The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 4,544 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 The Life Of Pablo
Lowest review score: 0 Graffiti
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,663 out of 4544
  2. Mixed: 771 out of 4544
  3. Negative: 110 out of 4544
4544 music reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    LUMP
    All that surrealist pop plays out over 30 minutes of interlocking songs, enough to keep you thoroughly entranced and get you hoping LUMP might soon inspire its hosts to deliver more.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    God's Favorite Customer
    There’s little to adorn most of these songs—lyrically economical, sonically without much pageantry--but the intimacy and honesty results in some of Tillman’s most stunning songwriting.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hell-On
    Case’s restless exploratory impulses are contained within relatively conventional song structures, with much more compelling results.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Age Of
    The result is a remarkably accessible, yet still resolutely avant-garde work, with Lopatin taking various musical forms--cough-syrupy R&B jams, country ballads, baroque chamber pop--and wresting unexpected nuances out of them, the same way he does that harpsichord.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    DAYTONA
    For the first time since going solo, it all feels of a piece. ... The sonic setting he [Kanye West] places this performance from Pusha in is an absolute masterpiece of minimalism.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    V.
    Momentum is lacking throughout much of the record, as comatose tracks like “Already Gone” drone on with little to grab the ear. Thankfully, the band perks up again during the closing stretch.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love is Dead
    The songs sound bigger and more layered, but the core of hook-laden, synth-based pop and Lauren Mayberry’s lilting vocals remains undisturbed.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dirty Pictures, Pt. 2
    Dirty Pictures (Part 2) is an album for all occasions: whiskey-fueled dance parties in dark bars, heartbroken late-night sobfests, and introspective moments pondering life’s vicissitudes.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Rausch
    Rausch picks up right where Narkopop left off. The new effort—pointedly intended to be listened to in a single sitting--finds a pulse early on that almost never ceases, with Voigt filtering in guitar plucks that hit like wind chimes.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Sparkle Hard
    Sparkle Hard is Malkmus at his most compelling: balancing his experimental whims while revealing pieces of his arcane heart.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Wide Awake!
    Wide Awake! is a full arc of an album, one that captures both Parquet Courts’ usual keyed-up exasperation and their new, hard-earned optimism.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tell Me How You Really Feel
    Tell Me How You Really Feel is a disappointing and muted record that never quite lives up to its potential.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Mark Kozelek
    Newcomers are unlikely to care much, but anyone who’s been following the man’s career since the Red House Painters should appreciate how he keeps looking for new ways to convert his very existence into art.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer.
    Forgoing original instrumentation in favor of a dense collage of samples, The Body conjures an oddly catchy apocalypse on “Nothing Stirs” and “Off Script,” while guest vocalists like Uniform’s Michael Berdan--whose hate-choked bellow makes the NIN influence explicit--provide decipherable counterpoint to frontman Chip King’s slaughterhouse sq
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Floating Features
    La Luz’s sound is a lot like a mai tai: Both sweet and strong, it goes down easy before knocking you flat.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    7
    With 7, Legrand and Scally have gotten freer themselves. This is the sound of a band that knows itself extremely well and yet, in seeking outside perspectives and embracing imperfection, has discovered a whole new level to explore. If this album feels like an alternate-reality Beach House, it’s because Legrand and Scally have altered their reality.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino
    The album feels unmoored and even plodding due to a lack of structure.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    SR3MM
    SR3MM delivers quantity and quality by zeroing in on its creators’ charisma, clarifying the appeal that’s been there the whole time. In the strange pantheon of triple LPs, there’s nothing else like it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hollow Ground
    Clarke’s tendency to drift into the otherworldliness of his act’s namesake brings some much-needed grime to all that bubblegum.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Knock Knock
    There hasn’t been a more purely enjoyable record released in 2018.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Dove
    Shaving a few of the middling cuts like “Heartstrings” and “Stars Align” would have helped the album overall, as Belly’s comeback songs runs together in a cranky sea of relationship angst.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rebound
    Rebound sees bits of the Fiery Furnaces sound creeping back in. There aren’t any backwards-mixed vocals or abrupt key changes, but synths and programmed drums return to augment a batch of songs somewhat less rooted in concrete storytelling details.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Beyondless
    The group hasn’t abandoned its post-punk, just refined it.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Singularity
    There’s no prescribed narrative, but Singularity still tells a grand story--a synesthetic evocation of how it feels to be alive.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dirty Computer
    There is a concept here, but it is Janelle Monáe; there is a story here, but it is Janelle Monáe’s. And she’s outdone herself in both the execution of this vision and its resonance.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Critical Equation
    Dr. Dog’s music is usually far more engaging and inventive, so hopefully Critical Equation’s monotonous tedium is a mere blip.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Twerp Verse
    With few absolute standouts, it’s a consistent, engaging listen full of little surprises and ongoing discoveries.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    In the Rainbow Rain
    The songs here are among Okkervil’s lushest productions, adorned with choruses and horns and washes of sunny guitar, paired well with whatever subject Sheff happens to be tackling. Even when he gets too sappy, there’s always those stellar arrangements to serve as a saving grace.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Grid of Points
    Grid’s abbreviated runtime (seven tracks in just over 20 minutes) doesn’t give you much time to linger in it, and some melodies simply prove too gossamer to grab on to. Harris’ lyrics, as ever, are more sensed than received. Yet it’s another uniquely immersive, meditative experience, however briefly it lasts.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Everything's Fine
    It’s a sprawling and intentionally distancing record, but never less than fascinating.
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