The Telegraph (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,238 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: 882 out of 1238
  2. Mixed: 354 out of 1238
  3. Negative: 2 out of 1238
1238 music reviews
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    • 100 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Revolver Special Edition (Super Deluxe) [Box Set]
    The new version certainly sounds fuller, brighter and deeper, but unless you are a committed audiophile with studio standard hi-fi, most listeners could achieve a similar experience by turning up the volume, or perhaps investing in a pair of decent headphones. All interest therefore lies in extra tracks, which are not so much outtakes as works in progress – as the Beatles settled on arrangements, they would continually build on their chosen version. ... The truth is that the Beatles released everything they considered worthy whilst they were together, leaving nothing of outstanding quality in the vault.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blur 21
    The five and a half hours of unreleased demos/live recordings do give a warmly inclusive insider's feel but there's nothing I'd listen to more than a couple of times.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Guts
    Unfortunately, most of Guts sounds like a simple continuation of Sour – there is little musical growth or thematic change, with Making the Bed and Pretty Isn’t Pretty seeming like mere overhangs from her debut
    • 90 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rio [Live]
    There are good things here, but nothing especially new.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dear Scott
    Shackled by its own turgid competency, Dear Scott fizzes with all the life of a demo tape recorded in a local community hall double-booked with a bingo night. No matter how loud you turn up the volume, it still sounds quiet. It sounds uncomfortably naked, too.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Norman Fucking Rockwell!
    Yet the over-riding sense of her almost unremittingly sombre sixth album, Norman F______ Rockwell!, is of Del Rey shedding veils of production mystery at the risk of being revealed as just another over sensitive and particularly self-absorbed singer-songwriter.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Now and Then [Single]
    There are lovely instrumental passages, lustrous strings, and it has all been crafted with love and care, but it doesn’t hit the heights we expect from a great Beatles ballad, ending up sounding like a poor imitation of genius, the kind of soft rock whimsy you’d find on thousands of second-rate Beatle influenced albums in the Seventies.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Live at the El Mocambo
    This is the Stones’ 12th live album. Do we need another one? Not really. Live at the El Mocambo is one for dedicated fans and completists, but it’s a fascinating snapshot of a band in transition – and great fun.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gigi's Recovery
    Full of safe risks, Gigi’s Recovery is very much a transitional album as The Murder Capital look to evolve without alienating their fanbase. Doors are left wide open for subsequent reinventions but for now, the five-piece are comfortable sticking close-by what they know.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Petals for Armor
    Whilst Paramore's music tends to be all rage and release, solo Williams offers something much more quirky and cerebral, delving poetically and occasionally combatively into her insecurities. The elaborate intricacy of writing and production may be a lot to take in for all but devoted fans.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    3.15.20
    At its best, the grooves have the funky plasticity of an electro-Prince, sprinkled with baffling but thought-provoking lyrics. At its laziest, it sounds like a mumble rapper warming up over a jam whilst doing throat exercises. It's got groove though, and enough mysterious depths to warrant further investigation if you should somehow find yourself stuck at home with nothing better to do.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2
    Full of groove and grit, it's raw and enjoyable.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wounded Rhymes
    The result is never maudlin, but big, bouncy and entertaining.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Live: The Storyteller
    Although some of his anecdotes could drag on repeated listening, he is an engaging raconteur.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Show
    Horan’s sound of choice is much more understated, typically revolving around folky, acoustic strings and soft vocals. The Show, his third solo offering, is more of the same.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Drop Cherries
    A confident, interesting and accomplished album. But Marten is operating in a crowded field. Weyes Blood, Nina Nastasia, Lana Del Rey and Marling all plough similar furrows.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Utopia
    Simultaneously beautiful and befuddling, dazzling and irritating, Utopia has something of Stravinsky or Stockhausen about it. On some level, it may be a work of brilliance, but I suspect it is too far adrift from the rest of pop culture to appeal to anyone but a Björk devotee.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Viva Las Vengeance
    A fun, enjoyable vessel that spotlights a magnetic talent. The music might not entirely be Panic! at the Disco’s own – but like fellow Vegas bigwig Elvis, that’s clearly no barrier.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Before Love Came To Kill Us
    It is edgy fun with pitch-black humour masking real emotional content, although the tension between the darkness of the lyrics and sweetness of the vocals wears thin over a whole album.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    City of Refuge
    Although something of a melting pot, this is an original and accessible album, blending world influences with old time American music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Past Life Martyred Saints
    Blending hi-tech and lo-fi, modern synthesised sound and old-fashioned song writing, her work plumbs torrid emotional depths, similar to alt-rock stars such as Lou Barlow.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shufflemania
    An English one-off, in fine voice.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Secret
    While Touré acquits himself imaginatively in a variety of settings, the whirring, jangling opener Sokosondou, with just his own musicians, feels the most compelling track.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    At the BBC
    For every perfectly observed vignette of English life (Sunny Afternoon, Autumn Almanac) and pithily satirical narrative (Village Green Preservation Society, Dead End Kids) there's a clunking, unwieldy, elaborate novelty song (Supersonic Rocket Ship, Skin & Bone).
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    10,000 Gecs
    100 gecs can also be (perhaps willfully) irritating. ... At their strongest, though – as on punky standout Doritos And Fritos – 10,000 gecs is a wonderful exercise in letting creativity run amok with no rules at all and carefully catching the resultant gold.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    If I've Only One Time Askin'
    He brings real feeling to his own compositions such as Let Me Sleep (At the end of a Dream).
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Indian Ocean
    An enjoyable and soulful album, the highlight of which is the title track Indian Ocean.
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