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
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sweetener
    Grande’s new sound, the Williams-produced Not-Bangers, only make up half of the album. These standout tracks are interspersed between standard pop tracks. ... That’s not to say that the Bangers on Sweetener are bad--it’s more that they belong in previous era of Grande and they spoil the flow between songs. Sweetener may not be the dawning of a new age for Ariana but it could be a step towards somewhere weird and wonderful.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Sweet Heart Sweet Light
    Not only does Sweet Heart Sweet Light hit all patented Spiritualized thematic buttons squarely between the eyes – religion, drugs, sickness and redemption – it is also a record that covers everything with a Wyoming sized scoop of full-fat icky sentiment.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Melt Yourself Down
    The music Melt Yourself Down make on this eight song, 36-minute debut album is insanely full of energy and ideas, a tumultuous barrage of snaky, infectious hooks and punishingly addictive grooves.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kveikur
    It's more that Kveikur feels more like an unfinished trip (through said glaciers, perhaps), where the destination is in sight, but seen only from the halfway point.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Caprisongs [Mixtape]
    CAPRISONGS is light on its feet and more accessible than her tricksier electronic work but, whether she's delivering dancehall, hip-house, afrobeat or drill, almost all of these are songs which could only have twigs' name on them – take the glitchy, snatched vocals on 'ride the dragon' or the elegiac harp at the end of 'lightbeamers', mixed among the sub-bass and the hi-hats. CAPRISONGS is a testament to twigs' voice.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tranquilizer
    Lopatin doesn’t just wring moments of grin-inducing audacity from the archive, though, but a startling degree of emotional range too. .... It’s a magic trick he pulls off again on Tranquilizer: sifting through the graveyard of our computers’ dreaming and conjuring something enchanting.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Master
    With Master, they've made their biggest leap forward yet, with the band members leaping across genre divides with a confidence and sure-handedness that shows them at the peak of their powers.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Diablo
    Gurnsey here bounces back with a project nostalgic of the late 80s and early 90s club scene – a very characteristic return for a most uncharacteristic artist.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Of Shadow And Substance
    Bertucci might not have the reach of Taylor Swift but, in creating such affecting work, she’s generating a legacy that will hopefully last for as long as there are still humans pacing these receding coast lines.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Replica
    Put simply, nobody else could make music quite like this, no matter which part of the electronic fringe they might call home. Daniel Lopatin is in the zone.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    If All I Was Was Black
    One of the great successes of If All I Was is that it has the same levity as the anthems of the civil rights era.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PLAY ME
    Full of ire and desire. .... Gordon is no luddite. She’s incorporating sounds and techniques that – and apologies for bringing age into it – most other septuagenarians would recoil from.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Quarantine
    The results are nothing short of magnificent, producing a set of tracks whose fizzing surfaces are always disturbed by some new action just beneath, where ridges of static ruffle and tumble over one another, and where harsh regions of higher density sluice violently into the foreground.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sleepwalking Sailors
    Its confident shape-shifting compositional power and instrumental thunder make for one of 2014's most immediate and satisfying releases.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Molocular Meditation
    The music is cryptic, otherworldly, and uncanny. The dislocation of Smith’s voice from The Fall is jarring and thrilling at times.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Ascension
    For all the synthetic otherworldliness, this record is unflinchingly honest in its assessment of the United States as well as a very personal and raw portrait of Steven’s own humanity and fallibility. There’s no dogma, only equivocation.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Night
    By deconstructing their identity, Saint Etienne have created a coherent sequence of remarkable songs which sound like everything else they have done and nothing else, at the same time. It is a very impressive achievement.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No One Wants To Be Here and No One Wants To Leave
    As the album's outlook nosedives towards irreversible melancholy, Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave becomes increasingly hypnotic.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Argument
    The Argument may not be the best place for novices to acquaint themselves with the work of Grant Hart but for long-term observers it proves to be a welcome return from a singular if erratic talent.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bloodsports
    They've arrived at a romantic, odd, ambitious pop record that eschews musical theatricality for punchy, 40-something's take on the complexity of love from the view--and this is why it works--of one who is still, at heart, an incurable and incorrigible teenage romantic
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    i sure am getting sick of this bowling alley [EP]
    Thirteen minutes of bliss (or chaos, depending on the listener), Mclusky has proven their continued dominance in the noise rock world, while giving fans something satiating to devour until the next release.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pulse/Quartet
    It's a remarkable record, a reminder of that Reich, unlike many composers of his era, has not become archive material. He continues to speak to the cutting edge of music, to experiment with new compositional directions, to be vital.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips
    A shining, distorted, expertly constructed, open-ended record, that might be Xiu Xiu’s best.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mirror Traffic
    Dense, professional, and thoroughly realized, Mirror Traffic will become a lot of people's favorite Malkmus album. He sounds more like Malkmus than ever, and it makes me shiver.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wink
    WINK is CHAI’s most comforting listen to date, but that doesn’t mean they’ve left behind the fun or the bold, animated bite of it all. Instead, it’s a record that builds on everything they’ve done before, understanding their strengths together as a group and then growing something more immersive and insightful from it – all while remaining deliciously joyful.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?
    It’s the sound of joyous, playful experimentation squatting the rarefied worlds of chamber ensembles and concert halls. .... Even when Daniel steps furthest into abstraction it never feels like pretensions towards aloof, high art alienation.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Distracted
    Distracted feels like something rarer: a deeply human, painstakingly crafted album. Stephen Bruner has taken our collective exhaustion, our grief, and our hyper-connectivity, and transmuted them into a masterpiece of progressive R&B.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    KoKoro
    The only way to respond to the sourpusses is to ensure the music is very, very good, something that KoKoro can more than justifiably claim.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fin
    Beautifully composed and beautifully produced.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Future
    Some of the tracks in the album are some of the best that Moiré has made to date.
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