The other day, Chris was asking whether anyone had heard the new Beastie Boys album and whether it was any good. As it turns out, none of us had heard the full album, with the exception of the singles that have been getting radio play. So, I mentioned to Chris that Metacritic might be able to provide some insight.
Metacrtic, in case you hadn’t heard of it, is a review site for movies, music and video games. But, they don’t have their own review staff; rather, they gather reviews from other critics (both online and offline) and create an aggregate score out of 100 (which they call a “Metascore”). Because it’s based on dozens of reviews, you can really get a feel for how critics as a whole thought of a movie, album or game.
To get back to The Beastie Boys, I looked up To The 5 Boroughs to see how it fared. It got 67/100 which, as Metacritic puts it, represents “Generally Favorable Reviews”. But, there’s more to a Metacritic score than just a number. Sure, the score is a good starting point; but you can read over the individual scores from each critic — and particularly critics that you trust — to get a better idea for how you might like an album.
For example, I trust the guys over at The Onion AV Club (which is related to The Onion but without the satire). Here’s what they had to say:
It’s yet another gleefully kitschy game of postmodern dress-up, but it also has a greatest-hits quality, as if the group is rifling through its own back pages for inspiration. Boroughs unabashedly travels backward, but like Missy Elliott’s similarly retro-minded Under Construction, it’s so joyful that it makes regression feel progressive and growth overrated. […]
As someone who likes The Beastie Boys but doesn’t own any of their albums — only because I haven’t gotten around to it — this one sounds pretty good so far. Still, I think I’d rather wait for someone else in the office to buy it first. It’s not that I don’t trust Metacritic, but I’m not even sure how I rate as a Beasties fan in general :-/.