The Quietus' Scores

  • Music
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:
2374 music reviews
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There are plenty of nicely recorded aural treats dotted across 6 Feet Beneath The Moon, but they're swimming in a sea of dull mediocrity.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Convenanza regularly dips into a bag of tried and tested moves that are little more than default settings: dubby basslines, plenty of space, echoes, jazzy trumpets that sound like deflating balloons and so on.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The only thing Settle succeeds at is repurposing generic late 90s funky house into a sound that people seem to have been brainwashed into thinking is new and exciting.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's all too hammy, too rich to absorb.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Squandered its potential. Maruja emerge from the studio with raucous rap-rock and meandering jam music in tow, resulting in an album full of the same songs several times over. By the end, listeners may feel they have deja vu. Fans may feel they have dementia.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The net result is a lack of texture and the element of surprise that made this album's predecessor so wonderfully seductive.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ultimately, Hoodies All Summer sounds like it’s been ‘fixed’ by a major label trying to improve Kano’s chances of radio play by throwing some poppy hooks and production into the mix and praying for the best. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but in this case the result is simply banal.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    This feels, in many ways, more like a compilation than a coherent album: a selection of tracks created in tribute to the late artist, rather than a cogent piece of art crafted by her exacting hand. It isn’t so much that this tries and fails to replicate what SOPHIE did best – or, more accurately, what only SOPHIE did – but more that it steers too far away from that, likely (and with good reason) to avoid criticism on that front.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    ‘Out Of These Blues’ adds a country twang to the formula. ‘Live With Hope’ uses a gospel choir. A couple of others are more stripped back and equally forgettable.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Yuck aren't actually terrible, but their second album--and first since the departure of frontman Daniel Blumberg--is just eminently forgettable.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ had so much going for it. Why couldn’t Wolf Alice apply that level of vision, skill, invention and audaciousness to the rest of The Clearing? As radio friendly as Fleetwood Mac usually were, they didn’t win the world’s respect by holding back timidly for 80 per cent of each album, or being content to let only the vocals do the talking.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Overall, Madonna’s fourteenth album Madame X feels as if Mirwais had mostly completed a decent run-of-the-mill modern pop record, albeit with a cool hotch-potch global feel; hip nods in place to fado, dub and other micro-genres dunked amongst the trap and retro disco. But then just before sign-off, Herself went through the top-lines with a sharpie. ... None of these carefully curated flourishes feel as if they truly live inside the ‘whole’ of this music. Instead it all feels plonked on top of a template.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    What really makes Sheezus so frustrating, though, is that among the dross there are some genuinely interesting tracks here.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There’s simply so little spark here, barely glowing embers and blackened dust where once Radiohead blazed a fascinating, furious trail for others to attempt to follow.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    I feel as if it’s mostly the gathering of pieces for a record that was being constructed prior to a tragedy, with the grief itself manifesting in the abandonment of that work and this half-complete thing we get instead. Tricky is a shadow of his former self, playing the role of a shadow of his former self, which was always a selfhood in shadow.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Nothing on Comedown Machine really sounds natural either; it comes across awkward, hollow, like dead-chemistry trying listlessly to spark.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's sad to report then, that Psychedelic Pill is nothing less than a crushing disappointment as it gives way to Young's most meandering and directionless tendencies.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A curious listen, Sounds From Nowheresville is akin to having your memory wiped at exactly the same moment an experience is stored in the brain.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's not that Thicke can't carry a tune. It's that he thinks that having songs that smoulder with sex appeal a la Luther Vandross, Boyz II Men or Barry White means that you have to degrade woman and boast about how your penis is bigger than the next fella's.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There’s a distracted short-attention-span looseness going on that feels artificial and I hope it is, because otherwise it’s just thick. Shallowness worn proudly. Where some lines technically work, overall it gets so disjointed and almost comedically dumb-arse, it becomes less than the sum of its parts.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There's very little to be found within From The Very Depths to warrant repeat plays, and it's safe to say when the dusk mercifully settles on Venom (or on 2015, for that matter), this clumsy attempt at modern metal will not be remembered.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    With occasional flashes of their previous excellence, Spine Hits has too many drab moments to make this anything other than their weakest work yet by far.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The album is at its best when the margins are jammed full--tinny tambourine here, guitar feedback there, a wash of cellos dipping into the mix.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    One of the first things that jumps out at the listener, and it's something which persists throughout, is the disconnectedness between Smith and Elena Poulou in the control room, arsing about with daft voices and keyboard squiggles respectively, and the big lads at the back.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Akin to scrolling down a Tumblr dashboard, A.L.L.A as a whole lacks coherence but features some impressive displays of aestheticism.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The combination of Eno's obsession with stasis and his attachment to novelty for its own sake does the album in.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    For those that need a bit of background music The Slow Rush is a competent record, but it’s impossible to actively listen to it for a prolonged period of time without despairing. At least now that this is out, there probably won’t be another one for a few years.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There was a time when Primal Scream were considered essential, an acclaimed element of the indie rock landscape, and more than anything, Chaosmosis simply confirms that those days remain firmly in the past.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It is not even sprawling and directionless but just painstakingly mediocre throughout.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    All too often Paralytic Stalks feels like an attempt to assume the role of indie-pop's Steve Vai by competitively crushing structural formats underfoot until there's nothing left but dusty granules.