Tiny Mix Tapes' Scores

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For 2,889 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Lost Wisdom pt. 2
Lowest review score: 0 America's Sweetheart
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,804 out of 2889
  2. Mixed: 961 out of 2889
  3. Negative: 124 out of 2889
2889 music reviews
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    • 89 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    St. Vincent
    St. Vincent dances with themes (family, success and the absence thereof, the isolation of the digital) but only ever seems to fringe against them in a way that doesn’t let the record add up to more than the sum of its parts.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    RTJ2
    There’s something to be said for two masters of their craft talking jazz for the joy of it, but to me, the question remains whether or not this kind of jazz is played out.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Foundations of Burden
    Foundations of Burden is special, there’s little question of that, but the precocious virtuosity of the performance doesn’t change the fact that the material is far from challenging.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fishscale
    Fishscale is a confusing journey: far from a disappointment, it breathes new life into the legacy of Ghostface without blowing too hard, and for that we should be thankful. But to champion his latest as equal or, god forbid, superior to past albums in any way, shape, or form is laughable, as years-removed and repeated listens will bear out.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Hairshirt Of Purpose
    Pile are at their strongest when involved in slippages, designed moments of elasticity and indecision, effects incidental.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The River & the Thread
    The River & The Thread transcends its geographical markers. It is an open-hearted piece of Americana, filled with music that is literate, narrative, and just a little bit strange.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Summertime '06
    The album may sprawl too widely, but its second disc makes a strong argument for the continuity and self-awareness of the whole package.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Let's Stay Friends
    At best, the record is filled with remnants of bottled anger and expelled demons. At worst, it’s filled with the kind of angsty cries typically read in pouty 14-year-olds’ LiveJournals.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freedom
    Freedom is not a “challenging” listen, but choruses or hummable melodies are few; rather, the album progresses at a loping, steady pace, as if somehow delivered by natural rhythm.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Drawn In Basic
    Drawn In Basic is an enjoyable electronic pop record, one well-suited to late, sleepless nights. With echoes of a distant club resounding in its subdued beats and hushed vocals, this is a dreamy record of lullabies for the dance-floor set.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    LP1
    No longer a statement and certainly abandoning the vanguard, it’s still some sort of map of some sort of territory, a specific body and a specific sexuality in a specific sonic present/presence.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Inspiration Information/Wings of Love
    Unlike the greatest movements of his previous albums, Wings of Love’s diversity is its greatest fault, as 14 tracks visit musical fads long forgotten and ill conceived.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    David Comes To Life
    Between the overlong, overstuffed songs and arrangements, ridiculous album concept and lyrical conceit, there's no room left for the vicious, hurtling energy that first impressed me on Hidden World's best songs.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Life...The Best Game In Town
    All jokings aside, this record is downright GNARLY despite its hang-ups, impossible to wash from the soul and probably the thickest, grittiest substance you ever did see.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Helplessness Blues
    While Helplessness Blues is sparser and more restrained than its predecessor, it's also spotted by unexpected flourishes that are almost experimental by the band's traditionalist standard.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Moon
    You can hear him trying to figure things out, and that’s the most lasting and vital aspect of New Moon.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Drift
    This new album is relentlessly dark, disjointed, and disturbing. While there exist elements of his pop past -- gorgeous string sections, delicate guitars, bombastic drums -- there's nothing like a song here.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Smother
    Overall, Smother seems to be missing purpose. I hear those careful ruminations on relationships, and I hear the pain that evidently went into this, but it leaves me cold.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Veckatimest
    The result is a piece of art that had too much pressure ascribed to it, that found its creators trying too hard to make a masterpiece when they could have followed a more natural progression.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's Harvest
    Where the dog-eared, snapshot ambient wooze of Twoism and Geogaddi once harbored a feverish throb, Tomorrow’s Harvest now prickles with hollow spaces: a fragmentary, pixelated symbolism has been lost in the construction of an outline of a broader system.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This Right Here Is Buck 65
    This exact formula probably will function well with the new listeners, although it's hard to imagine someone appreciating Buck65 for all he's worth without being familiar with his earlier work.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Pretty Toney Album
    Unfortunately, The Pretty Toney Album falls short in replacing what Raekwon had contributed to Ghost's previous album releases, causing the album to feel essentially incomplete.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Negro Swan
    Perhaps Negro Swan is merely a step along the way, as Blood Orange continues to contend with monolithic, difficult ideas, but for now, this patchwork of sweltering grooves, amicable conversations, and urban ambience remains limited in its vision.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dark Days/Light Years
    The stakes are low for Super Furry Animals, with their dedicated fanbase and slim commercial prospects, and the music reflects this. They’re a legitimately great band, but sometimes one can’t help but escape the feeling that all of their dedication is in service of a joke.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Currents
    The most frustrating thing about Currents is that, for probably the first time, it seems like Parker is writing songs that would be pretty decent and probably interesting if he freed them from this musty aesthetic and gave them room to express themselves.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Take Me Apart
    For the most part, Take Me Apart is sonically more akin to a soundtrack, one for neon-tinged late-night driving. Or for bedrooms with ceiling mirrors--those slippery reflections.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Modern Vampires of the City
    It’s an honest delivery, but they are essentially preaching to the choir.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
    Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress’ is not a failure; it’s merely familiar.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tha Carter III
    Now, equipped with the stylish, but too-often substance-less Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne seems poised to flip the script on the “rapper racists” (radio stations, MTV) by evolving into the “biggest” rapper alive.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Abused Animal
    Oftentimes she’s content to let one spidery riff circle the drain endlessly (“Quicksand”) and more than once she goes completely a cappella, an effect that would normally lend an album a sense of intimacy, but I Abused Animal seems resistant to emotional refuge.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Soft Sounds From Another Planet
    Ultimately, Soft Sounds is an uneven experience, stylistically and in terms of (this listener’s) engagement. But still, in the shimmering hooky synthpop of “Machinist,” the Morrissey-esque lilt of “Boyish,” there are bright stars hanging in the firmament.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bright Ideas
    Portastatic is exactly as advertised: catchy, sometimes dumb, occasionally rockin', but always at least competent pop.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ekstasis
    Ekstasis is a lovely record. Bedroom pop that floats and swoons, it has a lightness to it at the same time as a real sense of seriousness and ambition.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harmonicraft
    Harmonicraft is a short, sweet collection of pop-metal confectionery, irresistible if not unforgettable.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    July
    In the end, it’s the vague, shapeless, and undefined nature of the fancies her protagonists chase that partly undermines the album’s substance, since without any clear delimitation of their supposedly particular aspirations it’s a little hard to sympathize with her characters and see in them anything more than cowardly, flighty children who ought to grow up.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Until the Quiet Comes
    Until the Quiet Comes isn't bad, exactly. It's just definitely not good either.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Attack On Memory
    Here, Cloud Nothings move past the slacker touches that marked their first releases, their gestures getting bigger and broader as they make attempts at emotional universality.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    case/lang/veirs
    Poetry aside, none of these 14 songs are highlights of any of the three artists’ vast catalogs. The stories and the production alike are pure sunshine, which often passes into the saccharine.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Faking The Books
    Listening to Faking the Books makes you feel utterly alone; and maybe that's the whole point.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lisbon
    The Walkmen are that rare band that can stretch into all manner of different shapes and retain their oneness with the rock gods, and they've held onto the zeal that made them stand out like a diamond among the other jeweled NYC bands with impeccable resumes in the early aughts.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rival Dealer [EP]
    Rival Dealer might be an intrepid leap for Burial, but the music is ultimately obscured by his intention to share a positive message through the most glaring of means.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Uproot
    This is not going to appeal to a wide swath of people, but DJs who take advantage of the late hours of a petering-out dance party to play dubstep and spacey ambient techno will surely appreciate the vibe here.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Arrowhead
    Arrowhead is unfortunately not among the stronger things he’s released.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Songs of Praise
    Despite Shame’s lyrical foibles, they evince a prodigious adeptness for musicianship, and though Songs of Praise isn’t the most arresting debut by a garage band, there are far worse places to start.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Age Of
    Because the album can’t be one complete thing, Age Of is its own archenemy; its own princess stranded in a high castle; its own climb up the Holy Mountain. A radical incompleteness haunts it.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    23
    So when the repetitive rhythms of 23 don’t bowl you over like the first synth lines of Melody, allow yourself the opportunity to sit through its entirety. What you’ll find is an album that reveals its true personality slowly, surely, and yes, lovingly.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    B'lieve I'm Goin' Down
    Of course, songs like the playful “Lost My Head There” and the searching “Dust Bunnies” could just as easily be about the consequences of excessive drug consumption or no-less excessive levels of modern stress, yet the persistence of the self-alienation motif amid slanted nods to his career in music end up strongly insinuating that his growing status as a rock icon is weakening the already weak hold he has over himself.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
    This is the new big British band? This is barely inspired enough to make it off campus.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    East Of Eden
    While Eden’s Eastern flavor is certainly enjoyable, it walks a thin line between cultural exploration and exploitation.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper
    As it stands, the album sounds like Panda Bear at the height of his unchecked, uncompromised (and, therefore, at times uninventive) powers.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Vintage Burden
    A Vintage Burden is well-executed, spare, and in the simplest terms, makes wonderful Sunday morning background music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Great Destroyer
    Half a good album, half disastrously wrong.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Frozen Orange
    While I am not one to fault Kilgour for slowing things down a little, an impatient listener might argue that Frozen Orange shows Kilgour's age in the same ways Yo La Tengo's Summer Sun belied theirs.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lost Wisdom
    Elverum is reveling in his honest moment of awe. In doing so, he has sloshed away the Norwegian frost with a mittened hand, a frost that kept these songs so chilling.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Compton
    Compton itself is a part of this little something too, because even though it fails to make a clear artistic statement, it houses some of the finest hip-hop production Dre has turned in for years, and proves that the city has much more going for it than just a bad reputation.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pattern + Grid World
    Although you'd be hard pressed, but very pleased, to find a shindig entirely amenable to FlyLo's relentlessly eccentric experiments, Pattern+Grid World is certainly more pillow fight than lounge party.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Painted Ruins
    With nary an aural step forward from their hitherto records, Painted Ruins ends much in the same way it begins, not with a bang, but with a drone.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sauna
    On Sauna, Elverum’s attempts to mimic heavy metal rock ballads, Tim Hecker, and certain so-called “holy” and unholy minimalists alike, feel inconsequential and compositionally uninteresting. That’s not to say that every citation falls flat.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
    Like ghosts that don’t know they’re dead, the songs on Deerhunter’s Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? wander about in a well-produced limbo almost in mourning for the death they can’t die. But they don’t know it, so--and this is the saddest part about it--they become what they deplore, all loss glossed over.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Universal Audio
    Melodies are practically nonexistent, leaving the music almost completely ignorable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wakin on a Pretty Daze
    The songs of his that have stood out most are the ones that at least try to meet the listener halfway, the ones that betray the deep-seeded enthusiasm underlying Vile’s laid-back, stoner(-esque — he’s a family guy, now) cool. While such material can still be found on Wakin on a Pretty Daze, locating it is becoming more and more of a chore.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Smoke Ring for My Halo
    For its circuitousness, there's always been a lean, mean backbone to the guy's writing; even his most bored-sounding toss-offs came wrapped in barbed wire. Here, he just kinda sounds bored.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rather Ripped
    Rather Ripped comes off as a collection of good-and-great songs, but it just isn't up there with their best.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's Blitz
    From most bands, half of a great record would be an incredible accomplishment, but we’ve heard so much better from them.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Contra
    Contra isn't really that bad, yet it's also not nearly sturdy enough to maintain the puppy-love, Obama-esque crush many of us have had on them.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Help
    It’s fairer to say that this album fails me because these 12 tracks are simply not interesting enough, especially for a band that was always so visceral and engaging.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Avi Buffalo
    The earth will remain unshattered by this release, but that's okay; there'll be time enough for rocking when we're old.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mien
    While the songs here are not memorable in the buzzer-beating manner of a title shot, no one would prefer a world where all-star matches were missing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Deep Politics
    The intensity of their work comes from a great deal of poise and restraint, but as is the case with Deep Politics, this tact can also come across as strangely normative.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cold Spring Fault Less Youth
    many of these songs see Campos and Maker presenting compelling musical ideas that simply aren’t expanded upon in an equally compelling manner. Still, Mount Kimbie frequently succeed here in capturing inspired, stirring musical ideas.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Civilian
    Even as it limits the album's appeal as much as it does the band's chances of broader success, Wye Oak's stylistic purity is a virtue in itself.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Scale
    If Dani appeared on a few less tracks here, Scale may have been one of the year's finest.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    L'Ami du Peuple
    L’Ami du Peuple is a predominantly rewarding album, despite the occasional misstep and despite its unambitious stylistic orthodoxy.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The BBC Sessions
    Truth is, there’s nothing too striking on The BBC Sessions, save for the closing four tracks.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Atomos
    Atomos is, to my ears, a more uneven offering than the debut, lacking the gem-like balance of its predecessor. The upside is that Atomos is perhaps a more challenging listen, featuring a broader sonic palette that contains more distinct highs and lows, both of mood and of merit.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kannon
    Ignoring the conceptual background, Kannon only achieves the very cusp of the transportative, magical power of past Sunn O))) albums.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Obliterati
    The first business-as-usual Burma release.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
    Things just go from mad galloping gobbledigook to spongy sentiment.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    You Are There
    I can't shake the feeling that I've heard this sort of epic music before, even from Mono themselves.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future
    Its purpose is to cement Underworld as elder statesmen of minor-arena-filling, rather than “floor-filling,” amorphously electronic music. It’s not hip, but it’s not square either.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shut Up I Am Dreaming
    There are a number of mediocre ideas that are drawn out a bit too long.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tanglewood Numbers
    Ultimately, Tanglewood Numbers is a pretty good record for the Silver Jews and a very good record if you like chimey, talky, uncool indie rock.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bonfires On The Heath
    Bonfires is certainly a step up on its efficient, bloodless predecessor "God Save The Clientele" and stands up no matter what’s next for the band.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Glowing Man
    For a record seeking personal elevation via uncontainable energy, The Glowing Man doesn’t always glow often or energetically enough to help its listeners realize that it’s trying to attain such elevation.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scissor Sisters
    The songs here are mindless, repetitive, and perfect for the dance floor.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Manafon
    While no one could accuse Sylvian of playing it safe, the exercises that make up Manafon are neither experimental nor aesthetically pleasing enough for me to recommend this album.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Aw C'Mon
    Although I quite like some of the tracks here, overall there just isn't enough here to keep me interested. [combined review of both discs]
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Return To The Sea
    There are some redeeming qualities, but for every success there are one or two failures.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gorilla Manor
    Letting themselves go with greater frequency would turn what is a pretty record into one that actually breaks ground; it'd be sexier that way.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Thursday
    But by continuing to relentlessly mine the same fundamentally limited descriptions of groupies and Schedule VI narcotics, The Weeknd risks coming off as bored as its debauched narrator.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fetch
    Melt-Banana prove with Fetch that they can twist their peculiar universe into something more cordial, but one that forfeits a certain part of their penchant for risk.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pleasure
    The pleasures that Pleasure describes are mundane to the point of tedium, trite beyond cliché. And the music itself is, despite the strength of Feist’s voice, mostly intolerable.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bottomless Pit
    Though it shrouds itself in chaos, Bottomless Pit is ultimately Death Grips’ most straightforward, morbid, and brutal report from the deep end yet. Like watching a great beast eat itself, there is little in the way of elegance or grand design to this music, yet it remains throttling nonetheless, as relentlessly blunt as it is overwhelmingly meaningless.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Me First
    Peppered with dissatisfying, mommy-daddy emotastic lyrics, Jeff Tweedy impressions, and Four Tet-inspired, stop-on-a-dime, into-something-totally-unrelated segues that don't really belong on a country-twinged "let's hang out, drink, and make a record, dudes" kind of affair.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Drop
    There’s enough texture and variety to Drop to make it a consistently engaging listen, although on a song-by-song basis, it doesn’t quite stack up to the albums preceding it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Flying Club Cup
    The Flying Club Cup is a good album. If you’re a fan of "Gulag Orkestar," it’s probably a great album. But aside from 'Cliquot,' it’s more of the same.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pink
    Pink is muddy as a bowl of bad split pea soup, and twice as hammy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Drunk
    Drunk’s a chill listen, but it’s also a restless one.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wind In The Wires
    There's a professional, assured feeling [to] it, but its nagging lack of innovation or [a] truly memorable melody leaves me a little cold.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Good Time [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    More or less adapting his own approach to sound with the sonic atmosphere and materials provided to him by the filmmakers, he managed to create a work that, guided by their vision, ties a satisfying knot between the two disparate ends of his catalog. Lacking the singularly textual and conceptual punch of his recent work, it’s both a practice in versatility and a sign that there’s still something of an enigma to Oneohtrix Point Never after all these years.
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