Uncut's Scores

  • Music
For 12,056 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 72
Score distribution:
12056 music reviews
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gone is the Suede-lite of The Tears. Instead we get acoustic guitars, lush string arrangements and the previously cagey Anderson pouring his heart out. [Apr 2007, p.92]
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Bees have a nose for sniffing out fine pop melodies. [Apr 2007, p.93]
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    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rarely has anyone making such exciting and fashionable music been so unapologetic about being mature, too. [Apr 2007, p.97]
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    [The album] adds a newfound sang-froid to their quiet/loud approach. [May 2007, p.100]
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They may have defined a genre, but Low can clearly still move forward. [May 2007, p.99]
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Living With The Living finds them at their most assured. [Apr 2007, p.113]
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Despite a top-drawer guest list, this often feels like empty bombast. [Mar 2007, p.98]
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A record dotted with peaks. [Apr 2007, p.93]
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    By far their boldest statement yet. [Apr 2007, p.92]
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For those willing to take a chance, it's an impeccably realised, verbose treat. [Apr 2007, p.99]
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Most of the album sees producers Charles Webster and Ewan Pearson buiilding on the bedsit rave of "Missing" and the beatific drum'n'bass of Walking Wounded. [Apr 2007, p.120]
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    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The over-shiny, repetitive beats and the carefree, happy-skippy persona soon palls. [Apr 2007, p.120]
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Weathered and intelligent, these songs resonate like folk antiquities from another age. Even more remarkably, they never sound forced. [Apr 2007, p.116]
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    More structured than its predecessors. [Apr 2007, p.102]
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    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Magical. [Apr 2007, p.114]
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is raw, inventive stuff. [May 2007, p.88]
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Surely--surely!--this is an elaborate hoax. [Oct 2006, p.110]
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Historically confused it may be, but the simple pleasures of Turn The Lights Out are hard to deny. [Apr 2007, p.115]
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    [Herrema's] songs still have the fuzzy weirdness of prime Trux, but now they're chunky, determined and fully formed, too. [Apr 2007, p.115]
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    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Largely, this one is a case of nice threads, shame about the songs. [Apr 2007, p.115]
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Their lack of artifice is a godsend. [Feb 2007, p.81]
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    While never musically abrasive, [it] is riddled with enough trademark lyrical barbs and sung with sufficient Eartha Kitt-ish snarl that the listening is never too easy. [Nov 2006, p.134]
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Their witty pop vignettes are about as much fun as you can have alone with a stereo. [Oct 2006, p.109]
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The album has a hazy, deeply romantic quality. [Nov 2006, p.112]
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Parts of Myth Takes [are] as close to commercial... as !!! can get without combusting. [Apr 2007, p.92]
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    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pocket Symphony drifts inconsequentially along. [Apr 2007, p.92]
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    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    While there is much here to admire, at its overblown worst Neon Bible is one of those records that takes itself too seriously to be taken seriously. [Apr 2007, p.90]
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Candylion is a more layered, fully-realised album than 2005's Yr Atal Genhedlaeth. [Feb 2007, p.79]
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Son Volt have discovered a new sense of ambition, even abandon, on The Search. [May 2007, p.104]
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    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The problem with The Weirdness is that it shoots its bolt immediately and has nothing left to offer. [Apr 2007, p.93]
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's frequently wistful, sad and nostalgic. Yet Cooder's eccentric storytelling style and his prankish, Sufjan Stevens-ish take on Americana also sounds oddly contemporary. [Apr 2007, p.99]
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The powerful tunes make this an odd thing: a subtle album, fit for stadiums. [Mar 2007, p.83]
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    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's essentially a pop record--albeit a complex and cleverly arranged one. [Apr 2007, p.115]
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A winning hybrid of indie neuroses and Brill Building craft, precision and intimacy. [Apr 2007, p.120]
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The results have a clinical, cerebral appeal, but--perhaps predictably--sometimes fail to deliver instinctive musical kicks. [Mar 2007, p.100]
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If the Valentines' inspired drone-rock of "Hammond" suggests a more stoned Spiritualized, their commercial future will depend on refining relentless glam-stomps "This Mess" and "Steal Their Gold." [May 2007, p.115]
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Their mission sounds increasingly convincing. [May 2007, p.87]
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Calling finds her in fine voice, nestling somewhere between Shawn Colvin and Helen Reddy. [Apr 2007, p.116]
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The key moments are covers. [May 2007, p.104]
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Overall... the mood remains one of pleasant inconsequence. [Apr 2007, p.94]
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    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There is little to these songs besides Mark's Lennon-like voice and an unobtrusive piano and guitar. [Apr 2007, p.113]
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Arrangements range from scraped guitars to epic brass fanfares and, unusually for an album about loners, there's no misanthropy. [Mar 2007, p.86]
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All Of A Sudden... rather falls under the shadow of Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but there's ample majesty in its climactic moments to recommend it. [Mar 2007, p.79]
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    If he sometimes misfires... K-OS at least has inventiveness in his sights. [May 2007, p.96]
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Imagine Bolan produced by Prince, then scrambled by Beck, and you're only halfway there. [Mar 2007, p.85]
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There's a nervy, frayed soulfulness to these songs. [Feb 2007, p.76]
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's less gonzoid than previous efforts and more effective for that. [Mar 2007, p.79]
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In his own way, Swift is as vivid a newcomer as Joanna Newsom or early Rufus Wainwright. [Mar 2007, p.84]
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    An amazing album. [Mar 2007, p.75]
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    These articulate odes to pop's past strike the right balance between carefully studied craft and melodic inspiration. [Mar 2007, p.83]
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Combine[s] utterly maddening complexity with candyfloss pop hooks. [Jun 2007, p.108]
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    An album of sometimes stark simplicity, West is in many places rather drab and charmless. [Mar 2007, p.72]
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    They're now a glorious band. [Feb 2007, p.76]
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Magnetic Wonder can make a claim to be the definitive AIS album. [Apr 2007, p.92]
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    For an album that strives to articulate the youthful pleasure-rush of love, drugs, and power, this is a worryingly pedestrian effort. [Mar 2007, p.75]
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    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dip
    It's tasteful, but not much more. [Feb 2007, p.78]
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One of the year's most uplifting records so far. [May 2007, p.99]
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A brave endeavour. But unlike My Chemical Romance's Black Parade, Infinity On High has critically little sense of its own ridiculousness. [Mar 2007, p.79]
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The added zip only serves to spotlight her stark, moody delivery. [Mar 2007, p.98]
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    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Her songwriting here... demonstrates a depth and majesty previously absent in her work. [Mar 2007, p.82]
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For all its weird dissonance, Sermon...'s musical crudeness gives it a powerful immediacy. Strangely accessible and highly addictive, it's her best work in three decades. [Mar 2007, p.98]
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Another sly masterstroke by the canniest widow in rock. [May 2007, p.103]
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    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For the most part, this Stockholm outfit's sun-streaked, clever-white-boy pop-funk catches a season as expusitely as Air did circa Moon Safari, or as Hot Chip have more recently. [Aug 2006, p.104]
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Too often, Aereogramme's tastefulness veers on the side of caution. [Mar 2007, p.75]
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This may just be [the] finest pop break-up album since [Justin] Timberlake's Justified. [Aug 2006, p.95]
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    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A flawed but fascinating follow-up. [Feb 2007, p.85]
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What's especially daring about Not Too Late is the degree to which Jones and [producer Lee] Alexander trust their songs and her languorous voice to hold the listener's interest. [Feb 2007, p.75]
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    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's over-polished and lacks excitement. [Jun 2007, p.119]
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    RoadKillOvercoat fattens his usual oblique rhymes into even more demanding, bombastic forms. [Apr 2007, p.93]
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Over time, vocalist Aaron Ross stands out as the weak link, his voice merely shrill and average. [Apr 2007, p.102]
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stuttering breakbeats, looped effects and suffusive psychedelia. [Feb 2007, p.72]
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Live may well be the best place to encounter them. [Feb 2007, p.73]
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cadogan's threesome seem an altogether leaner, meaner deal. [Feb 2007, p.78]
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The result is akin to walking in the woods alone at midnight--both spooky and compelling. [Nov 2006, p.104]
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Clearly, appealing quirks can easily become irksome affectations. [Apr 2007, p.94]
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The biggest surprise is how rarely this scratch supergroup really swings to its full potential. [Feb 2007, p.68]
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wincing isn't so much a departure as it is an all-out augmentation, taking the best things about The Shins and amplifying them. [Feb 2007, p.72]
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    At best, Hissing Fauna... posits its creator as the missing link between Hot Chip and Morrissey. [Mar 2007, p.88]
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Reuniting her ex-bandmates adds a rock impetus to Doiron's more fragile solo work. [Feb 2007, p.74]
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Like its predecessor, the most impressive aspect of The Enemy Chorus is not so much the breadth of its references as the tumescent, head-spinning harmonies. [Feb 2007, p.74]
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The intense grandeur... is still quite a shock. [Feb 2007, p.73]
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Though garlanded in elegant strings, it's as furiously seething a record as she's made in 20 years. [Mar 2007, p.82]
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This wonderful record already feels like a cult classic. [Feb 2007, p.88]
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A sluggish, garage rock set. [Jun 2007, p.99]
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Remarkably alluring. [Apr 2007, p.93]
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    [It] isn't so much More Fish as it is Cheap Fish. [Mar 2007, p.81]
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This largely instrumental set is a nicely ambient version of their usual hellacious harmonics, but also a reminder how the band have attained creative control on a major label. [Feb 2007, p.85]
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Delivers much of the same. [Feb 2007, p.86]
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Another terrific collection, tacking a stylish course between Jam and Lewis, Zapp and raving crunk. [May 2007, p.88]
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    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Concise at 12 tracks, the stylistic coherence seldom fails to engage. [Feb 2007, p.73]
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The band seem to have suffered a who-are-we?-style mid-life crisis. [Jan 2007, p.100]
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A dense and abrasive record of astonishing precocity, which, if it has a fault, is only that it occasionally offers brute intensity in excess of the impact Pemberton's razor-sharp verses. [Oct 2008, p.87]
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Whilst a gift for converting arrogance into entertainment has always been one of Jay-Z’s strongest suits, Kingdom Come skirts perilously close to the showboating that marred 2002’s bloated double album, The Blueprint 2.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beast Moans can be drowsy at times... but it's punctuated by bursts of poetic insight and near-orgasmic glee. [Jan 2007, p.103]
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    If the scale is almost beyond comprehension, Love also represents a sonic Da Vinci Code for Beatles trainspotters. [Dec 2006, p.104]
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    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It's remarkable... how much of a piece the entire set is, reflecting how skilfully Waits has welded the various tributary styles of his art into a seamless whole. [Dec 2006, p.122]
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Snoop's patter soon descends into G-funk pastiche and cretinous misogyny. [Feb 2007, p.85]
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The tone is generally one of mild encouragement, of jollying-along the reluctant participants in this most fraught of celebrations, as indicated by titles like "Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!" and "It's Christmas! Let's Be Glad!".
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Their scratchily rhythmic guitar music with dour, sardonic vocals has proved immensely influential. [Dec 2006, p.114]
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    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ys
    For the 56 minutes that "Ys" lasts, all the doubts evaporate. Every elaboration has a purpose, every labyrinthine melodic detour feels necessary rather than contrived. Tempting as it is to fixate on the gilded reputations of her associates, this is unequivocally Newsom’s album.