them. But this is what we’ve come to expect from the South London post-punk outfit. On All Fours is the strongest release to date.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Engravings
    Where acts like Grouper or Lee Noble seem to be deconstructing song altogether, Barnes seems to be engaged in a more subtle exercise, assembling strands of song formats into elliptical constructions with absolute precision.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crack-Up
    The whole album is a cabinet of curiosities to discover and decipher.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Wonder Working Stone
    A Wonder Working Stone is the work of a songwriter at the top of his game; inspired by tradition but equally inspired to break from it, fired by collaboration and freed to follow his muse wherever it may soar, like the ptarmigans that spread their wings through several of these songs.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love
    Though they are very different albums, one way that Love carries on where Through Donkey Jaw left off is that it is deeply hypnotic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fabric 91
    Fabric 91 deserves to linger in the public consciousness: it feels like a statement, a carefully curated bridge between past and present that evokes atmosphere and emotion.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Giant Swan
    Everything here is distorted. Everything as resonant as it can possibly be. Sharpened, infinitely intensified and yet simultaneously blunted and blurred. There is just the right amount of detail.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Colourgrade
    Much like her previous work, the imperfections, leftfield leanings, and laidback nuances of the lo-fi aesthetic on Colourgrade demonstrate that modern love songs can hit places you never thought they had the integrity to ever reach.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    ForeverandEverNoMore
    Ultimately, a record is never going to change the world, but FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE might finally put an end to the fallacy of Eno as the “non-musician”.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Svengali
    Svengali is a seductive and playful accumulation of influences, interspersed with short interludes or skits that Cakes has said are real messages from lovers.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Utopia
    Opener ‘London’ carries the ethereal quality of a psychedelic haze, beckoning listeners into Gwenno’s world of underground campfires and whispered wizardry. ‘Dancing on Volcanoes’, the delightfully playful lead single.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mercy
    It’s no Paris 1919, and it’s no Vintage Violence either. You, as the listener, will be required to do some work. To call Mercy a slog would be dismissive and unduly harsh; challenging would be more appropriate. Given that we are in the presence of the 80-year-old godfather of avant-rock, you know that persistence will be its own reward eventually.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pastoral
    Pastoral may be an album of satire, but it’s not the cheery-pallid rural parody of Cold Comfort Farm, Five Go Mad In Dorset or even Hot Fuzz. Gazelle Twin’s Pastoral jester bares its teeth with glee; its smile is part Punch and part the grotesque little homunculus of Aphex Twin’s ‘Come to Daddy’.
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