The Wire's Scores
- Music
For 2,880 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
51% higher than the average critic
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7% same as the average critic
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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: 2,405 out of 2880
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Mixed: 455 out of 2880
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Negative: 20 out of 2880
2880
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
There is some extremely sophisticated signal processing going on here, resulting in complex subliminal sound patterns in the spaces between beat and the 303s’ scrolling and glooping. However each track is about relentless repetitions of one monolithic kick and one acid riff above all else. While the processing can occasionally resemble some of Tin Man and Cassegrain’s recent dismantlings of acid, which float in motionless seas of reverb, the primacy of the kick ’n’ riff lends the forward momentum of these tracks a glorious singlemindedness. [Sep 2018, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Aug 7, 2018 -
- Critic Score
A range of compositional strategies are succinctly worked through, pivots in structural dynamics executed with an often startling sharpness. [Aug 2015, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Aug 5, 2015 -
- Critic Score
Book is likewise packed with songs that take a few listens to click. Flansburgh remains an acute observer of humanity’s pettiest manipulations as well as a shit hot guitarist; Linnell still has one of the most weirdly soulful voices in rock and a feel for poignant absurdity. [Jan 2022, p.72]- The Wire
Posted Dec 22, 2021 -
- Critic Score
Dragged out doom riffs and saw-edged unison vocals capture their fury and helplessness. [Sep 2016, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Broken Knowz sounds cleaner, more restrained and organic than his previous material. [Dec 2016, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Dec 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Moments illuminate the nimble beats and perky dayglo synthetic patches and above all the fierce resolution of purist independent grime anthems such as “Dem Man Are Dead” and “Badman Walking Through”. [Feb 2020, p.48]- The Wire
Posted Feb 5, 2020 -
- Critic Score
The fit between Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet--whose list of previous collaborators includes Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass--is so natural it’s almost a wonder they haven’t worked together previously. [Mar 2018, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Do Not Disturb, VDGG’s 13th album and their third since regrouping in 2005, bears little evidence of engagement with music’s outside world, but it’s creative and sprightly on its own terms. [Oct 2016, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Nov 8, 2016 -
- Critic Score
It’s a gorgeous sounding album, with a fat, woody drum sound and well-defined bass frequencies that are headphone umami. [Dec 2016, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Dec 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Marc’s production skills are impressive; he layers beautifully recorded organic instruments with synths and sampled vinyl crackle, adding just enough reverb and bass boom to bring it all to vivid life. [May 2022, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Apr 26, 2022 -
- Critic Score
OOIOO retain and reconfigure the most appealing elements of rock music while reimagining the familiar band-as-gang dynamic to suit their own personalities. Charismatic and cool like few contemporary rock bands are, their sense of fun always feels inclusive of the listener. [Feb 2020, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Feb 5, 2020 -
- Critic Score
Long Island may be their heaviest album--some songs introduce enough distortion to qualify as Stoner Metal in the vein of Fu Manchu or Nebula, But for the most part, they do exactly what their name says, grinding along like 1975 will never come. [Feb 2013, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Feb 28, 2013 -
- Critic Score
It feels a little overstuffed, though the effect on the listener isn’t boredom – more enjoyment at an impressive speaker taking up a little more time than expected. [Jun 2025, p.61]- The Wire
Posted May 7, 2025 -
- Critic Score
The threat of salvation has never sounded more eerie. Wake In Fright is about the horror of being too much alive, the horror of all the things people do to escape life while forgetting that any attempt at running away from existence only results in a tightening of its shackles. [Apr 2017, p.- The Wire
Posted Jun 2, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The album embraces bittersweet moods and moulds them into gorgeously transportive but deceptive cuts. [Oct 2020, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Nov 6, 2020 -
- Critic Score
Everything that 30 years ago made Dinosaur Jr a lightning bolt of enervated languor is present here. [Sep 2016, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Hellfire confidently establishes Black Midi as a distinct musical personality. [Jul 2022, p.44]- The Wire
Posted Jul 7, 2022 -
- Critic Score
Everything about the record--the pacing, the choice of sounds--reveals a mature, careful hand. [Dec 2012, p.77]- The Wire
Posted Jan 8, 2013 -
- Critic Score
Moore runs the risk of seeming absorbed in some kind of midlife episode, but he gets away with it by deploying punk spunk as just one of an arsenal of countercultural referents rather than as a means to regain or revisit his youth. [Mar 2013, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Feb 28, 2013 -
- Critic Score
Wire’s newest material sounds like a figment of where Roxy Music might have gone if Eno had stuck around. This is most evident on the menacing, glamorous swagger of “Forever And A Day”. But the sound, if grounded in the past, is focused on the present. Wire still make distinctly modern, distinctly European music. [Apr 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Jun 2, 2017 -
- The Wire
Posted Nov 8, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Undertow makes great use of Baljo’s guitar and Olson’s saxophone; looping them into churning, oozing grooves that recall the metallic swamp of Gnod’s Infinity Machines LP. Within this sickly ambience, bursts of electronic noise erupt and sputter but never dominate. [Apr 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Jun 2, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Intoxicating oddness permeates some of these slow, shimmying jams. [Aug 2020, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Jul 14, 2020 -
- The Wire
Posted Nov 6, 2020 -
- Critic Score
Lightning Dreamers may be over the top and all over the place, but that’s what it takes to project a complete picture of Mazurek’s vision. [Apr 2023, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Apr 14, 2023 -
- The Wire
Posted Oct 21, 2016 -
- The Wire
Posted Dec 9, 2019 -
- Critic Score
While Lattimore is willing to put her instrument through some effects, she never subdues its essential character. Its inherent lightness gives records that bear her name a yielding quality that contrasts with the stark clarity of Baird’s solo work, let alone the body blows delivered by her combo Heron Oblivion. [Dec 2018, p.44]- The Wire
Posted Nov 15, 2018 -
- Critic Score
As inspired as it is, The Return Of Dr Octagon is no sequel. [#269, p.44]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
Throughout, what’s so revelatory and gratifying is hearing Zedek pushed by others and pushing others in turn. [Dec 2016, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Dec 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Time Indefinite feels closer to a documentary soundtrack than a regular solo album. And it tells a poignant story. [May 2025, p.63]- The Wire
Posted Apr 23, 2025 -
- Critic Score
In Arbouretum’s case the song remains much the same, but its continuation is more than welcome. [Apr 2017, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Jun 2, 2017 -
- Critic Score
There’s a luxuriant impulse at work on this second album by the London-based keyboardist and producer. The strings in particular work beautifully on the soporific funk of tunes like “1989” or “Toulouse”, suggesting a Xanaxed Roy Ayers recording for CTI in the mid-70s. Aug 2020, p.68]- The Wire
Posted Jul 23, 2020 -
- Critic Score
[The album] is so blatantly, almost self-consciously pleasurable it should come, like an insalubrious takeaway, with heavy duty napkins. [Apr 2014, p.65]- The Wire
Posted May 8, 2014 -
- Critic Score
What we have here is the hangman’s blues, the alienated piano soliloquies of classical, the wary prayers of gospel, the lustful frustration of R&B, the drugged lightning of rap. Beastmode 2 is Future at his worst, which is to say, Future at his best. [Sep 2018, p.66]- The Wire
Posted Aug 7, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Propulsive and beautifully weighted, this is music of absolute clarity. Sangare’s voice gleams adamantine. [Oct 2020, p.67]- The Wire
Posted Nov 6, 2020 -
- Critic Score
The mix between organic and technological sonics, including the harmonious tones of Williams's own voice, makes for a mesmerising debut. [Sep 2016, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
The music for the horror/revenge fantasy developed from Cosmatos and Jóhannsson’s mutual appreciation of heavy metal and psychotronic cinema, and it shows. [Nov 2018, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Dec 13, 2018 -
- Critic Score
The dryness of the recording is key, there’s an intimacy to everything that makes even the heaviest moments (“Skin A Rat”) feel like you’re hearing them in a dead room, and the shifts in tone from the punchy (“Sorry Entertainer”) to the plangent (“The Greatest”, “Tried To Understand”) and the gorgeous chorale-like (“Feminine Water Turmoil”) remain utterly convincing thanks to Ashworth’s miraculous voice. [May 2022, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Apr 26, 2022 -
- The Wire
Posted Dec 15, 2014 -
- Critic Score
Music to aspire to, music from when it seemed like there might be a future worth dreaming about. [Oct 2020, p.68]- The Wire
Posted Nov 6, 2020 -
- Critic Score
The album feels like paten's mostly mechanically calculated and precise output to date. [Sep 2016, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
The precision and control and grand guignol gothery are all still in place – but there’s also surprise (check the startlingly clean and gorgeous nine minute odyssey of “They Move Below”) and a palpable energy the band haven’t shown in years. [May 2022, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Apr 26, 2022 -
- Critic Score
These tracks embody the heartache arising from Remy struggling with her place, and the place of her sisters, in the world of male power and dominance. [Mar 2018, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
He knows that being the most complete version of himself requires lifelong searching – græ never fails to feel like such a journey. [Aug 2020, p.63]- The Wire
Posted Jul 14, 2020 -
- The Wire
Posted Jul 12, 2018 -
- Critic Score
On top of the crisp, sympathetic playing, the songwriting and vocals stand out with tunes that could have come straight from the Treasure Isle songbook. [Sep 2016, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
While the intellectual territory is familiar, it's explored with similar playfulness and ear for inventive juxtaposition as Papaich's fellow city dwellers Matmos. [Oct 2015, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Oct 13, 2015 -
- Critic Score
Become Zero sees Chesley using digital processing for the first time; “Radiate” benefits greatly, evolving over nine minutes from treated bowed dissonance into churchy ambient drone, while “Machine” adds layers to an initial loping pulse until it’s an enveloping roar. [Oct 2016, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Nov 8, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Archangel Hill is a great album. As dearly as I love her early work, there’s something about Collins’s sound here that feels just right. [Jul 2023, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Jun 7, 2023 -
- Critic Score
This is the adult Metallica at last, monolithic, grandiose and grizzled. Maturity suits the band, makes them a weightier proposition than the pursuit of former glories ever could. [Dec 2016, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Dec 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
On the opening “Asynchronous Intervals”, Golding’s beautifully burnished tenor tone – sumptuously recorded here – plays against free drums that gradually morph into a slowly burning groove. On “ActiveMultiple-Fetish-Overlord”, that tone is broken up against Luthert’s palpitating, roiling low end work. “After The Machine Settles” is muscular jazz rock; “Because Because” with multitracked/echoing soprano, is a stirring conclusion. [May 2022, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Apr 26, 2022 -
- Critic Score
Her taste--for beats at least--isn't that expensive, but is certainly sophisticated, perhaps pointedly so. [Jan 2015, p.74]- The Wire
Posted Dec 16, 2014 -
- Critic Score
He's come up with a debut album that combines vaulting ambition, real musicality and a deceptive deftness of touch. [Jun 2008, p.47]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
This music reminds you how alone you are; it consoles you through its insolubility, comforts you by jabbing you in the chest and letting you know how complex the struggle is, how inaccessible we are to each other but just how universal our pain can be. [Dec 2016, p.63]- The Wire
Posted Dec 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
If there’s a heaven for a gangsta, Eazy-E is smirking down on South Central serene and secure that G Perico is doing immaculate justice to his legacy. [Mar 2018, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Continues along lines that Stereolab have been laying down since the late 1990s: motorik drumming and a swish of keyboards tarversing a linear landscape, with the emphasis on Sadier's laconic, dewy vocals. [#239, p.65]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
Ultimately the album's strength lies in the way its civil facade barely masks Trim's enduring unresolved issues, its portrait of an MC looking to simultaneously escape, dominate and earn the acknowledgement of a scene he transcended a long way back. [Sep 2016, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Oct 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
The vocal arrangements almost all verge on the irritating--overblown neo-gospel--but there’s too much good here to deny on that basis. [Oct 2016, p.63]- The Wire
Posted Nov 8, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Cocoon Crush is, partly, the album that you’d imagine Future Sound Of London’s Lifeforms might have become if they’d had a million times the processing power at their disposal. Poised and composed. [Dec 2018, p.45]- The Wire
Posted Nov 15, 2018 -
- Critic Score
If Wilco have deliberately stepped back from the brink in recent years, the quality has been maintained, and one feels the door is always open for their return. [Jan 2015, p.80]- The Wire
Posted Dec 16, 2014 -
- Critic Score
What unites them through the funk of “Zipper”, the smooth, slightly cheesy pop of “Hottie” and the sudden bursts of metallic dissonance on “Sister/Nation” is a sense of hiphop starting over, moving beyond iconography and iconoclasm into a world where they have absolute freedom to make shit up as they go along. [Feb 2018, p.46]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- The Wire
Posted Mar 9, 2016 -
- Critic Score
It’s the confidence and clarity of Dalt’s vision that makes this album a charming, compelling listen. In its best moments, it’s strange and familiar at once, like a weird, beautiful dream. [Nov 2022, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 13, 2022 -
- The Wire
Posted Jun 2, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Through poetry, wordplay and a sonic palette that seamlessly bridges the human and the mechanical, IRISIRI positions itself at a nexus of sonic and conceptual ambiguity, weaving openended narratives with a logic that eludes straightforward interpretation and exudes genuine wonder and fascination. [Jul 2018, p.45]- The Wire
Posted Jul 13, 2018 -
- Critic Score
LSD is so concentrated, so packed with ideas, that on initial listenings, it's most efficacious when taken in moderate doses. .... Jim and co-producer Torabi have created a best fit from an abundance of available music, and this version of the band does Tim Smith proud, serving his singular vision with brio and love. [Oct 2025, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Sep 19, 2025 -
- Critic Score
However difficult is might appear on first hearing, his music is at once curiously involving and constantly inviting. [#209, p.59]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
One imagines Blue Eyed In The Red Room might serve as an alternative soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. [#252, p.47]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
When you listen to Made Out Of Sound, you feel encouraged to immerse yourself in every note, cherishing the beauty of this otherworldly space. [Apr 2021]- The Wire
Posted Apr 14, 2021 -
- The Wire
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- Critic Score
These are songs with enveloping atmospheres that dramatise their lyrics with crisping, gasping, blinding, thundering, quietly screaming sound design. [Nov 2022, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Oct 12, 2022 -
- Critic Score
Pieces Of Treasure is a moving album from an artist who knows these songs inside out and is smart enough to know when to set knowledge aside, to access each song’s elemental power. [Jun 2023, p.52]- The Wire
Posted May 9, 2023 -
- Critic Score
A collection of grungy, haunting songs that sound and feel timeless. Led by Hersh’s velvety grunts, this is the sort of rock that borrows the best from all the music’s variations to create something familiar yet surprisingly fresh. [May 2022, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Apr 26, 2022 -
- Critic Score
Forget about the backstory, though, and it's clear that h remains a truly innovative MC, and Ultimate Victory is stronger than its predecessor for one reason. [Nov 2007, p.70]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
That this is Spiritualized's most vital and compelling set for a decade suggests that his muse has been galvinised by his near death experience. [May 2008, p.61]- The Wire
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- The Wire
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- Critic Score
He doesn’t strain in the falsetto passages and there’s no papering over the cracks in his phrasing. He’s as accurate and precise as he ever was, projecting even at low volumes. [Aug 2019, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Jul 11, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Drawing on such lofty motifs doesn’t make Dalt’s records any less intimate or enjoyable. Instead, they offer more space for exploring the most vulnerable corners of an artist’s emotional state, by using metaphor and allusion as a way to express the inexpressible. [Jun 2018, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Jul 12, 2018 -
- Critic Score
The payoff is worth the effort. Those who’ve typecast Lombardo as strictly a metal/punk sticksman will be surprised by Rites Of Percussion. [Jun 2023, p.53]- The Wire
Posted May 9, 2023 -
- Critic Score
It carries with it the expressivity of darker electronic take on popular forms, and exchanges the cliches of this UK habit for new and complex alien intimacies. [Oct 2015, p.49]- The Wire
Posted Oct 13, 2015 -
- Critic Score
America’s National Parks is as consistent musically as it is conceptually diverse. What appear on first listen to be reserved essays on grand topics are steadily revealed to be eloquent statements of a mature and unified vision, realised with collective mastery. [Dec 2016, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Dec 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Downbeat, deliberately anticlimactic, refusing to abide by rap orthodoxies, while affirming one of the genre’s dominant reflexes – calling out pretenders. Think of Marceliago as Macbeth transferred to Hempstead, Long Island, or any of the city’s other unacknowledged locales. Marciano’s rhymes read like rap koans. [Feb 2020, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Feb 5, 2020 -
- Critic Score
Virtuosity quickly shades into something inhuman, as every plectrum and drumstick lands inevitably – and thrillingly – on target. [Jun 2023, p.54]- The Wire
Posted May 9, 2023 -
- Critic Score
Its satisfying blend of genres amplifies the best of what both these artists have to offer. [Apr 2026, p.63]- The Wire
Posted Mar 4, 2026 -
- Critic Score
She draws you into the shadows and crumbling concrete of America, a nation in which, as Knowles pointed out in a recent online essay, “a former Ku Klux Klan leader is running for Louisiana senator.” [Dec 2016, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Dec 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
The album opener “Electron Central” sets a blissful, meandering pace, winding around in a shimmering drone like a drop of ink diffusing in a glass of water. ... The album closer “Empty Hold” takes a more unsettled turn, swooning and rattling into a resonant void. [Feb 2020, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Feb 5, 2020 -
- Critic Score
This is still a grand, holistic statement, superbly structured in its 38 minutes of ebb and flow. [Nov 2014, p.66]- The Wire
Posted Dec 15, 2014 -
- Critic Score
While perhaps not the triumphant return that many fans have hoped for, the murky and dystopic excursions of 8 Diagrams are uncompromising, visionary and unique. [Mar 2008, p.62]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
Where Inter Arma employ Cascadian elements and bottomheavy tonalities in order to plumb the depths of the soul, Full Of Hell express the desire to not simply ponder life’s futility but to actively resist those feelings. [Jun 2019, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Jun 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The Future Never Waits (oh, that pesky future!) benefits from the addition of former Coil/Spiritualized/Waterboys keyboard player Thighpaulsandra, who appears to have opened up the band’s sound in such a way that seems almost effortless. [Jul 2023, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Jun 7, 2023 -
- Critic Score
“Pensées Magiques” has little spoken word, yet it somehow perfectly conveys a sense of nightfall across the landscape, as if you and Atkinson are quietly absorbing it together. [Nov 2024, p.48]- The Wire
Posted Nov 14, 2024 -
- Critic Score
They feel energised with Keenan back in the fold, and while the pronounced riffs on the introduction of “Little Man” might hark back to their hardcore days, the emphasis here is on groove. [Feb 2018, p.46]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
While Haram was a bit heavy on the neo-noir vibes, Test Strips bustles with dynamic turns, and guests inspired to step out of character. [Oct 2023, p.51]- The Wire
Posted Sep 27, 2023 -
- Critic Score
An album as complex as this encourages listeners to reflect on themselves. [May 2021, p.46]- The Wire
Posted May 18, 2021 -
- Critic Score
It isn’t Blonde On Blonde or John Wesley Harding – two acknowledged influences, on the decision to go to Nashville, at least – but the sheer energy of association and the adolescent clarity of understanding often yields strikingly subtle results. ... It isn’t always grown-up, but there’s nothing more mature than embracing immaturity. [Nov 2022, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Oct 17, 2022 -
- Critic Score
A captivating fourth album from the Richmond, Virginia outfit that casts a woeful eye over Trump’s America. [Jun 2019, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Jun 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
This is fierce, unpredictable music; her sounds ripple and explode, dropping in from above, rarely settling into a groove. It’s rare to encounter an electronic album that feels quite so specific and personal, despite the ego-dissolving intentions of its meditating creator. [Jun 2018, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Jul 12, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Disturbing and delirious when it's not romantic and hilarious, the songs have a much more direct emotional appeal than the patently surrealistic Alice. [#219, p.72]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
These New Puritans feel better equipped than most to carry that mantle, a vision of English pastoral music heavy with stoicism and solitude; both steeped in, yet strangely unencumbered by history. [Jun 2013, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Jul 3, 2013