The Wire's Scores
- Music
For 2,879 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: 2,404 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
The Blow excel at cold wave beats and detached machine pop. But much of this sounds a bit too defeated, or needs some more of their nicely weird online humour to offset the gloom. They sound stronger and more substantial on the souped up “Get Up” which embraces its own Debbie Downer side and promises “I want to come through, persist/ I’m going to form all my selves into the shape of a fist”. [Apr 2018, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Apr 5, 2018 -
- Critic Score
It’s not a bad record--if nothing else it goes some way to atoning for the disappointment of AC/DC rather than Ghostface landing on the Iron Man 2 soundtrack--but it could have been so much more. [Apr 2018, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Apr 5, 2018 -
- Critic Score
The result is often similar in sound to the classic Malian groups, but much gnarlier. ... The drumming is a pummelling, clattering hailstorm of toms and snares, thrashed out at heart attack tempos. It’s all-consuming, exhilarating and fearfully hard playing, and as a truly disorienting backdrop to a virtuoso band, it pushes Tal National’s music into the realm of the unique.[Mar 2018, p.51]- The Wire
Posted Mar 12, 2018 -
- Critic Score
The album’s strongest moments aren’t the existential musings of “Marathon” or “World Of Flaws” but the palpable joy when he reflects on his everyday life in the ebullient title track, and the problematic yet precious local pride of “Brixton Baby”. [Mar 2018, p.47]- The Wire
Posted Mar 12, 2018 -
- The Wire
Posted Mar 2, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Haino’s signature detonations and Yacyshyn’s punctuation leapfrog each other, creating a Möbius strip of energy that escalates freely without falling--a tightrope walk that American Dollar Bill has been building towards all along. [Mar 2018, p.48]- The Wire
Posted Mar 1, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Drift is thoughtfully and firmly wistful, an acoustic fireside plainsong with odd interference from a distant radio and neurotic strings (“Sleep”) or, in the vein of a Yankee Tindersticks, practising delicate odes to the simple pleasures of touch, free time and, perhaps, the timefree. [Mar 2018, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Mar 1, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Craft and primitivism are often presented as opposites, but here they complement each other so completely that you couldn’t have one without the other. [Mar 2018, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Mar 1, 2018 -
- Critic Score
The live material captures a potent clash of styles and reminds that progressive rock was not necessarily a pseudo classical confection. [Mar 2018, p.66]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Estrella Sanchez and Amor Amezcua (daughter of Mexican rave icon Bostich) avoided the trap of a rushed debut album, and Pasar De Las Luces justifies the simmering approach, albeit too long at 64 minutes. [Mar 2018, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
I’d say that the seething intransigence of Impossible Star is precisely what makes it so compelling. A release whose glittering details and dusty undertow can’t obscure how appalled it is. [Feb 2018, p.51]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Unsurprisingly, Badu’s is the least pretentious, the least bogged down in gushing musical detail; it’s also the most politically woke and personally reflective. It is perhaps the most in tune with Fela’s own unique worldview, with eternal struggle as a way of life. [Feb 2018, p.65]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Souleyman’s most recent excursion is seriously upfront music. The Syrian singer’s electro-hype dabke burnouts seem to have been ratchetted up to a degree that makes his own past efforts seem quite mellow. [Feb 2018, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
The closer “World” is the culmination of these trials, in which fragments of sound--runs of keys with the uncanny quality of speech, shadowy static, heavily abstract synthesized choirs--drift in a deeply organic and warm silence. [Feb 2018, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
The ninth album from Wolverhampton born singer-guitarist and producer Stephen James Wilkinson is even more vague and numinous than 2016’s A Mineral Love and far better for it. [Feb 2018, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
I Like Fun isn’t as dazzlingly hyperkinetic as 2013’s Nanobots but retains the rich melodic content, complex songcraft and dynamic impact of 2015’s Glean and 2016’s Phone Power. It’s also their funkiest album since 2007’s Dust Brothers-assisted The Else. [Feb 2018, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Xylouris and White seem to have decided take advantage of all available resources, adding stylistic, instrumental and emotional variety without sacrificing the looseness of their early work. The busman’s holiday is over, but the party continues. [Feb 2018, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Thanks to Tune-Yards’ trademark genre splicing--demented nursery rhyme chanting, jerky rapping, tortured harmonising and stuttery 808 beats--Private Life shows there’s still space for playfulness amid the polemic. [Mar 218, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Most songs are laid over a percussion track that despite the occasional presence of Max Kennedy Roach is mostly programmed and staccato. It’s not a classic, but the songs are as urgent and effective as ever and you’re recommended to complete the course. [Mar 2018, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Chosen topics prove less crucial than his relentlessly tedious delivery. [Feb 2018, p.51]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Not everything is great--in particular “Lifting You” with Ed Sheeran is about as limp as you’d expect--but even the clumsier moments feel relevant and contemporary. [Feb 2018, p.51]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- 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
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 -
- 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
Much of their output since has been consolatory rather than essential, and ultimately Clone Of The Universe can’t quite escape that tag, but Fu Manchu remain justly loyal to old production values--absurd amounts of bottom end and tube fuzz, basically. [Mar 2018, p.58]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- 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
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
Absolutely gorgeous. ... It’s as clear, translucent and dazzling as the medium it both plays with and describes. [Mar 2018, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Pissing Stars sees his songwriting separate more fully from the motherships of Silver Mt Zion and GY!BE, skirting new fringes only a solo artist could reach. [Mar 2018, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018 -
- Critic Score
Tahoe is a record for after the fall, after the collapse, a compulsive soundtrack for an age that is both post-natural and post-virtual. [Mar 218, p.46]- The Wire
Posted Feb 23, 2018