Pitchfork's Scores
- Music
For 12,009 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
41% higher than the average critic
-
6% same as the average critic
-
53% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: | Sign O' the Times [Deluxe Edition] | |
---|---|---|
Lowest review score: | nyc ghosts & flowers |
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 9,825 out of 12009
-
Mixed: 1,877 out of 12009
-
Negative: 307 out of 12009
12009
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
-
- Critic Score
For all its cracked nerves, Good Living Is Coming for You is a record of triumph and gathering strength, of harnessing self-awareness to break out of toxic cycles.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jul 6, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Even as she’s lost some of her range, Williams’ voice remains sui generis. She’s never sounded more tender or unguarded as she does on “Where the Song Will Find Me,” leaning into her vibrato, letting the holes and pockmarks in her voice tell their own stories.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jul 6, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Thrown on at a barbecue, dinner party, or drab commute, Blowout is sure to enliven the mood. Yet Kirby’s work also rewards careful listening, sprinkled with moments that jolt you to attention as surely as they soothe.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jul 5, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The new compositions are highlights, tracing their central motifs to unexpected destinations. While some of Metheny’s best original work this century has spoken to his ambition as a composer (2005’s The Way Up), his aim here is for simple but immersive mood-setting.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jul 5, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Myuthafoo, however, dispenses with vocals entirely, and is better for it. The absence of singing brings Barbieri’s synths to the fore. Part of the wonderment of Myuthafoo isn’t just how she sequences; it’s what.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jul 5, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The initial, gut-level response to Systemic’s crust-punk take on doom metal is more than enough to hold it aloft. But in engaging with its themes, then contemplating them on repeat listens, Systemic gains a depth that’s rare for a largely instrumental record.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 30, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sternberg’s deep compassion radiates across I’ve Got Me. By album’s end, they come to feel like a friend—one who’s trying their best not to repeat the same mistakes, but still texts you from their ex’s place in the middle of the night.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 30, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Nothing here is going to replace “Boys in the Better Land” in the alternative disco pantheon—but Chatten has made a bold claim here as a folk auteur, whose classical songwriting and tender, veracious touch resonates now and into the past.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 30, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Bain has crafted her share of evocative ballads, but the ones on In the End tend to zap the momentum. Bain is at her best when she’s embracing a sense of playfulness, winking as subtly as she cries, sashaying between humor and hurt.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 30, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Picture of Bunny Rabbit offers the chill of encountering more of a beloved artist’s classic work in the moment they made it. There’s something near-holy about overhearing Russell in this magic half-light again.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 29, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
An expanded version of the Truckers’ The Dirty South that finally reveals the true breadth of their 2004 masterpiece.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 28, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Business Is Business, perhaps due to its nature as a cobbled-together collection from someone who can’t access a recording studio, even to comb through his vaults, frequently recalls Thug’s loosest, most apparently improvisatory work. It’s all the more compelling for it.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 28, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Life Under the Gun explodes out of the basement show without abandoning its energy and essence. The noise of their earlier EPs has become rich and lush, their rhythm section tight and crisp.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 27, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
On Purge, Godflesh strike a balance between communal vulnerability and seething hostility that makes for the most inviting entry in their late career.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 26, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Some tracks are more compelling than others, but that’s to be expected when an artist writes by throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. The melodies on Hammond’s album are in ample supply; it’s the urge to self-edit that’s taken a breather.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 26, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Good emo music makes you feel their feelings; great emo music makes you see the world through their eyes. MacDonald’s lyrics render images like chewing on bread that’s turned to flesh, peeling a drunk driver off the asphalt like roadkill, feeding nickels and dimes to ducks in a pond.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 23, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Despite its razzle-dazzle, this is the rare King Gizzard release that actually sounds like it was composed as quickly as it was.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 22, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Michael is an origin story that works best when it examines how worshiping at the altars of sex, money, and Jesus created the man we know today. But when he petulantly doubles down on critiques of his public persona and status as a Black multi-millionaire, the album is harder to stomach.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 22, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While their influences are all over the map, it’s encouraging to hear Geese getting more comfortable sounding like themselves.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 22, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Although songs like “King of Hearts,” a pummeling Eurodance stomper, or “Castle in the Sky,” another pummeling Eurodance stomper, might allude to urgency in their lyrics and music, they still feel totally anemic and bereft of passion.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 22, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sometimes the single versions here are superior to the album edits, 12-inch mixes, and other edits, but not always. It is also possible to imagine a more nuanced and inventively sequenced gloss of Pet Shop Boys’ career than this chronological survey. But there is particular value to this nerdy historicism.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 22, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Each song is a carefully constructed miniature, and the album itself is endearingly small-scale too—a record where life lessons aren’t preached, just lived.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 22, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Omnichord Real Book is no less assertive, yet feels energized by grace and understanding.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 22, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The result is an album that is too vague to have much depth and too absorbed in real-life drama to have the feel-good vibes he wants to preserve.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 22, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While she has a reputation for making familiar songs sound utterly new, here she finds a way to make Bramblett’s songs tell her story, to let them speak for her. She rewrites his songs simply by singing them.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 21, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While exactingly played and produced, Speakers Corner Quartet’s songs don’t always push forward stylistically; a few tracks, like “Can We Do This?,” built around Sampha’s familiar coo, feel like songs you’ve heard many times before. But there are moments of breathtaking originality.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 20, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Here, Duffy is at their most instrumentally complex and collaboratively generous. The result of this free-for-all cooperation is Hand Habits’ most engrossing project yet.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 20, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
On Guy, she takes time to steady herself to her inner metronome, finding her voice with her dad’s help.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 20, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
With Work of Art, Asake understands that his winning formula needs no adjustments.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 20, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This is not an album of passages or movements or suites. It’s best understood and appreciated as a collection of songs, of which there are clear highlights.- Pitchfork
- Posted Jun 20, 2023
- Read full review