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
Sadly much of Music Is A Hungry Ghost is marred by a pebbledash of clicks and glitches -- that already overused signifier of au courant production. [#207, p.87]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
As a prank or a statement, Expekoration is a particularly lazy one. [Dec 2010, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Dec 22, 2010 -
- Critic Score
It all makes for an album which is strangely boring; the baroque detailing becomes an inaudiable blur. [Dec 2008, p.65]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
If narcoleptically bland neo-soul is your bag, you’re in luck. A parade of guest singers and rappers do nothing to inject any interest. [Sep 2023, p.69]- The Wire
Posted Aug 8, 2023 -
- Critic Score
Fay aficionados may be unsettled that our man seems to have been kidnapped by aliens and reprogrammed as a frail new age gospel singer. Eccentricity is kept to a minimum, as thin songwriting is padded out by repetitive chanting of a chorus's final line. [May 2015, p.49]- The Wire
Posted May 15, 2015 -
- Critic Score
The epic slog of Culture II offers up more than 20 courses of candyfloss, toffee apple and burnt syrup in lieu of any real variety. [Apr 2018, p.68]- The Wire
Posted Apr 5, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Hayward sounds bored, Coxon throws out Clapton-ish licks, and Taylor's milk-and-water vocals make him sound like the younger brother of The Beautiful South's Paul Heaton. Only Thomas seems willing to inject any imagination into the songs. [Apr 2011, p.52]- The Wire
Posted May 3, 2011 -
- Critic Score
There's little to set the sombre half-tones of the Cave and Seed world alight with suspicous glimmers. [#228, p.59]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
Throughout this solo effort--his fourth, for what it's worth--Callahan mumbles ever onward like a charmless, tranquillised version of Giant Sand's Howe Gelb. [Apr 2011, p.55]- The Wire
Posted May 3, 2011 -
- Critic Score
Pleasant, yes, but not much more.... Too many of these 'songs' snap off at around the three or four minute mark, just as they start to get interesting.... It sounds consistently half-there. [#208, p.52]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
If the Wu-Tang Clan's A Better Tomorrow was a shoddy attempt at cinematic audio in a Hollywood blockbuster sense, this is the arthouse variety show alternative with caricature Ghost as compere. [Sep 2015, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Sep 2, 2015 -
- Critic Score
It all sounds very loose and off the cuff, but any positive sense of spontaneity is sabotaged by a delivery so careless it borders on the sloppy. [#229, p.68]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
This may be the first solo Eno work that is entirely without interest. It is bafflingly below par. [Dec 2010, p.45]- The Wire
Posted Mar 1, 2011 -
- Critic Score
PSB celebrate an idea of fusty Britishness but lack the imagination, intelligence or inclination to interrogate it or in fact add anything at all to the discourse. [May 2013, p.59]- The Wire
Posted May 3, 2013 -
- Critic Score
[Tipsy] painstakingly process small episodes of manufactured excess and thoughtless musical effect into tracks evoking the giddy pleasures to be found in running your favourite party tapes at the wrong speed. [#206, p.81]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
Given the sprawling length, naturally it's not devoid of a few stray gems and curiosities. [Oct 2011, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Dec 6, 2011 -
- Critic Score
This trio are rarely an ecstatic proposition, preferring the slow burn to the white flame, but in truth there's little heat here at all. [Aug 2015, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Aug 14, 2015 -
- Critic Score
Sadly their rather airless space rock doesn't really lift off beyond a certain Ambient politeness. [#244, p.66]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
Despite the bloodlettting and reckless spending, Future just sounds bored. And occasionally lazy. [Apr 2016, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Mar 22, 2016 -
- Critic Score
The track ["Power Circle"] and the entire album seems to lose its air after he [Gunplay] makes his exit. [Aug 2012, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Aug 2, 2012 -
- Critic Score
Even in the midst of the fairly wretched Phase Two there are gems but you sure have to dig for them. [Feb 2016, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Feb 18, 2016 -
- Critic Score
Pop itself is not a problem, it's just that in Tarwater's take on it nagging tunes and interesting textures are in short supply. [#253, p.65]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
Not enough of Drukqs confidently breaks new ground, and too often James falls back on the all too familiar dysfunctional jitterbeat which has typified Aphex output since 1996's Richard D James album. [#212, p.55]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
Preparations is a tediously uneven listen that drags on despite its 31 minutes running time. [Oct 2007, p. 63]- The Wire
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- Critic Score
There is no shortage of bad ideas on the second installment.... But this ugliness is anchored by a series of largely curatorial successes. [May 2013, p.68]- The Wire
Posted Apr 24, 2013 -
- Critic Score
Another slapdash cash-in from masked rap's last bastion. [Sep 2012, p.60]- The Wire
Posted Oct 3, 2012 -
- Critic Score
The rest of the album makes the distance between now and (Berlin) then of "Where Are We Now?" painfully evident, a pain heightened by Visconti's failure to convert this collection of session muso workouts into anything memorable. [May 2013, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Apr 24, 2013 -
- Critic Score
Sadly it feels like the gestation period has robbed Joker's music of some of its immediacy. [Nov 2011, p.72]- The Wire
Posted Dec 6, 2011 -
- Critic Score
Much of the album's faults are down to Smith. Rather than steering the collective ship, his voice, slurred to the point of incomprehensibility, barely connects with the others. [Dec 2014, p.48]- The Wire
Posted Dec 16, 2014 -
- Critic Score
Almost without exception, these 11 tracks lurch along at a donkey's pace that seems designed to signify grace and dignity, while the crystal cave reverb applied with such liberality by Randall Dunn, producer of choice for the likes of Sunn 0))), Wolves In The Throne Room and Earth, seems after the nth track to cloak a more profound problem, which is that much of the material on Strangers is thin pickings. [Jun 2016, p.54]- The Wire
Posted Jul 18, 2016