Blender's Scores
- Music
For 1,854 reviews, this publication has graded:
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39% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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58% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.8 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 65
Highest review score: | Together Through Life | |
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Lowest review score: | Folker |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 957 out of 1854
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Mixed: 862 out of 1854
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Negative: 35 out of 1854
1854
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
Like the previous Brazilian Girls records, New York City is a lounge-y pileup of bossa rhythms and Old World romantic ache, girded by slithery push-button funk throb—at once refined and happily trashy.- Blender
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On the album’s best moments, he pours his hopeless longing into sweaty, inebriated celebrations of love’s boundless optimism.- Blender
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It's 10 tightly wrapped wads of black bubblegum, not a politicized sci-fi fantasia like "year Zero" or a two-hour drift into instrumnetal blip 'n' grind like this spring's "Ghosts I-IV." [July 2008, p.74]- Blender
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Youngblood's tunes are so clever it's easy to overlook the commitment to new wave it took for him to avoid wasting his love of wordplay on folk music. [Aug 2008, p.84]- Blender
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Even as they take on the album title's potentially heavy theme, two vocalists sing with wide-open smiles, and they toss in new-wave beats alongside the saloon pianos and tube-amp guitars. [Aug 2008, p.84]- Blender
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Now and then, the energy lags. But mostly, Sugarland’s shameless mining of VH1 Classic hooks keeps their more tepid tendencies in check.- Blender
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With music that evokes cheesy early-’70s MOR and the modern Hollywood-hipster songbook invented by Beck, this is pop that gets out and moves, and has you rooting for the wallflower with the yawny voice to do the same.- Blender
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Finn has been sharper and funnier before, and their fast-and-down-the-middle rock has gotten more experimental, which isn't the same as better. But it's still a pretty good way to spend 45 minutes. [Aug 2008, p.86]- Blender
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Even when the Wire slow way down, their densely layered riffs reward wall-shaking volumes. [Oct 2008, p.83]- Blender
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By now he's decided he'd rather be Bob Dylan--recent Dylan, that is, devoted to phlegm-clogged blues-codger grumbles about how he's ready for his pine box. Producer T Bone Burnett proves a willing accomplice. [Aug 2008, p.88]- Blender
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He tries to atone on the bluesey and somber 'Cadillac on 22's Part 2,' but--like much of this album--the sequel is a downgrade compared to its wrenching and confessional original. [Aug 2008, p.82]- Blender
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In a style gentler and more richly textured than the crudely amplified minimalism of the series’ debut by Konono N°1, the songs swell in and out of expansive and hypnotic patterns, forming clouds of interwoven rhythms.- Blender
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Produced by hip-hop head case Danger Mouse, who is half of Gnarls Barkley, Modern Guilt mixes ancient rock--mainly the incense-and-peppermints-flavored ’60s psychedelia of Revolver-era Beatles, the Zombies and Pink Floyd--with the woozy, abstract beats Danger Mouse manages to turn into freaked-out fun.- Blender
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When the singer’s overfamiliarity with certain material risks turning him nonchalant, Dan Nimmer’s barrelhouse piano picks up the slack; just when you’re ready to give up on an uninspired Hank Williams cover, some New Orleans parade funk kicks in.- Blender
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It occasionally feels slack, especially compared to old faves like “Wildcat” or their bootleg hip-hop remixes.- Blender
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Unfortunately, it translates into kohl-eyed pantomime, rather than cathartic music, with lyrics so hopelessly trite they sound like a feel-good tract for preschoolers.- Blender
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Sometimes they're tossing salad, with predictably sappy songs about sainted all-stars Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson, yet theyre funny throwing chin music at cult figures Fernando Valenzuela and Harvey Haddix. [Sep 2008, p.76]- Blender
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She’s more geeky than queenly anyway, jazzily singing and breezily rapping over buoyant reggae and soul throwback beats sculpted by a guy named Adam who previously worked with American Idol finalist Elliott Yamin.- Blender
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These gothed-out Chicago yeomen relish a catoonishly dark lyric and if they eke new inspiration out of anything on their sixth studio album--which bounds along, as though bunny-powered, on a pop-punk beat--it's war. [July 2008, p.70]- Blender
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Her voice was made to rip, and when she lets go just a little, the coyness turns sultry--proof that she might just have a life after high school.- Blender
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On this clamorous, relentless album, a violent death lurks in every bar (“Rider Pt. 2”), licentious catcalls have replaced slinky come-ons (“I Like the Way She Do It”) and guns seem to fire of their own accord (every other song here). In doses, it’s rousing. Over the course of a whole album, it’s exhausting.- Blender
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Its penitent but hopeful mood still suggests a Catholic equivalent of corporate Christian rock- Blender
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This album is luxuriously, fantastically gay, a nod to the origins of disco, when the music was known for its queer fan base as much as anything else. [July 2008, p.73]- Blender
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Their Fire Songs can seem a little thin-boned--the twins’ intertwined voices are lovely but ethereal, the steel guitars melting into the horizon like a mirage.- Blender
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Creatively cast, bonkers as ever--it’s a bright spot in the Bobby Digital series.- Blender
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At his best, Berman used to refract sage-with-guitar tropes into dryly perverse insights; but this time he's just smothering them in weird phrases. [July 2008, p.76]- Blender
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Viva La Vida still manages to seem downsized compared to the band's gradiose early work. [July 2008, p.69]- Blender
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Arcade Fire never babbled about “horse-shaped fire/Draggin’ stereo wire.” These guys make it seem like an Olympic sport.- Blender
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Perry’s creative-writing-class punch lines don’t always justify her self-congratulatory drag-queen tone. But she hiccups quirkily enough, and myriad big-name producers (from Dr. Luke to Glen Ballard) keep the new-wave synth hooks hopping- Blender
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