The Wire's Scores
- Music
For 2,879 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
51% higher than the average critic
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7% same as the average critic
-
42% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.8 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
| Highest review score: | SMiLE | |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest review score: | Amazing Grace |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 2,404 out of 2879
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Mixed: 455 out of 2879
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Negative: 20 out of 2879
2879
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
Maus’s genius is to splice nostalgic sonic expectations for the future with new structural realities. [Nov 2017, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Dec 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Lindstrøm is better able to keep everything the right side of good taste, for better or worse. This continuous set of eight tracks gets into its spooky stride towards the end. ... A darker second hour might have been even better. [Nov 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Dec 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The mainstreaming of yoga, mindfulness and other pursuits of spiritual enrichment in our digitally distracted, permanently anxious modern reality might have tipped the balance, as Laraaji pulls in listeners who aren’t necessarily collectors of forgotten, strange or otherwise outsider music. [Nov 2017, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Dec 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
On some of the songs Langford’s slightly rough and ready approach is the grit that helps produce the pearl; on others it’s made to sound out of place by the very musicians who play his songs so well.- The Wire
Posted Dec 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Mechanics Of Domination is careful, elegant and cerebral but it is also quietly stirring. [Nov 2017, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Dec 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
A fitting tribute to one of the greatest collectives in music history and essential for anyone who has ever had their lives changed by Parliament/ Funkadelic. [Nov 2017, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Dec 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Modern production simply won’t allow for the kind of warm frictive depth in the low end or biteable chunkiness of beats those albums revelled in--but as a dazzling showcase for Bootsy’s still-ill skills it’s great, always problematising what could be politesse with the sheer deranged drive behind Bootsy’s shades, always plumbing for excess as a watchword. [Nov 2017, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Dec 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Fohr’s music achieves ever greater levels of emotional richness while keeping a careful distance from the confessional. [Nov 2017, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Dec 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Translated lyrics illuminate and mystify in equal measure. [Oct 2017, p.67]- The Wire
Posted Dec 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
It may look wildly out of control but closer inspection reveals the symmetry and order that supported the garden’s historical design. [Nov 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Dec 6, 2017 -
- Critic Score
You might not think you need new versions of these. But you’d be wrong. [Nov 2017, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Dec 6, 2017 -
- Critic Score
It’s no radical departure, but Gamble nonetheless conjures a new and unsettling sense of richness from differently focused materials. [Oct 2017, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Dec 6, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Washington can flirt with bombast and kitsch, but his commitment is undeniable and the tunes are great. [Oct 2017, p.68]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Brick Body Kids Still Daydream is a sublimely reflective slice of nostalgia with none of the comfort or security that term implies--it’s a both hysterically funny and sharply political skewering of the games nostalgic reverie can play on people, and a people’s consciousness. [Oct 2017, p.67]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
On TFCF (short for Theme From Crying Fountain) Andrews comes into his own. The tracks might be loosely structured, ideas, samples, field recordings and styles scattered by the dozen across the album’s 33 minutes, but it’s a sense of a distinctive songwriter exploring fracturedness across a broad spectrum from the dancefloor to the introspective. [Oct 2017, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The result is an intuitive and spacious sound. Controlled but organic and broken down into contained but naturally arcing pieces, The Gradual Progression becomes a set of sequences using long drum rolls, cloudlike synths and eventually gentle vocal noises and ascents.- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Revel in the poppy darkness of Beaches--sunset drenched “ba-ba-ba” vocals, upfront drums and twangy guitars--but also marvel as the Australian psych rockers draw out their swirling sounds into extended hypnotic workouts on this double album. [Oct 2017, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The result is an album which will satisfy fans of all the band’s distinct phases without necessarily ingratiating itself to anyone. [Oct 2017, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
A set of vigorous yet highly intricate arrangements of new material. [Oct 2017, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Electric Trim is Lee Ranaldo’s 12th solo album but it sounds remarkably fresh. [Oct 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
An upbeat yet ultimately wistful record about living, dying, youth, age, wasting time, but also trying not to waste time. [Oct 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
His cartoonish vocals remain charmless, his lyrics as tediously self-referential as ever. [Oct 2017, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The detail and artistry of Take Me Apart more than justify the wait. [Oct 2017, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Zola Jesus is back to her dark roots, but enriched by intense layers of experience. [Oct 2017, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The sheer density of stylistic markers here is perhaps most representative of the nature of Iglooghost’s production, the album being immersed in the chaos of skittering beats and cut-ups with vivid synth lines that twist, crack and inflate in dazzling clusters. [Oct 2017, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The whole thing seems to aim for slightness (of the disc’s 20 tracks, only seven are over two minutes long), but many of these sketches have the gorgeous, pastoral-futurist texture of Boards Of Canada or The Focus Group. [Oct 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
This is the sort of shtick that the band have been pulling for over two decades, and it's as earnest and laudable as ever. ... Though, the band could also do with a sonic rehaul. [Oct 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
To run with the cinematic analogies, I'd suggest that Frost is the musical equivalent of Nicolas Winding Refn, all neon lit brutality and state of the art emptiness. [Oct 2017, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The Munster release makes for occasionally uncomfortable listening. [Sep 2017, p.66]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
A few tracks stand apart: "Story Of OJ" and "Mercy Me" both impress for verve and venom if not his every chain of thought. Otherwise it's all so dry that after a couple of listens it feels more like spoken word. [Sep 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Prophets Of Rage can’t help sounding a little male-menopausal even if lyrically the targets remain crucial and the trajectory remains ferocious thanks to the sheer undimmed timbre of Chuck’s meshrattling voice. [Sep 2017, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Parallels frustrates as much as it entrances because it feels like a collection of separate tracks corralled together for expedience. [Sep 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
How Did I Find Myself Here? is the occasionally thrilling result. [Sep 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
On Bioprodukt, his fourth album for Planet Mu, Edwards’s prolific nature again benefits from the honed ear of label boss Mike Paradinas, who curates a neat ten track journey through recent material. [Jul 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Infinity Ultra keeps going with the introspective synth symphonies, but there are a couple of spots where it’s also up for a party, although maybe one where the dancefloor is full of blissed out narcoleptics. [Aug 2017, p.63]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
This is a deep but balanced record, elegant in its melancholia and experimental. [Jul 2017, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Circle’s ability to fuse distant or disparate modes and styles is part of what makes their music so compelling. Where attention might before have been generated out of the way it all fitted together, the tension here is more about viscerality, more about the vocal and guitars tearing through your body than seeping into your brain. [Sep 2017, p.48]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Silhouettes & Statues--83 songs across five CDs--is a useful opportunity to take stock of goth’s actual achievements. It charts the genre’s emergence from post-punk, emphasises points of overlap with anarcho, industrial and even synthpop, and ends in 1986 before the arrival of Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and hordes of neo-celtic, pagan folk and cyber goth sub-groupings. [Sep 2017, p.69]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
At some point in the future Tyler, The Creator may define his ideology and grow tedious with it; for now he remains on top form revelling in ambiguity. [Sep 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
“In The South” is a mash-up with Gucci Mane and Pimp C that could’ve snuck on the back end of a posthumous UGK set. [Sep 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Every beat is a slow motion epic, every hook aches with promethazine exhaustion transcended through force of will. [Sep 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
[New Facts Emerge] finds the group in passable but not especially inspiring form. [Sep 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Nothing Is Quick In The Desert shows them in fantastic form, sidestepping those laboured moments of musical correctness that made 2015’s Man Plans, God Laughs so patchy, and focusing on the kind of ear-popping chaos that made so much of 1994’s Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age so uniquely addictive. [Sep 2017, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Dreaming In The Non-Dream is a protest record through and through. It captures a rabid collective frustration and expels it with a palpable urgency. The fact that Forsyth and the rest of his group can do it with an eloquence that’s hard to summon in these dire times makes it all the more rewarding. [Sep 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
For just a few moments [on "Slow Your Roll"] there’s an unmistakeable sense that what’s already a decent album could have been a whole lot better, could have been inspirational. [Sep 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Lack doesn't allow so much for meditation, forcing the listener to confront its continued presence through interjections of anxious vocal exercises and crashing echoes, industrial scrapes and human ululations. [Sep 2017, p.49]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The meat of the set almost certainly wouldn’t have been released if Prince were still with us. ... They add up to arguably the strongest new set of Prince recordings since Lovesexy. [Aug 2017, p.70]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
What’s most thrilling about Big Fish Theory is that it doesn’t sound leftfield or challenging; instead it provides a scintillating snapshot of both the state of the art and the untold history of underground black music for the past 30 years. [Aug 2017, p.65]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Pussycat is as excoriating and pitiless as anything Jenny Hval has produced to date and just as unflinching in its analysis of gender politics (the Wire-ish “Sex Machine” manages to be funny, poignant and upsetting) plus Hatfield cranks out some cathartic Ragged Glory solos (which could easily go on for twice as long as they do) and proves herself a fearlessly uninhibited vocal stylist to boot. Good work. [Aug 2017, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
They [Born On A Gangster Star and Quazarz Vs The Jealous Machines] can be appreciated either together or apart from each other. [Aug 2017, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
They [Born On A Gangster Star and Quazarz Vs The Jealous Machines] can be appreciated either together or apart from each other. [Aug 2017, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
He’s grown up, but he’s done so better than most, and crucially Mellow Waves hits you not just with ravishing sonics, but with a plangent heart, a sense of emotional growth that fulfils the promise Cornelius’s music has always had. [Aug 2017, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Deftly slice through seemingly disparate arenas--the fertile intersection of past and present, acknowledging both without succumbing to the whims of either. [Aug 2017, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The director has previously been namechecked by Lopatin as an early idol. Consciously or not, he applies a more vivid psychedelic impulse to a comparable tying together of sound and vision. [Aug 2017, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
It is surprisingly polite and beautiful in places yet conjures up an air of real menace and myriad Nietzschean altitudes and climates. Fras’s voice and heavy, laden, deadpan German is perfect for Nietzsche’s portentous fragments and aphorisms. But there is a lightness here too. [Aug 2017, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Patton’s signature style is overpowering, transforming an opportunity to create something unique into another of his side-projects.- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
This is an album, and a genre, to ponder--one that remains musically rich, deep and mysterious. [Aug 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Many of these tracks barely scrape two and a half minutes. Crazed voices talk about “hair” and a “super-weird looking guy” while the deranged piano of a haunted ballroom plays for no one (“The Hidden Joice”). But it’s a fun, fairground of a record too, with a hare-brained 1960s Wurlitzer pop song (“Give It To Me”), dopey scat (“Scooba”) and silly names and phrases like “Chicken Butt” and “Eat Yourself Out”.- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Dear is pervaded by a deep melancholy, but of a sweet, lovelorn kind, a looking back and a bitter-sweet attitude. Who knows if it’ll be their last record. If this is the case, it’s certainly a fitting send-off. [Aug 2017, p.49]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The sound is crisp without sacrificing any of Chesnutt’s trademark grit. By adding a little glean, Cody Chesnutt gives you the best of both sonic worlds. [Aug 2017, p.48]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
While The Singles fails to represent Can’s adventures in untethered improvisation and oceanic drift, if you wanted to hand somebody one record that told them what Can was, you could do far worse. [Jul 2017, p.67]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
What J Hus has over all else this year is an ebullient ironic pseudo-oblivious pomp, the kind of breathless mongrel music you’ll only ever get from folk young enough to miss how vital it is they’re breaking all the rules. [Jul 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
It is mixed heavy in the low mids, blanketed by chorus effects, yet somehow misses warmth. Its ambitions are little short of symphonic. [Jul 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Opener “Reverance” gives us a great deal--tremolo string flourishes and swirling synthesizers, filter gates as grand as castle keeps that slowly open up to reveal lush vegetation within--but of percussion it gives us none. From there on, the album offers up interplanetary R&B. [Jul 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Ex Eye fuse together in a whirring blare of intricately constructed math metal, where each player can be distinctly heard weaving their individual musical craft within the group’s membrane. [Jul 2017, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Crazy, tender and occasionally corny, Rundgren remains defiantly unpredictable. [Jul 2017, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Because of the time lapses involved in recording the material, the album sounds uneven and sometimes stale, sadly lacking the Misfits punk rock kick that he managed to reboot into early Danzig offerings with producer Rick Rubin. Of note, however, is the closing “Pull The Sun”, a majestic hovering ballad where Danzig drops the Jimbo stance to elevate his group and his more subdued vocal to a higher rock pinnacle. [Jul 2017, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Perhaps some of the head-scratching freshness of Burgess-Olson’s early material has been lost--but with her gear-led, no-fuss production sensibility, she slots in perfectly on Ninja Tune’s Technicolour imprint alongside prolific mavericks like Hieroglyphic Being and Legowelt. [Jul 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
New material is conspicuous by its absence, and several shambolic passages indicate that the band barely managed to rehearse, let alone write songs. [Jul 2017, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Nite Jewel sounds like a latter-day Prince protégé, with a beatific calm to her tone. [Jul 2017, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Just as these wise, bittersweet, intimate and wry songs and poems about love and the everyday have a life of their own beyond being haunted by the Nick Drake legacy, so too The Unthanks’ quietly scholarly interpretation of Molly Drake has a distinctive and nuanced self-assuredness. [Jul 2017, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The overall effect is fresh and forward thinking throughout. [Jul 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Whether with Supersilent or on his own, Arve Henriksen has demarcated his own world of sound, communicating in ways that are sometimes inscrutable but always deeply felt. [Jul 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
A good bit stranger-sounding and more interesting in their excavation of the past. [Jul 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Dust floats along meditatively, and is Halo’s warmest and most familial record to date. [Jul 2017, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
For all its kinkiness Green Twins is indubitably an R&B record (tracks like “Cuffed” and “JP” really can’t be described as anything else) and an exceptional one at that. [Jul 2017, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
It’s a bold, defining album from the UK techno producer that will undoubtedly fulfill her wish to flip people’s perceptions. [Jul 2017, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Three years in the making, Dawson’s follow-up ditches the formula entirely, transporting the listener to the AngloSaxon kingdom of Bryneich. ... The big question is how seriously to take all the antique stuff. [Jul 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
This ambitious album deserves to be a crossover hit. [Jul 2017, p.46]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
It reignites the traditions it draws upon and creates something utterly contemporary. If this record sounds familiar, it is because it is the music your soul has already worked out we need for the struggles to come. [Jul 2017, p.46]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The inconsistency here might grate but if you focus on Freddie’s spellbinding raps the story is cohesive and fearless. [Jun 2017, p.77]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The album suffers at points from fastidiously clean production; it’s not just lo-fi romanticism to want to hear musicians of Vieux’s calibre in settings that are less polished. [Jun 2017, p.76]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Farrell’s production is funky and deep throughout, but it’s sometimes a touch too downbeat; Kidjo is imperious on the chemically propelled “Dombolo”, Nneka spits controlled fire on the dubby “La Dame Et Ses Valises”, but tracks like “Wedding” and “Nebao” are sonic tar pits from which their stars struggle to escape. [Jun 2017, p.76]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
This set represents a powerful statement on multiculturalism without any need for proselytising. [Jun 2017, p.74]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Those who were there the first time round will enjoy playing spot-the-sample on these hyperactive cut ’n’ shuts; for anyone else, it’s a strange one. Inarguably fun, but you’re left scratching your head, wondering why. [Jun 2017, p.74]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
async is an exceptionally beautiful record, in the way that maths is beautiful, quite free of rhetoric or ‘effects’. Its coherence of tonality and timbre gives it the feel of an imaginary soundtrack and yet each track has its own internal logic and direction which means that it never sounds like a grab-bag of musical supervisor’s cues but like a proper album of songs. [Jun 2017, p.70]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Crescent’s first album in a decade is certainly a memoir, and one as evocative and impressionistic as you might expect, where the fall of sunlight on a window or a late-night touring mishap--“I’m opening up the van/And the cymbals crash/All across the street/In the clear night” (“I’m Not Awake”)--stay lodged in the heart and mind far longer than any 12" release. [Jun 2017, p.69]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
They make it sound easy, and there are moments where that ease works in their favour. “Exalted” has the same gliding grace as the best moments on Moore’s last album of songs, The Best Day; conversely the way Shelley and Googe bear down on “Aphrodite” is quite satisfying. Still, the record could have used a more contrarian filter. [Jun 2017, p.67]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Progress really doesn’t come into it. Rather, each track here, particularly the bumpin’ highlights “Cosoco” and “Cara De Espojo”, can be seen simultaneously as both a refinement and amplification of everything that has made Molina’s music such a rare delight over the past decade. [Jun 2017, p.67]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
There’s a gracefulness to Patton’s rhythms that sets her apart from other footwork producers--something deeply contemplative. [Jun 2017, p.66]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
There are some satisfying rushes of buzzing sawtooth waves, and luminous passages that hail back to the Workshop’s glory days. But the most successful tracks let their beautiful and odd electronic timbres breathe on their own, rather than adding them as a dressing or a side dish for the piano melodies, or other attempts at constructing a more conventional pop backbone. [Jun 2017, p.65]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
A less deranged response to celebrity than Kanye West’s Yeezus, more imaginative than Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP or Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, it shares with the former an economy of form, and with the latter two the giddy energy of an artist coming into perfect sync with their audience. It’s also a sumptuous sounding pop record, polite streamlined mass market psychedelia. [Jun 2017, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
With all this pent-up anger channelled into a nicely weird record, faUSt call their thrown-together team effort of improv and agitation “enlightened dilletantism”. As a jumbled response to unfolding chaos on Planet Earth, Fresh Air delivers a welcome jolt of energy. [Jun 2017, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Triplicate’s greatest triumph is to strip cheap sentiment from the poetry by dimming the lacquer of the brass and muting the swagger of the singer, leaving the songs to crackle like revenant vignettes in the wireless of the mind. [May 2017, p.63]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
It’s an overegged pudding at times, but to its credit Versus is anything but polite; with brass and bass to the fore, Craig chips away at our preconceptions--he’s here for more than the black tie and polite applause. [Jun 2017, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Best Troubador is a joyous reclamation of song, gentle and true to Oldham’s personal, more delicate style. [Jun 2017, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Six decades later, this 90 minute slab of previously unreleased Monk reveals some strikingly fresh angles on his working methodology. [May 2017, p.68]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017 -
- Critic Score
There’s a telling lack of conviction when he uses the past tense saying “I used to feel so devastated… now we on our way to greatness”. It’s a shame because when he settles for articulating rage from a less lofty position at the centre of a crowd he’s rejuvenated, alongside Schoolboy Q, J Cole, Styles P and Kirk Knight admitting a burn in his gut and boasting of how he’s “flowing religiously... Amerikkka’s worst nightmare, the super predator”. [May 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2017