The Wire's Scores

  • Music
For 2,880 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 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: 100 SMiLE
Lowest review score: 10 Amazing Grace
Score distribution:
2880 music reviews
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    While I'm A Dreamer looks back the best part of a century, sepia cover photo and all, it never simply lapses into pastiche. [Nov 2013, p.54]
    • The Wire
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Frost's most fully realised work to date. [May 2014, p.62]
    • The Wire
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Their current incarnation has an almost puppyish energy and optimism which makes the album's 34-minutes seem even shorter and more repeatable. [Sep 2015, p.54]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Debut album Labyrinth is Kanda’s most sophisticated solo effort to date, swaying through 13 tracks of gorgeous melodies and electroacoustic layers that skip and skitter between beats and material states. [Dec 2019, p.48]
    • The Wire
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What works so well here is that all the elements are pursued with equal intensity. It is not that noise cedes to the electronics, or the guitars make way for the voice, or turns are taken. On the contrary, everything is plugged in, blindly ongoing without lessening. [Dec 2017, p.50]
    • The Wire
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cope’s wit and poetic skills remain as sharp as his playing, all of which is further illuminated with swathes of nostalgic Mellotron and tenderly plucked acoustic guitar. [Mar 2025, p.59]
    • The Wire
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Becs is something of a return, then, but equally it demonstrates that the guitarist's approach to pop composition has developed considerably over the past 13 years. [May 2014, p.83]
    • The Wire
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What makes this set so compelling is its mapping of the rapid shifts in Davis's music within shorter periods. [Oct 2015, p.68]
    • The Wire
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Cauda Venenum is a peculiarly convincing example of retro rock but that’s not to say the album is anchored to one particular scene or era. ... What’s also helpful is that frontman and bandleader Mikael Åkerfeldt has one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary rock, an impassioned croon whose soulfulness defuses any potential for pomposity. [Dec 2019, p.57]
    • The Wire
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Guerilla Toss’s music is now disarming in its earnest post-digital exuberance and cutesy directness, while a fragile thematic framework holds it all together. In the process of getting here, they traded their convulsive rock progressions for slowly decaying walls of texture and Kassie Carlson’s Auto-Tuned vocals. The effervescent bangers “Live Exponential” and “Mermaid Airplane” are especially awesome. [Apr 2022, p.56]
    • The Wire
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Even more than on past outings, Kirby seems drawn to a sense of disconnect, refusing to let the elements of each track interact with one another. Yet Dead Empires is also rich with experiments and surprises. [Nov 2013, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A lovely collection full of ethereal evocations of the past. [Feb 2016, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An album that for the most part is ebulliently nasty pop, the monumental “Big Steppa” and the gleefully foul “No Face” in particular will be irresistible to anyone raised on Trina and Missy Elliott, daring us to switch off as the party spirals out of control. [Nov 2022, p.73]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Objects scraped, rubbed, manipulated and plucked from their natural environments for the richness of their attack, decay and luxurious resonance here produce a superbly rich, tuneful and intricately rhythmic music. [Jul 2025, p.56]
    • The Wire
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Clearing isn't a work of artfully suspended melancholy which leaves the listener wanting and wondering00it gestures ahead toward comfort and resolution. [Jun 2015, p.48]
    • The Wire
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 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
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Springtime’s music feels free, but never carefree, full of spontaneity, acidity and momentum, sputtering in a thousand different, noisy directions at once. [Dec 2021, p.56]
    • The Wire
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A thrilling affair. [#252, p.63]
    • The Wire
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's not so much a return to first principals as a 3D reboot of the homicidal stoner aesthetic established between 1991-1995 with Cypress Hill, Black Sunday and Temples Of Boom. [Nov 2018, p.52]
    • The Wire
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Even beyond this shared ending/beginning, the new material flows like a continuation of the previous album, but with a more progressive and tenser edge to it. [Apr 2022, p.56]
    • The Wire
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sometimes he might repeat tricks, but his is a freedom few will ever know. [Feb 2016, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As Jackie Lynn, Fohr’s voice still occupies center stage, but it does so within synthesized set pieces crafted for her to inhabit. Like a hotel decked out with themed rooms, each song on Jacqueline has its own fine-tuned palette and nostalgia-tinged lighting scheme. [Apr 2020, p.49]
    • The Wire
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 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
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Their newest struts and froths like the wild-eyed offspring of Deerhoof and Thundercat, raised in the swamps on little but No New York and toadstools. At turns, it’s impossibly upbeat--something like a Martian single parent’s go-to motivational album--and spasmodically funky, in the best tradition of Bernie Worrell-era Talking Heads, flipped on 45. [Nov 2018, p.54]
    • The Wire
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Despite the celebratory atmosphere, the group's air of menace remains intact. [Sep 2014, p.54]
    • The Wire
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! sees Cave at his wittiest and most relaxed, though perhaps also most detatched. [Apr 2008, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strike a rich vein of form. ... This record lacks a stated motif, but finds the musician digging into the American primitive style (which has often been at least in the orbit of his playing) more keenly than before. “Celerity”, “Enville” and “Vellum”, deft instrumentals all, sit ably in Fahey/Basho territory. [Apr 2020, p.50]
    • The Wire
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Throughout In These Times McCraven displays a preternatural ability at composing outside of 4/4 time, his oddly metred pieces built upon ear-catching melodies and dynamic rhythmic interplay. ... In These Times encompasses the fire and natural eclecticism found in the best contemporary jazz.
    • The Wire
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s heavyweight stuff delivered with a beautiful lightness of touch. [Nov 2022, p.73]
    • The Wire
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s gorgeous stuff, but whether the future she imagines is entropic or hopeful, it’s hard to say. [Mar 2024, p.57]
    • The Wire