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
Electric Trim is Lee Ranaldo’s 12th solo album but it sounds remarkably fresh. [Oct 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
An upbeat yet ultimately wistful record about living, dying, youth, age, wasting time, but also trying not to waste time. [Oct 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
His cartoonish vocals remain charmless, his lyrics as tediously self-referential as ever. [Oct 2017, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The detail and artistry of Take Me Apart more than justify the wait. [Oct 2017, p.56]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Zola Jesus is back to her dark roots, but enriched by intense layers of experience. [Oct 2017, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The sheer density of stylistic markers here is perhaps most representative of the nature of Iglooghost’s production, the album being immersed in the chaos of skittering beats and cut-ups with vivid synth lines that twist, crack and inflate in dazzling clusters. [Oct 2017, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The whole thing seems to aim for slightness (of the disc’s 20 tracks, only seven are over two minutes long), but many of these sketches have the gorgeous, pastoral-futurist texture of Boards Of Canada or The Focus Group. [Oct 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
This is the sort of shtick that the band have been pulling for over two decades, and it's as earnest and laudable as ever. ... Though, the band could also do with a sonic rehaul. [Oct 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
To run with the cinematic analogies, I'd suggest that Frost is the musical equivalent of Nicolas Winding Refn, all neon lit brutality and state of the art emptiness. [Oct 2017, p.52]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The Munster release makes for occasionally uncomfortable listening. [Sep 2017, p.66]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
A few tracks stand apart: "Story Of OJ" and "Mercy Me" both impress for verve and venom if not his every chain of thought. Otherwise it's all so dry that after a couple of listens it feels more like spoken word. [Sep 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Prophets Of Rage can’t help sounding a little male-menopausal even if lyrically the targets remain crucial and the trajectory remains ferocious thanks to the sheer undimmed timbre of Chuck’s meshrattling voice. [Sep 2017, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Parallels frustrates as much as it entrances because it feels like a collection of separate tracks corralled together for expedience. [Sep 2017, p.53]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
How Did I Find Myself Here? is the occasionally thrilling result. [Sep 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Oct 11, 2017 -
- Critic Score
On Bioprodukt, his fourth album for Planet Mu, Edwards’s prolific nature again benefits from the honed ear of label boss Mike Paradinas, who curates a neat ten track journey through recent material. [Jul 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Infinity Ultra keeps going with the introspective synth symphonies, but there are a couple of spots where it’s also up for a party, although maybe one where the dancefloor is full of blissed out narcoleptics. [Aug 2017, p.63]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
This is a deep but balanced record, elegant in its melancholia and experimental. [Jul 2017, p.57]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Circle’s ability to fuse distant or disparate modes and styles is part of what makes their music so compelling. Where attention might before have been generated out of the way it all fitted together, the tension here is more about viscerality, more about the vocal and guitars tearing through your body than seeping into your brain. [Sep 2017, p.48]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Silhouettes & Statues--83 songs across five CDs--is a useful opportunity to take stock of goth’s actual achievements. It charts the genre’s emergence from post-punk, emphasises points of overlap with anarcho, industrial and even synthpop, and ends in 1986 before the arrival of Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and hordes of neo-celtic, pagan folk and cyber goth sub-groupings. [Sep 2017, p.69]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
At some point in the future Tyler, The Creator may define his ideology and grow tedious with it; for now he remains on top form revelling in ambiguity. [Sep 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
“In The South” is a mash-up with Gucci Mane and Pimp C that could’ve snuck on the back end of a posthumous UGK set. [Sep 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Every beat is a slow motion epic, every hook aches with promethazine exhaustion transcended through force of will. [Sep 2017, p.62]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
[New Facts Emerge] finds the group in passable but not especially inspiring form. [Sep 2017, p.59]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Nothing Is Quick In The Desert shows them in fantastic form, sidestepping those laboured moments of musical correctness that made 2015’s Man Plans, God Laughs so patchy, and focusing on the kind of ear-popping chaos that made so much of 1994’s Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age so uniquely addictive. [Sep 2017, p.55]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Dreaming In The Non-Dream is a protest record through and through. It captures a rabid collective frustration and expels it with a palpable urgency. The fact that Forsyth and the rest of his group can do it with an eloquence that’s hard to summon in these dire times makes it all the more rewarding. [Sep 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
For just a few moments [on "Slow Your Roll"] there’s an unmistakeable sense that what’s already a decent album could have been a whole lot better, could have been inspirational. [Sep 2017, p.50]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Lack doesn't allow so much for meditation, forcing the listener to confront its continued presence through interjections of anxious vocal exercises and crashing echoes, industrial scrapes and human ululations. [Sep 2017, p.49]- The Wire
Posted Sep 1, 2017 -
- Critic Score
The meat of the set almost certainly wouldn’t have been released if Prince were still with us. ... They add up to arguably the strongest new set of Prince recordings since Lovesexy. [Aug 2017, p.70]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
What’s most thrilling about Big Fish Theory is that it doesn’t sound leftfield or challenging; instead it provides a scintillating snapshot of both the state of the art and the untold history of underground black music for the past 30 years. [Aug 2017, p.65]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017 -
- Critic Score
Pussycat is as excoriating and pitiless as anything Jenny Hval has produced to date and just as unflinching in its analysis of gender politics (the Wire-ish “Sex Machine” manages to be funny, poignant and upsetting) plus Hatfield cranks out some cathartic Ragged Glory solos (which could easily go on for twice as long as they do) and proves herself a fearlessly uninhibited vocal stylist to boot. Good work. [Aug 2017, p.61]- The Wire
Posted Aug 9, 2017