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: 100 SMiLE
Lowest review score: 10 Amazing Grace
Score distribution:
2879 music reviews
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Most of Infinity Machines' 110 minutes consists of lengthy, evolving jams build upon elephant's heartbeats bass beats overlaid by slowly building washes or jabbing trills of analogue synth, brain-sucking white noise and wailing saxophone. The later adds greatly to the miasmic atmospheres. [Apr 2015, p.56]
    • The Wire
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    anyone who buys this with the idea of getting significantly reworked material will be disappointed. [May 2015, p.63]
    • The Wire
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One has to look back to the golden age of the West African guitar bands to find this level of complexity executed with such brazen confidence and ability. [May 2015, p.59]
    • The Wire
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Summoning Suns is too derivative to be a major work, but it shows promise. [Mar 2015, p.46]
    • The Wire
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is the first music that feels genuinely post-referendum. [Jan 2015, p.68]
    • The Wire
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    His music has an airless, contrived and over-polished quality. However, the production style developed by his team of collaborators is glacially impressive, if gloomy. [Apr 2015, p.66]
    • The Wire
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Over melodic, it sounds like it was made by a TV composer working to a brief for a rave episode. [Apr 2015, p.65]
    • The Wire
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    On tracks with genuine maverick talents like E-40, his fundamental lack of character appears (or disappears) in sharp relief. [Apr 2015, p.65]
    • The Wire
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wire agenda stays constant in a changing world. [Apr 2015, p.63]
    • The Wire
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Black & Gold has a poise, purpose and maturity not heard before. [Apr 2015, p.63]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Its feel is psychedelic but strong. [Apr 2015, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The album exhibits two players of formidable range and ability. [Apr 2015, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fantasy Empire stands out from run of the mill noise rock because it captures not only the ferocity of the playing, but also the fecundity of sharp and serious ideas that lesser acts cannot match. [Apr 2015, p.58]
    • The Wire
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    While the high energy interplay between the players remains solid, their proto-punk edginess is less pronounced. [Apr 2015, p.54]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With its warm timbres and cushioning delays, sonically Captain Of None is Colleen's most approachable record yet. [Apr 2015, p.52]
    • The Wire
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Complex puzzles for nimble feet to crack, custom-built for dancing. [Apr 2015, p.52]
    • The Wire
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    IDLSIDGO is monumental in its willingness to just be a great rap album. [May 2015, p.59]
    • The Wire
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A series of hermetic, drifting analogue tracks sprawling over eight sides of vinyl. The occasional bizarre touches of the more conventional numbers show his techniques best. [May 2015, p.59]
    • The Wire
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The transitions are typically brusque, though a few feel unsatisfying, creating drops in tension. [May 2015, p.58]
    • The Wire
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Sonics actually sound like they're back. [May 2015, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The second CD is noisier at times, and more surprising overall, introducing new instruments to powerful effect. [May 2015, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lamar offers a commitment to effect change through the work itself. Whether or not that's realistic ideal the delivery is so powerful it's hard not to get caught up in the rapture. [May 2015, p.50]
    • The Wire
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The ten laptop compositions of Platform are brilliant, thrilling articulations of many of her ideas. [May 2015, p.50]
    • The Wire
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Perhaps their most forceful to date. [May 2015, p.49]
    • The Wire
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 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
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    At times it takes an effort to differentiate Hive1 from many other of the gentle experimental works involving modular synthesizers across the decades, despite its unique origins. But there are subtle--and again, intensive--surprises scattered throughout, both in sounds and forms. [May 2015, p.47]
    • The Wire
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The clunkier, funkier patterns mapped out here have something proufound to say about the relationship between us and our technological world, about where our dancing and moving bodies fit in among the conurbations and databanks of our lives. [Apr 2015, p.57]
    • The Wire
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's a series of blows that fail to connect.... Taken on its own terms, divorced from the genre to which it owes its existence The Ark Work's dogged pursuit of incongruous juxtaposition can be hugely entertaining. [Apr 2015, p.53]
    • The Wire
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Somehow unconvincing, it's like beach bar escapism spliced with an incidental tune from the TV comedy show The Mighty Boosh. [Mar 2015, p.60]
    • The Wire
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    With Primrose Green, Walker is in a larger collective setting and it works in his favour. A mixed bag of Chicago musicians concoct a pleasant, hazy feel to the proceedings. [Mar 2015, p.54]
    • The Wire