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: | 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
While the lack of fixed personnel gives the album a gloriously freewheeling mixtape feel, Remy’s lyrics and persona in these songs, – particularly the wondrous title track and the miraculous “Tux” – demonstrate both a sleep deprived hunger for changes of spiritual and musical trajectory – sometimes within a single song – but also a recurrent return to elemental, physical needs, and the sheer lambent wonder of the grooves and hooks always keeps you rapt. [Mar 2023, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Mar 21, 2023 -
- Critic Score
The way these four strong musical personalities making up the current quartet are moving forward while acknowledging their history gives Thirteen an extra dimension. [Apr 2026, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Apr 14, 2026 -
- Critic Score
The sixth album by this Norwegian power trio is, like each of its predecessors, a fierce demonstration of their strengths as individuals and as a collective. [Feb 2019, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Jan 25, 2019 -
- Critic Score
The combination of simple but taut musicality and literate lyricism is a winning one. [Apr 2021, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Apr 5, 2021 -
- Critic Score
This is warped, tactile and certainly druggy music. However, it's the duo's use of breathless double time flows that vividly replicate the mesmeric metal hum of psychedelics. [Oct 2014, p.64]- The Wire
Posted Dec 2, 2014 -
- Critic Score
The album repeats and reiterates her major concerns--artistic, political--and renders them witty and endearing. [Oct 2013, p.51]- The Wire
Posted Dec 10, 2013 -
- Critic Score
Swans are alive, utterly. A terrible beauty is reborn. [Sep 2010, p.51]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
There’s so much going on in these dense constructions, you’re likely to hear new layers and combinations with each spin. [Oct 2022, p.46]- The Wire
Posted Sep 28, 2022 -
- Critic Score
The pop craftsmanship on display throughout Pangs is just the thing to make vinegary dregs go down easy. [Mar 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Jun 2, 2017 -
- Critic Score
An interesting example of a performer getting more experimental and simultaneously more studio-savvy, Chenaux has produced his best work yet. [Mar 2012, p.51]- The Wire
Posted May 11, 2012 -
- Critic Score
Supple openendedness of texture and the cyclic reoccurrence become one and the same as the music goes on and on – liberating words in time, rather than setting them in stone. [Sep 2020, p.46]- The Wire
Posted Nov 6, 2020 -
- Critic Score
They’re on fire here and now, reassuringly within that sound world you’re familiar with but – perhaps because the album is self-produced – sounding freer, looser and more magnificent than ever. ... A band who’ve clearly lost none of their miraculous touch with their sources, who incredibly seem to have an entirely new lease of life. [Mar 2023, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Mar 21, 2023 -
- Critic Score
It’s the definition of method to madness. The sense of barely controlled chaos, occasionally lashing out in random directions, only adds to the wonder that it holds together and maintains momentum. [May 2023, p.61]- The Wire
Posted May 17, 2023 -
- Critic Score
The album is a well-sequenced 50 minute statement that you can nod your head or trance out to. [Nov 2024, p.48]- The Wire
Posted Oct 21, 2024 -
- Critic Score
A cohesive album in the traditional sense, Hesaitix is an epic world-building exercise littered with simulations of natural beauty. [Dec 2017, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Jan 4, 2018 -
- Critic Score
The album’s stylistic breadth and the cinematic sweep of its production add up to a more polished version of the anthemic, collaborative sound cultivated on the tour, heard on his 2020 Live At Le Guess Who? 2018 album. [Aug 2023, p.51]- The Wire
Posted Jul 26, 2023 -
- Critic Score
It's probably the most conceptually interesting record Squeeze have ever put out and also one of their most consistent and adventurous latterday works. [Apr 2026, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Apr 14, 2026 -
- Critic Score
Hersh’s lyrics are pithy character portraits (“Nola nobility/And you her superhero in drugstore plastic”) peopled with lovers and wanderers (“Where are you walking?/Can I join you?”). Her lyrical brevity matches the straightforwardness of the musical set-up, as well as a well-honed confidence and swagger. [May 2025, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Apr 9, 2025 -
- Critic Score
Like his collaborative music with Peverelist, it's these tracks' mesmerising qualities that give rise to their oblique emotional resonance, even if Utility as an album is relatively low on surprises for an artist whose history to date has been littered with them. [Apr 2016, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Apr 21, 2016 -
- Critic Score
It would be very hard to see Y In Dub as completing the project of taking dub into white punk, but taken on their own, separate terms these tracks are deep and engrossing explorations of a set of possibilities few others have dabbled with. [Nov 2021, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Dec 20, 2021 -
- Critic Score
Thanks to Muldrow, these compositions now bump and swing to the blues of the day. [Sep 2020, p.47]- The Wire
Posted Nov 6, 2020 -
- Critic Score
Nightcap further distinguishes them as more than a clever amalgam of Dead tropes. The shifting time signatures and dramatic dynamics of “Wasted Time” suggest a fondness for Gabriel-era Genesis while the courtly melody and stentorian storytelling of “Altered Place” conjure thoughts of The Moody Blues at their late 1960s zenith. [Jan 2021, p.72]- The Wire
Posted Dec 9, 2020 -
- Critic Score
While it might be hard to hear this music as revolutionary now, there's no denying how commanding and demanding both the tuneful and flat out noisy sections are on modern ears. [Oct 2014, p.70]- The Wire
Posted Dec 2, 2014 -
- Critic Score
Hardly the stuff of revolution, Still Smiling nevertheless feels comfortable in all of its swollen riches. [Oct 2013, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Dec 10, 2013 -
- Critic Score
Despite her apparent striving towards sharpness and clarity, Hatis Noit avoids sterility in these pieces, all eight of which are constructed solely from her voice; while this starkness could leach the emotional impact, instead it is magnified. [Aug 2022, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Jul 13, 2022 -
- Critic Score
By the time you’re through to the end of the album, Negro’s precise refusal to have bullied you with his ideas means you’re happy to return to the beginning and let that sunlight in again. Central heating for kids. Lovely. [Mar 2019, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Mar 20, 2019 -
- Critic Score
Whatever The Weather II showcases James’s creativity and technical mastery as much as her capacity for emotional subtlety, depth and warmth. [May 2025, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Apr 9, 2025 -
- Critic Score
Sorrow is a faithful revision. [Apr 2016, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Apr 21, 2016 -
- 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 -
- The Wire
Posted Dec 20, 2021