The Skinny's Scores

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For 1,575 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 75
Highest review score: 100 Aa
Lowest review score: 20 Heartworms
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,068 out of 1575
  2. Mixed: 502 out of 1575
  3. Negative: 5 out of 1575
1575 music reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One More Thing
    One More Thing is the product of an accomplished band noodling around in the studio. There's a playfulness and creativity here that promises bigger and better things from the Brighton four-piece in the future. As far as debut albums go, this is a promising one.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    TANGK
    A raucous expression of love, TANGK is raw, vulnerable and inimitably IDLES.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    VENUS
    Resigning itself to well-trodden paths, Venus seems curiously content charting no new territory.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All Life Long
    The cumulative effect is sublime and will leave even the most agnostic listener in a state of transcendental bliss.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
    It's yet another successful reinvention from the Californian artist who continues to be an impenetrable force, laying herself bare and rebuilding for all to see and hear.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Phasor
    PHASOR is a rich and absorbing record that truly transports; placing the listener in a languid, half-lit morning where you’re never quite asleep and never fully awake.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Prelude To Ecstasy
    These writers are resurrecting a long lost art in popular music – using big sounds, with indulgent lyrics, crafting a listening experience so rich it borders on hedonism. Some records are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and few to be chewed and digested. We’re still digesting Prelude to Ecstasy.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Last Name
    While this is an exciting new style for the band, the album could have benefited from more of the stripped-back moments that we hear in the likes of America. In the opening and closing songs of the album, we’re reminded why Courting are such a captivating band but New Last Name, while fun and energetic, sadly fails to match the impact and charm of their debut.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs
    For a band at this stage in their career, Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs is a surprisingly solid return. Die-hard fans will love it regardless, but if you haven’t checked in with AK3 for a while – now's the time. They still have their spark.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Three Bells
    He can still shred with the best of them (Wait, Hi Dee Dee, Watcher), but across this hour-plus album he revels in upending expectations, whether through abrupt tonal shifts (To You's new age synth excursions, Void's trippy synth hits), fried-metal no-wave (The Bell), or even a regular rocker that could pass for early Radiohead (Reflections).
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blue Raspberry
    A hint of musical theatre elsewhere sees the record lose some of its bite, but in general it’s a robust rejoinder to some of the more depthless musicality of soul-baring, 'authentic', indie-rock. Kirby is instead funny, scathing and full of clarity about her personal epiphanies.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    People Who Aren't There Anymore
    Throughout, the group's tried-and-true, gleaming synth-pop palette is flecked with fresh sonic ambition, particularly on slow-burning epics Corner of My Eye and The Sickness. At the centre of it all remains Herring’s fabulously expressive voice, tailor-made to spin tales of heartache.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Wall of Eyes
    Wall of Eyes is a kaleidoscopic, mind-altering pronouncement: The Smile are not a band of their component parts, not echoes of their previous ventures. They are something exciting, ambitious, and genuinely brilliant; a sentiment delivered so resoundingly by their work here that it will leave your ears ringing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Saviors
    The resulting album, Saviors, is a hugely entertaining return to form, with some of the seminal American rockers' best music in decades.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Little Rope
    Sleater-Kinney’s decade-spanning songwriting style feels the same. Give us the electrifying assault and brutal guitar tones to fill those tiny cracks now present in our hearts. Give us a little more rope.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations
    There is an attractive simplicity to this record, perhaps the band’s most straightforward since their debut. These are catchy feelings-forward songs with football chant-worthy choruses. It is, quite simply, an album full of singles.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Orquídeas
    Orquídeas is a display of bravura. Between Kali Uchis’ plurality of sound, empowered directives, and dance-inducing hypnosis – this is an entire album of sweet spots.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Big Sigh
    Big Sigh's strength is in not holding back from confronting darker feelings, and revelling in the raw honesty of experiencing them.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Iechyd Da
    There is a timeless and timely feel to these tunes and it sounds as if something stately is stirring in West Kirby. Good health, indeed.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Get Into Trouble
    Cheerfully melodic, you’d be forgiven for not noticing the dark biblical story it retells – of assault, abandonment, fear and faith. These themes persist across this sparse diaristic record, coming to the fore on the grungy, vulnerable Don’t Kiss Me. Surprises, too, sees Zeitsch reckon with how mundanely a life can be altered.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rockstar
    The queen of Dollywood has more than earned her place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with this stupidly fun and over-the-top love letter to the genre.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hadsel
    Ultimately, it's a collection of well-written and well-presented songs, though at this point the familiarity with the Condon style feels expected, and the few new tweaks aren't quite enough to raise Hadsel above a middling Beirut album.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quarter Life Crisis
    Packed with irresistible hooks and confessional lyrics, you'll find her best songs to date here; it's clear that Baby Queen understands the cinema of pop music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    LXXXVIII
    At times, these eccentric – and often downright baffling – transitions in style and tone can be disorienting, but they also speak to Cunningham’s dexterity as an electronic auteur, and his refusal to play by the rules.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I DES
    A triumph for Anderson, it's a more than worthy addition to his extensive and revered body of work; after over a hundred albums, his reign as king is as secure as ever.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I<3UQTINVU
    Various guest features add further depth and despite many of the mixes being made in a day, this beautifully weird mish-mash of sounds succeeds in inviting listeners further into the depths of Jockstrap’s experimental world.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Phone Orphans
    This is probably one for Veirs purists, but such is the standard of her songwriting that even among these sketches, there’s some real gems to be found.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Los Angeles
    There are times when this commitment to innovation and experiment costs Los Angeles its ability to hold the listener’s attention. .... Even so, Los Angeles proves that each artist on the record is a visionary in their own right, as they push the boundaries of the past whilst looking to the future.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Twits
    The album works in short bursts of adrenaline. That can leave midtempo ballads like Shoo feeling aimless.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    trip9love…???
    While it lacks the truly avant-garde attention of her previous record, trip9love…??? still contributes to her tripped-out, sensual surrealism with the intent of an artist willing to unfurl. In a carefully improvised moment of surprise, a definitive auteur of the modern feel decided to waltz into the centre of the dancefloor and yearn through that great release.
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