Boston Globe's Scores

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For 2,093 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 66% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 31% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 72
Highest review score: 100 City of Refuge
Lowest review score: 10 Lulu
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,670 out of 2093
  2. Mixed: 412 out of 2093
  3. Negative: 11 out of 2093
2093 music reviews
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    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everything's Beautiful
    The middle of the album is a problem, especially the Hiatus Kaiyote number, “Little Church,” a strange, bloodless clunker that drags down the Mvula (“Silence Is the Way”) and KING (“Song for Selim”) features that follow. The Badu track, the electro-bossa nova “Maiysha (So Long),” is fine but familiar. Miles Davis concept aside, Glasper’s still in “Black Radio” mode. It works, but it needs a little dirt, and probably a new challenge.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rest in Chaos
    After an all-covers debut, this second album is a major step forward.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    2
    The new album is as fiery and romantic as a youthful tryst, a rock ’n’ roll experience unsullied by the inevitable passage of time and unspoiled by the burden of experience.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Still Do
    The results are mixed. Half of I Still Do falls into the easy-listening, cruise-control blues of Clapton’s later career, a long way from his fiery days with Cream and Derek and the Dominos.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Day of the Dead
    The few gold nuggets too easily get lost among the many chunks of lead.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dangerous Woman
    The album glides through styles, maintaining a slightly menacing yet sexed-up vibe throughout.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Holy Ghost
    Whereas second LP “You’re Gonna Miss It All” delivered Facebook rants from a self-pitying underclassman, Holy Ghost is the hard-charging graduation speech.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Thank You
    Trainor continues the self-esteem party on Thank You, and the cracks that were already forming on her debut grow a little wider and deeper on its followup.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Heart Speaks in Whispers
    Six years later she returns healed, exuding hope and whimsy on her often wondrous new record.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    99.9%
    The album’s title refers to the feeling of never being quite done, but “99.9%” oozes poise and confidence.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hopelessness
    Unlike the haunting ambiguities that comprised the Johnsons oeuvre, Anohni doesn’t traffic in subtlety here; boldface subversiveness makes Hopelessness lethal.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take Me to the Alley
    Again Porter delivers passion and craft in abundance, owing to the songwriting, the acoustic-jazz arrangements (by producer Kamau Kenyatta and pianist Chip Crawford), and his corduroy-warm baritone, pliant and powerful.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Westerner
    As for “Sweet Reward,” a marvelous moment-in-time narrative sketch delivered by the murmur of Doe’s voice, and “Rising Sun,” where a reverberating guitar line gives way to a singer sounding like a Sonoran Sinatra amid the song’s slow, swirling rise and fall--at moments such as those, Doe simply is making some of the most striking music of his career.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Paging Mr. Proust
    A bright, challenging album.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Ship
    Simply stated, here’s the experimental-listening event of the year.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Honey
    With nearly 20 production collaborators, the record has plenty of invention--and way too many cooks in the kitchen. ... [A] busy, unfocused record.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Triangle
    The short, melodically complex songs cohere into an often stunningly moving suite.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Take All My Loves: Nine Shakespeare Sonnets
    Save for the playfully tempestuous “Th’Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame (Sonnet 129),” they’re serviceable and, like the spoken-word reprises by the likes of William Shatner and Siân Phillips, take few risks.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ears
    Smith creates wide-eyed compositions with textures that cascade over one another, capturing the vast celestial wonder of synthesized sound.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Cure for Loneliness
    His first release in six years is filled with downtempo, darkly intimate tracks--eight of the 12 are ballads.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Santana IV
    The album generously includes 16 new songs, so if you’re a fan you’ll find enough to like. But finding a new lyricist should be a higher calling.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Hope Six Demolition Project
    The Hope Six Demolition Project might derive its title from a Housing and Urban Development program designed to “transform public housing,” but the bleak picture Harvey portrays on this stunning album gives that title a second, and more ominous, meaning.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Path Tonight
    With producer Shane Fontayne adding dimension and tension to the music, Nash’s first album of originals in 14 years is marked by hope and possibility shadowed by loss.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Sailor's Guide to Earth
    “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)” starts the record with a foreboding sound that moves to stately piano and tremolo strings before exploding into soul. Nirvana’s “In Bloom” is turned into sweeping countrypolitan; “All Around You” offers killer country soul. “A Sailor’s Guide” confirms that Simpson isn’t content to stand in the same place for very long.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Windows
    Whatever the particular style, Little Windows is a series of sparkling pop gems; clocking in at just under 26 minutes, the only thing the record leaves you wanting is more of it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Man About Town
    Highlights album come when the songs stretch beyond Hawthorne’s solo comfort zone.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gore
    Gore brings together light and dark, airy and grinding, in a way that makes these seemingly disparate qualities seem like natural allies.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Junk
    The result is less serious than his last release--the kind of thing we might hear back from aliens in response to radio waves that escaped our stratosphere long ago.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Distortland
    Distortland, the band’s ninth album, sounds downright insular: fully formed, in its way, but nearly impenetrable.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lukas Graham
    Lukas Graham connects best when relying on pop smarts, without reaching for grand epiphanies.
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