You from this site? 'Cause if you are, I gotta bone to pick with you.

And it doesn't appear that way. Most albums are clumped between 60-80, and a point difference here or there doesn't do much to differentiate between the quality of certain albums.

eh, I can't speak for how it works in reality, but that's the theory. I got that from the "how did we calculate this score" link they have underneath the album score.

God knows why I was reading that....

What's your bone to pick?

1) How they choose the albums to be featured. Too many obscure albums released by poor electronica artists.
2) How they decide how a review should be scored. If a reviewer doesn't provide his own score, it shouldn't be included at all. End of story.
3) How they decide which reviewers are given higher preecedence. It's complete bullcrap to give higher precedence to reviewers they find "a bigger influence on the genre" because that just normalizes the scores around what those people say. Pitchfork, Spin, Kerrang!, Rolling Stone, etc. have no more objective critics than anyone else.

All three concepts flawed and subjective. And no, their "how this works" section does nothing to adequately explain it.

Yup, the system does give too much power to their own preference.
I only really use it to find a bunch of different reviews in one place.

I can't stand critics.

I might check out albums based on how much praise and attention they're getting overall, but I don't look towards reviews for recommendations. It's all biased bullcrap and in absolutely no way determines weither you'll like it or not, everyone likes to do reviews for fun, but I don't think music criticism should even be taken seriously as a profession.

And it's a lame excuse for guys like Robert Christgau, Piero Scaruffi and Rob Sheffield to make a lot of money, basically for just having horrible taste in music.

Exactly what I've come to realize.

Not to mention there are hundreds of well-received albums out there which I absolutely abhor. The Streets are one of the biggest piles of crap I've yet heard, and they topped the critic's charts.

Well I do end up liking most albums I come across that are very critically aclaimed, but my tastes are just very un-discriminating.

However there are some critical darlings I just couldn't bare. Every hipster raves about how Psycho Candy is one of the best albums ever made, and I just didn't get it. Nor did I ever get what was so special about Nick Drake and Pink Moon.

But if theres ever a time I think me and critics aren't on the same plane, it's right now. Very rarely does checking out some new hyped up band actually pay off.

Pitchforks reviews are pretty helpful though, if they love it I'll probably hate it, if they hate it I'll most certainly love it.

yeah i used to think metacritic was pretty legit, but then i figured out there system a couple of months ago and realized the score i was looking at didn't even begin to approach any semblance of accuracy

i've yet to find a reliable online source, and while i'd never let a website craft my musical opinion it would be nice to have a place that would consistently tell me what might be worth listening to and what is utter crap

Okay, I'm gonna have to bump this thread again, because I am absolutely confused by this.

Luck In The Valley reviews at Metacritic.com

One critic (Pitchfork) gave this album an 82. The others reviews were six 80's and a 70. How does the metascore become 82?

I agree with the general assessment if not the conclusion here.

Reviews are definitely all biased in one way or another, but they can be helpful if you either find a critic/publication that you generally seem to agree with or get a feel for what a particular critic/publication looks for and how you feel about that sort of thing. It works if you only look at it as a rough guide, and in that, it's legitimate as a(n admittedly subjective/editorial) form of journalism as long as it's well written.

That metacritic fudges the math is silly and lame, but honestly, it's hard to take a number as meaning anything as far as reviews go anyway.