The Telegraph (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,241 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 77
Highest review score: 100 Hit Me Hard and Soft
Lowest review score: 20 Killer Sounds
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 884 out of 1241
  2. Mixed: 355 out of 1241
  3. Negative: 2 out of 1241
1241 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    FFS
    As if set free from seriousness, they knock out some polished, off-kilter pop gems about inadequate individuals.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    85% Proof
    The record could do with more tunes to make use of that talent, but it’s still nice to see him back.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Forest of Arms
    Canadian band Great Lake Swimmers excel on I Was a Wayward Pastel Bay, a gentle song which shows off frontman Tony Dekker’s country music skills.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Rose of Roscrae
    It's a sprawling beast of an album and a remarkable piece of creativety from 68-year-old Russell.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    White Men Are Black Men Too
    Yet for all its exuberant DIY spirit, Young Fathers’ songs sound like another bunch of interesting demos, full of passion, spontaneity and left-field inspiration, but too often failing to really nail the song or message down.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Chaos and the Calm
    Making music by numbers shouldn’t be this tiring.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tracker
    Fans will find much to enjoy here, but it might be time for Knopfler to push himself out of his comfort zone.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Down to Believing
    There is a neat cover of Creedence’s Have You Ever Seen the Rain but the best songs are her own heartfelt and brooding country ones.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Chasing Yesterday
    More solid, stadium stompers bulk out this second album.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vestiges & Claws
    Play it soft, and it drifts into the background. Play it loud and something much more vigorous and compelling emerges.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fifty Shades of Grey [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Crazy In Love aside, this generically pleasant and wafty album makes a better accompaniment to laundering sheets than rolling in (or being tied up with) them.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wallflower
    It is a lovely Valentine record, if you favour melancholic songs about missed chances. The set feels overfamiliar, though, drawing heavily on classic Seventies ballads by the Carpenters, Eagles, Elton John and 10CC.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Title
    She just needs to read more self-help than she spouts, and show us that she has more depth than bass.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Pale Emperor
    That this is Manson’s most accessible and focused album in years counts for very little; there is simply no shock value when all you have to offer are cheap shocks.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance
    Atlanta-based producer Ben H Allen (who has worked with Animal Collective and CeeLo Green) has beefed up their sound, although a taste for clean sonic lines and cheesy keyboards retains a power to grate.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Restriction
    Archive seem strangely restricted, dulling their more inventive edges with a black-and-white quality of mood, texture, rhythm and melody, that leaves you craving emotional colour.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    III
    The result for Take That is what you would expect: slick production-line pop that puts all the verses, choruses, hooks and beats in the right place, or at least the places we usually find them.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Going Back Home
    If the production is too clean, it does at least reveal Johnson in glorious high definition with his Telecaster, simultaneously stabbing the chords while letting the licks bleed out with liquid heat.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rock or Bust
    Although what follows isn’t all as good as the opener, it’s solid, vertebrae-jolting stuff, often recycling old themes and melodies.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sound of a Woman
    Her smarter, odder lines (“Put your hand on my piano”) stand out amid the clubbing clichés, though her high, slightly strangled, often shouted vocals don’t.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Listen
    Each track has the invention to be a smash hit but the cumulative effect is rather wearing, an album of no emotional depth, in which everyone is going all out to deliver the big single.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A History of Insolence
    There is plenty of passion in songs about Tennessee striking miners in the Thirties, or about the English Civil War.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Art of McCartney
    The predictable result is an album that sounds far too reverent to the originals.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Big Music
    High point Honest Town, gives a slick, new-Millennial pulse to all the retro heartache. But title track Big Music is a wince-inducing reminder of naff, leather-trousered bombast.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Forever
    The blatant, stocking-filler money-grab of tagging these songs on to a quirky hits compilation (minus Bohemian Rhapsody) isn’t in the Christmas spirit.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sonic Highways
    The lyrics cleverly incorporate words and ideas from each programme. But a soundtrack featuring all the oddball artists from the series would have been more interesting.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Endless River
    Although the 18 tracks (12 of which are co-credited to Wright) are short on catchy tunes, it’s still an effective 53-minute trip.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Storytone
    It’s a long way from the rocker's angry persona, but he’s always had a soppy side. Sometimes the lyrics are also sloppy.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tell 'Em I'm Gone
    It can be a little underwhelming but it is music with its heart in the right place.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sings the Great Diva Classics
    She oversings to compensate, as if by keeping notes moving we won’t notice weaknesses, and there are moments of synthetic fluctuation that suggest recourse to autotune techniques routinely used to polish performances of lesser contemporary pop singers. The material does her no favours.
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