| 3.0 good |
| Adele 21 |
| Rolling in the Deep is good, but none of the other songs on the album really click on all cylinders. She's getting there. |
| Asobi Seksu Fluorescence |
| Not my type of music. It's pretty good though, for the first half. |
| Bright Eyes The People's Key |
| Gets points for originality. Some tracks are great lyrically, but those are the ones where the music is at its worst. I definitely like their folk sound better than everything else they do. The only song where everything comes together well is Haile Selassie. |
| Cage The Elephant Thank You Happy Birthday |
| Seems like a group of semi-talented people that don't really know what they're doing. Doesn't make for very good music. And the singer needs to sing better. |
| Cake Showroom Of Compassion |
| I like all the variety in this album, but unfortunately there aren't any memorable songs |
| Chase and Status No More Idols |
| Lots of talent that just clashes and muddles into sounds that don't sound good, and then get glossed over even further by the production. A generous 3. |
| Currensy Covert Coup |
| Deerhoof Deerhoof vs. Evil |
| There are some cool sounds here, but there's no progression (neither in the individual songs nor in the track to track), and that makes each song only half-way interesting for about 30 seconds. |
| Destroyer Kaputt |
| This had the potential to be an amazing album. Unfortunately it ends up sounding too samey. The production is great, but it still could have used some more variety. Sure the songs don't all sound exactly the same, but at some point they all end up in the same place: a murky, airy undertone with a guitar on top of it followed by saxes. By the 4th song, I was yearning to hear a song with a different formula: something with a moment of clarity, or an explosion of sound, or even an a capella despite how crappy the singer is. There needs to be a switch-up at some point. And I'm not sure if this is actually true or not, but because of the repetitive formula, it sounded to me like the sax was playing the same notes on every song. |
| DevilDriver Beast |
| Top half is pretty good, but the bottom half has really bad songwriting. |
| Dum Dum Girls He Gets Me High |
| EMA Past Life Martyred Saints |
| Frank Ocean Nostalgia, Ultra. |
| Hail Mary Mallon Are You Gonna Eat That? |
| Hercules and Love Affair Blue Songs |
| Painted Eyes is the best song here and probably the only one most people would be interested in. The rest of the album maintains. No real knockouts or clunkers. Just solid enough to get a high 3. |
| James Blake James Blake |
| I can't figure out what to do with myself listening to this. Do I put on my serious art critique face and listen with a technical ear? No, because then he hits me with autotune and clumsy lyrics. Do I just chill out and relax to the music like a regular dubstep album? No, because then he laces all those little parts in in a syncopated way that make it impossible for me to catch a vibe. Shit is too unstable. It's a cool album, and it's very entertaining, but it still feels listless and empty and hard to listen to as a whole. |
| Joan as Police Woman The Deep Field |
| Kendrick Lamar Section.80 |
| Almost a 3.5. I like the storytelling and I like his flow. But his lyrics are hit-and-miss and the repetition is very annoying. Production's okay. |
| King Chip Gift Raps |
| KRS-One Godsville |
| Show CAME THROUGH on the first half, but KRS was meh for the whole album. Every song before Legendary is worth a listen but they're a hear one time and done thing. And the rest kinda suck. |
| Lia Ices Grown Unknown |
| No good songs. No bad songs. Bland singing. Passable production. Mediocrity at its finest. |
| Lykke Li Wounded Rhymes |
| Madlib Madlib Medicine Show No. 11: Low Budget High Fi Mu |
| Mitochondrion Parasignosis |
| Trials and Banishment are dope. The other songs are too sludgy. And Ambient Outro was a terrible idea. |
| Mogwai Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will |
| Moodie Black Sana Sana |
| Dope as hell for the first 5 tracks. Then everything got noisy and irritating. Of course, it could be said that the whole thing is noisy and irritating, but there's something about tracks 6, 7, and 8 that just sound like they have much lower quality. (Sin has a few elements of the top half and the bottom half mixed together.) If the kinks get worked out, the next album has the potential to be a classic. |
| Motorhead The Wörld Is Yours |
| Yeah... you all know what the deal is with this album already. It's formulaic and unimpressive. The middle tracks have really lazy guitar work too. 3.0 shouldn't really be categorized as a "good" score in my opinion. If I scored a 60% on a test, I wouldn't think I did a good job. |
| PJ Harvey Let England Shake |
| Half of the songs are good. The other half are mediocre. None are really monumental, but it's a good album. Right on the border of 3 and 3.5 for me. |
| Radiohead The King of Limbs |
| Every track feels like it got caught halfway between being a song and just being a sound. |
| Riverside Memories In My Head |
| Saigon The Greatest Story Never Told |
| Slaughterhouse Slaughterhouse EP |
| Sad to see that they still have no chemistry and don't understand how to make stuff that other people will want to play more than once. Average songs from very talented guys. |
| Smith Westerns Dye It Blonde |
Sounds good for the first few tracks. Then you start noticing that the singer is putting no
effort into this at all. |
| Spokes Everyone I Ever Met |
| Sounds pretty good, but I've been down this road before. |
| Talib Kweli Gutter Rainbows |
| The Atomic Bomb Audition Roots Into the See |
| Too much dead space, and I'm not much a fan of the vocals, but it has its moments |
| The Carrier Blind To What Is Right |
The sound is great. The lyrics are inconsistent though. I don't know how they managed to do
so with an album this short, but it sounds like they ran out of stuff to talk about. |
| The Decemberists The King Is Dead |
| Very relaxing. Solid songwriting and great production, but no standout tracks. It won't blow you away but it's a very enjoyable album. |
| The Go! Team Rolling Blackouts |
| It's a T.O.R.N.A.D.O!!! .... and some other decent tracks. |
| The Twilight Singers Dynamite Steps |
| Times of Grace The Hymn of a Broken Man |
| It's hard to be experimental on every song and still make an album have one unified sound. This album tries and fails at that. After the 4th track it stops sounding like an album and starts sounding randomly pieced together, like every song wants to be a single but none of them are actually good enough to stand on their own. |
| WC Revenge Of The Barracuda |
| White Lies Ritual |
| Sounds like the same song is on repeat the whole time. A very generous three. |
| Wick-It the Instigator The Brothers of Chico Dusty |
| You Ain't the Next DJ, Afraid of the General, and Black Bug are great. But the rest.... He tried, he really did. And they were done well, it's just that they don't sound nearly as good as the original songs. |
| Yellowcard When You're Through Thinking, Say Yes |
| 2.5 average |
| ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead Tao of the Dead |
| A Skylit Drive Identity on Fire |
| Manages to have every song sound the same and have every song sound worse than the last at the same time. There's nothing good, and nothing all that bad either. Just really, really generic. |
| Anna Calvi Anna Calvi |
| Her voice isn't that great to start with, and by attempting to hide it with cloudy production she made all the songs sound worse. This had the potential to be a much better album. |
| Atmosphere The Family Sign |
| All I have to say is that they're clearly not trying anymore. |
| Bibio Mind Bokeh |
| Chapel Club Palace |
| Cold War Kids Mine is Yours |
| Still lame and amateur. And the lead singer still can't sing. |
| Cut Copy Zonoscope |
| DJ Quik The Book of David |
| Ducktails Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics |
| It's chill, but it's also too stupid to be enjoyable |
| Dumbo Gets Mad Elephants At The Door |
| Iron And Wine Kiss Each Other Clean |
| What the hell kind of production is this and why doesn't it compliment the lyrics? Or have a reason to be there? Or at least make the album a little bit enjoyable? |
| Lemuria (USA-NY) Pebble |
| Different Girls is one of the worst songs I've ever heard in my life. The singers put no effort into the album and only a couple of the songs have lyrics worth hearing. The instrumentalists just do their job. |
| Mr. Big What If... |
| The whole album is solid, but boring. Not a single memorable track |
| Nicolas Jaar Space Is Only Noise |
| The majority of this is boring and stupid, but there are some parts that make for good listening. |
| Onry Ozzborn Hold On for Dear Life |
| Pharoahe Monch W.A.R. |
| Shpongle The God Particle |
| Stateless Matilda |
| Wow, what a drop. Starts off pretty good and then it just keeps getting worse and worse with each track |
| Tapes 'n Tapes Outside |
| If there's one thing I can't stand, it's an album that's smugly comfortable with being mediocre. |
| The Antlers Burst Apart |
| The Veils Troubles of the Brain |
| Great first song, and then the rest are just bleh. |
| Universum Mortuus Machina |
| I'm still trying to figure out what exactly people are getting out of these lyrics. I mean, with most death metal albums, even if the lyrics are crap, you can see why people would relate to them if they're going through tough times. This... what does this do for anyone? |
| Wild Beasts Smother |
