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
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Her darkest effort yet, a harowing chronicle of a woman barely keeping herself together. It's also her liveliest effort yet--not to mention her most confidently diverse. [Jul 2016, p.71]
    • Uncut
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The result is an assured, mostly instrumental album with freeform jazz as its guiding imperative. [Oct 2016, p.40]
    • Uncut
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    His wrinkled brogue--warm, pithy, occasionally fluttering to a falsetto--is a thing of understated beauty in itself, framed in folk-shanty arrangements that make telling use of strings and bagpipes. [Oct 2016, p.32]
    • Uncut
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kath pillages heartily from Belgian new beat, braindance, electroclash and EDM cheese to forge brutally effective industrial lullabies. [Oct 2016, p.26]
    • Uncut
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    These seven piano/voice tracks, recorded and mixed live to tape by Tucker Martine, are immediately seductive, balancing spare, bittersweet melodies and billowing space. [Oct 2016, p.26]
    • Uncut
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Co-producer Tucker Martine pulls out all the stops, building the tracks from subdued openings to majestic climaxes that support but never overpower Israel Nebeker's songs and vocals. [Oct 2016, p.26]
    • Uncut
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A fairly straightforward indie offering, covering mid-tempo jangle with layers of guitars, and lyrics about growing up and suburban escape. [Oct 2016, p.25]
    • Uncut
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Her ambitious third record marks anther giant progression in an already distinguished career, and offers provocative thoughts on sacrifice and identity that should outlast its 48-minute runtime. [Oct 2016, p.22]
    • Uncut
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Without question, Schmilco is Wilco's quietest, most disquieting album. [Oct 2016, p.24]
    • Uncut
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sumptuous, orchestra pop lace with lyrical acerbity. [Oct 2016, p.28]
    • Uncut
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    It may be OR's best album yet. [Oct 2016, p.36]
    • Uncut
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Despite the occasional lapse into polished AOR, this is another classy, sassy step forward from a restlessly inventive pair. [Oct 2016, p.39]
    • Uncut
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tracks such as "Dragon Bones" and "Joan Of Arc" have bigger, stickier hooks than anything he's written since "Sheila." [Oct 2016, p.39]
    • Uncut
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Their ninth album might be their best this millennium; a triangulation of mature soppiness, mitigated contentment and indelible tuneage. [Oct 2016, p.39]
    • Uncut
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The most radical treatments are the highlights. [Oct 2016, p.40]
    • Uncut
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The first four tracks are moody, post-rock instrumentals, but elsewhere filthy, squalling guitars and a meaty swing dominate. [Oct 2016, p.40]
    • Uncut
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tough, yet seductive. [Oct 2016, p.40]
    • Uncut
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Hanging Valley blends whooshing motorik drums, a lyrical archness reminiscent of Wire, and a love for repetition that borders on the pathological. [Sep 2016, p.71]
    • Uncut
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    While this second effort has its engaging moments, Leftwich has stuck dispiritingly close to his early template of delicate folk with hushed vocals and lyrics about bruised hearts and rain. [Sep 2016, p.75]
    • Uncut
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A record that provides few surprises but at least captures the feral energy of their live shows. [Sep 2016, p.78]
    • Uncut
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Animal Races offers few departures, being exploratory and decidedly retro, but it's appealingly rendered. [Sep 2016, p.71]
    • Uncut
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cameron nonetheless hits the mic with the total hip=grinding conviction, as if daring you to proclaim him an ironist. [Sep 2016, p.70]
    • Uncut
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The 12 songs on his eighth ares till gloriously strange, though: lyrically as kaleidoscopic as mid-'60s Dylan, and packed with fascinating, contradictory references. [Sep 2016, p.76]
    • Uncut
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Place Called Bad augments such high-water marks as 1983's Blood red River with rarities and live tracks like a 1983 demolition job on Captain Beefheart's "Clear Spot." All of it whets the appetite for explorations of Salmon's sprawling post-Scientists oeuvre. [Sep 2016, p.88]
    • Uncut
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For all of their doom-mongering--this record feeds on notions of dereliction and abandonment--Marconi Union always finds beauty in the bleakest places. [Sep 2016, p.76]
    • Uncut
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Some of it is a little too cosy and overly earnest, White tending to excel on the more spirited likes of the swampy "What's So" and "I've Been Over This Before." [Sep 2016, p.81]
    • Uncut
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sometimes it makes sense. A lot of the time, it doesn't. [Sep 2016, p.74]
    • Uncut
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There's a pleasing lyrical grit to At Swim. [Sep 2016, p.74]
    • Uncut
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Weird Exit has an immediacy and coherence that was missing on previous outing, 2015's Mutilator Defeated At Last--a fine album, but not as hooky as this one. [Sep 2016, p.80]
    • Uncut
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tonight's Music finds Davies returning to The Moles' first principals of beguiling deadpan psychedelia, as if Syd Barrett had lit out to New Zealand in the 1980s and joined The Chills. [Sep 2016, p.76]
    • Uncut
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This being a soundtrack and not a convetional Scott Walker album, there is no sign of that pale, lieder that floats through latterday Scott Walker records like a phantom. But there are clear points of continuity between The Childhood OF A Leader and recent studio albums The Drift and Bisch Bosch. [Sep 2016, p.68]
    • Uncut
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Coomes rasps and hollers across the kind of gurgling voodoo boogie that Suicide or Clinic would consider too deranged to release. [Sep 2016, p.71]
    • Uncut
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Morgan Delt has moved to Sub Pop and upped the ambition for this excellent follow-up. [Sep 2016, p.73]
    • Uncut
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Their debut is squeaky-door dub that offers unexpectedly plentiful tunes. [Sep 2016, p.73]
    • Uncut
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    As enchanting as it is, Moon Saloon can inevitably feel overstuffed, such that Adams may best succeed in the album's least ornate moments. [Sep 2016, p.69]
    • Uncut
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Not exactly groundbreaking, but not reverentially retro either, and full of fizz and vigour. [Sep 2016, p.74]
    • Uncut
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Loveless' songwriting on Real is sharp, economical and wickedly funny. [Sep 2016, p.77]
    • Uncut
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The album unfolds like a fever dream, the instruments bleeding into each other, awash in echo, as Arthur layers metaphors much as he layers the parts of the self-performed album. [Aug 2016, p.71]
    • Uncut
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Scare careens between sunbaked Americana, dreamy melodicism and more aggressive moves that are less reminiscent of Walker's exploratory folk-rock than the full throttle pummelling of Rosaly's sides with jazz titan Peter Brotzmann. [Sep 2016, p.75]
    • Uncut
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    There's a sense that the artificiality in the sound is being used to anaesthetise the raw emotion, but the sonic fractures can't disguise the loveliness of "A Sport And A Pastime" and "My Fair Lady." [Sep 2016, p.78]
    • Uncut
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Broad in scope, and naturally playful, this is a spectacular, fresh as the proverbial, triumph. [Sep 2016, p.73]
    • Uncut
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Eve
    Eve might just be her strongest yet, bold in its subtlety and intimacy, with Zedek's writing bittersweet and observational. [Sep 2016, p.81]
    • Uncut
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tobacco's stew of narcoleptic beats, tape experiments, Vocoder mutterings and vintage synths in states of distress has lost some potency in the nine years since BMSR's classic Dandelion Gum, but remains wholly idiosyncratic. [Sep 2016, p.81]
    • Uncut
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    His fourth album as Lawrence Arabia cuts the potential sugariness of strings-embellished, '60s-influenced pop with reflective, often bracingly direct lyrics and wry humour, but sensibly, no sardonic edge. [Sep 2016, p.69]
    • Uncut
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There's still a tendency to over-emote with superfluous melisma. But when she's at her starkest and most haunting, accompanied by little more than Beste's piano on "Faded" and "Leave You In Yesterday," she hits the spot unerringly. [Sep 2016, p.76]
    • Uncut
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The opening title track casually drifts into existence, and the rest follow suit, melancholic blend of twinkling steel guitar, rambling acoustic guitars and wearied vocals. [Sep 2016, p.76]
    • Uncut
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Of late, Cherry Red have rediscovered a role which had eluded them for years, as curators of scenes and scenes in-between. The material here doesn't do that reputation much harm, revealing a thin but potent seam of transitional, very hairy hard rock. [Sep 2016, p.95]
    • Uncut
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This unheard set, captured at Athens venue The Mad Hatter in 1983, shortly before the band's dissolution, confirms their two fine studio albums were no fluke. [Sep 2016, p.93]
    • Uncut
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wasner and bandmate Andy Stack wield sharp production touches, like the breaths that pan "On Luxury," although Tween can suffer from a slight surfeit of scale over melody. [Sep 2016, p.81]
    • Uncut
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    We're All Somebody delivers high-sheen Billboard country fare, more Keith Urban than back-porch picking. [Sep 2016, p.81]
    • Uncut
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A delicate album of soft '60s-inflected pop that mostly plays like a great Evie Sands or Bobbie Gentry record. [Sep 2016, p.78]
    • Uncut
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Apache holds its focus on straight-ahead vintage soul-pop, blending mid-tempo workouts and big weepy ballads with swampy shuffling grooves. [Sep 2016, p.78]
    • Uncut
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The breadth, scope and sheer suppleness of black SUMMERS'night makes one wish Maxwell worked a whole lot faster. [Sep 2016, p.76]
    • Uncut
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Collingwood remains, however, the guy out of Fountains Of Wayne, and therefore can't help himself from confecting soaring, sumptuous melodies. [Sep 2016, p.75]
    • Uncut
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A succinct pastiche of junglist, breakbeat and chill-out fare. [Sep 2016, p.75]
    • Uncut
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Faun Fables sound more shamanistic than ever. [Sep 2016, p.74]
    • Uncut
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    These crafted tracks are built for dancefloor delirium, yet darkness and unsettlement abound, awkward elegance and cool beauty twinned with repetitious abandonment. [Sep 2016, p.74]
    • Uncut
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Guitar fans will particularly enjoy tracks like "Life Pass" and "Let It Out," where the solos are enjoyably garish. [Sep 2016, p.73]
    • Uncut
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The album which confirms that the older, wiser Dinosaur Jr--Dinosaur Sr, if you will--compete on quality as well as quantity. [Sep 2016, p.73]
    • Uncut
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is an album filled with earworms, with hooklines and stray phrases that burrow deep into your consciousness. [Sep 2016, p.72]
    • Uncut
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    [A] splendid debut for Blue Note. ... Backed by a brilliant ensemble of strings, wind and percussion, Cline's guitar creeps stealthily through arrangements elegant and enigmatic, lush and low. [Sep 2016, p.71]
    • Uncut
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    His debut LP impresses, in large part thanks to smart deployment of guests. [Sep 2016, p.70]
    • Uncut
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's a sumptuous set-piece, nine tracks of oceanic expansiveness that shift in dynamics and mood. [Sep 2016, p.69]
    • Uncut
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    For the most part [Blossoms] Don't disappoint. [Sep 2016, p.69]
    • Uncut
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fairly conventional, but done with plenty of panache and alluring bad-girl swagger. [Sep 2016, p.69]
    • Uncut
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There's plenty of uncommon beauty in these four hours of stalagmite electronica. [Sep 2016, p.69]
    • Uncut
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    By using layers of shoegazey guitars and powerfully mic'd-up drums, they create soundscapes that combine Americana with English pastoralism. [Sep 2016, p.67]
    • Uncut
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wildflower does a robust job of reiterating core skills rather than offering radical reinvention. [Sep 2016, p.66]
    • Uncut
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Despite his recent move to a major label, these songs do retain the malicious edge that made its predecessor so enjoyable. [Sep 2016, p.75]
    • Uncut
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The resultant tracks are dominated by Allen's fidgety, polyrhythmic Afrobeat rhythms, particularly the Fela Kuti-ish "Bade Zile." But the Haitian singers and FX-laden soundscapes of Glasgow guitarist Marc Mulholland take things into other dimensions. [Aug 2017, p.69]
    • Uncut
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    65daysofstatic's soundtrack to the highly anticipated No Man's Sky Game loads up on pile-driving guitar sequences reminiscent of Mogwai, but it's industrial-sized programming, moments of tranquility and chilling electronica confirm the Sheffield quartet's visionary ambitions. [Jul 2016, p.67]
    • Uncut
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Challenging, but deeply satisfying. [Aug 2016, p.83]
    • Uncut
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    These songs achieve something like topicality, sounding all the more invigorated and just plain fun for having one foot in the past and the other in an uncertain present. [Aug 2016, p.68]
    • Uncut
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Warm Leatherette is often considered a rehearsal for Nightclubbing but in some ways it’s the most radical of the pair, because it unveiled to a shocked audience the new-look Jones, presented on the sleeve in stark black and white as a kind of sinister Pierrot by her partner Jean-Paul Goude.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Evolving from fairly skronky beginnings, and passing through a great set of ostensibly Greek folk-psych, Redshift at once honours and transcends those influences, chucking in some Dead-style ambulation. [Aug 2016, p.81]
    • Uncut
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's a dense, courageous storm of an album, revved-up and snarling. [Jul 2016, p.73]
    • Uncut
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The blitzkrieg is offset by a vein of black humour, epitomised by Ian Svenonius' hilariously pitiless guest vocal on "Party Line." But as with any military campaign, fatigue eventually sets in. [Aug 2016, p.80]
    • Uncut
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Day To Day's fusions feel accomplished and natural. [Aug 2016, p.77]
    • Uncut
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A quietly eloquent, simply persuasive record that chimes well with the current taste for bucolic abstraction, and moves Rhodes forward. [Aug 2016, p.79]
    • Uncut
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    He still writes lovely, dreamy psych-pop songs that position Luxury Alone as a strange, introverted companion to Tame Impala's Currents. [Jul 2016, p.82]
    • Uncut
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The synthetic drama of Maps' "The Other Side" retains the tension of Apollo 8's inaugural moon mission; Vessels anchor "EVA" with a tidy bassline; Field Music remodel "Korolev" into a taut, angular beauty. [Aug 2016, p.80]
    • Uncut
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The lyrics can be trite, but the guitar is accomplished, and the title fits. [Aug 2016, p.71]
    • Uncut
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The trio play straighter than fellow pre-Revolver fetishist Ezra Furman, but have the tunes to finesse it. [Aug 2016, p.75]
    • Uncut
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The prolific producer is releasing what could be his most accessible body of work. [Aug 2016, p.73]
    • Uncut
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Young In All The Wrong Ways may be Watkins' third solo album, but it feels and sounds like her first, reintroducing her as a writer/artist of uncommon eloquence and consequence. [Aug 2016, p.70]
    • Uncut
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A rewarding evolution by a band that could easily coast on their rugged laurels. [Aug 2016, p.72]
    • Uncut
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There's an addictive, hypnagogic quality to this ghostly combination of ambient noise, treated vocals and bursts if static. [Aug 2016, p.73]
    • Uncut
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    On the whole it struggles to strike a light, far less catch fire. [Aug 2016, p.78]
    • Uncut
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Her voice is every bit as great as her songs. [Aug 2016, p.76]
    • Uncut
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    IV
    "Time Moves Slow" is gorgeous Muscle Shoals soul with a killer turn from Future Islands' Samuel T Herring, while "In Your Eyes" with Charlotte Day Wilson is lush orch jazz with shades of David Axelrod. [Aug 2016, p.71]
    • Uncut
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As with its predecessor, the album cherry-picks from the past, but comes with a contemporary sheen. It's hard to imagine her bettering this. [Aug 2016, p.80]
    • Uncut
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Liquid "I'm Turning Inside Out" and lyrically unsettling, Bon Iver-ish "Shine A Light On Him" are standouts in a quietly haunting set. [Aug 2016, p.83]
    • Uncut
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hit Reset is a deliciously rowdy work in which Hanna flames negligent friends, cyber-bullies and idiotic lovers. [Aug 2016, p.77]
    • Uncut
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    [A] hugely satisfying album. [Jul 2016, p.66]
    • Uncut
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's all executed with efficient power, yet the sum is somehow less than its parts. [Jul 2016, p.74]
    • Uncut
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The guitar-loving chums churn out suitably entertaining, sludgy fare, a bit like a Neanderthal, fuzzier Fuzz with occasional electronics. [Aug 2016, p.76]
    • Uncut
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    While they lack a reedy falsetto, guest vocalists such as Blaine Harrison, Euros Child and Holly Miranda bring discrete personalities to bear on songs which trippily track the lightly fantastic. [Aug 2016, p.72]
    • Uncut
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The best moments are often the most self-excoriating. [Aug 2016, p.75]
    • Uncut
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The septuagenarian may not possess the range he once had, but Bell's voice wears the years gracefully. [Aug 2016, p.71]
    • Uncut
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    [Xenia Rubinos] often extract the maximum impact from a startlingly nimble rhythm section that disregards any boundaries between soul, rock, jazz and salsa, plus a voice that evokes Sarah Vaughan, Joyce Moreno and--on the brilliantly squelchy R&B of "Black Stars" and "right?"--Erykah Badu at her wildest. [Aug 2016, p.81]
    • Uncut