Observer Music Monthly's Scores

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For 581 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Hidden
Lowest review score: 20 This New Day
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 376 out of 581
  2. Mixed: 195 out of 581
  3. Negative: 10 out of 581
581 music reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Which Bitch?
    Though it may occasionally be a little too skittish for its own good, Which Bitch? confirms that the View are a band with a vibrant imagination and an abundance of ideas. For that reason alone, their return is very welcome.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Working On A Dream
    On his 24th album, Springsteen reaches for the simple power and unabashed romanticism of early pop.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Empyrean
    John Frusciante has carved out a parallel world as a solo artist over a series of intensely personal and brilliantly realised albums. His 10th, The Empyrean, is his most ambitious to date.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Merriweather Post Pavilion
    Even by their own exuberant standards, though, AC's ninth album is a dizzying knees-up that makes most music, indie rock or otherwise, sound both bloodless and pathetically timid.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Crying Light
    That The Crying Light vibrates with confidence will be no surprise to anyone who witnessed last year's remarkable shows at London's Barbican.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blood Bank [EP]
    Vernon is great at seizing on something simple and spinning it out to reveal its innner beauty and this EP shows that there's more than just heartbreak to the 27-year-old. The title track, however, does sound like something by Coldplay.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fantasy Black Channel
    Fantasy Black Channel is a tour de force comprising glam, techno, and rave, all of which he twists into unimaginable shapes.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Glasvegas
    Praise indeed but then these hard-nosed softies are unique and this, make no mistake, is their "Definitely Maybe," the quintessential noise-pop set of the modern age.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Folie A Deux
    And while this all may sound suspiciously over-indulgent, the fact is these self-styled 'soft-core' rockers are fulfilling their own prophesy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Electric Arguments
    His third stint as the Fireman, his partnership with producer Youth, finds the pair on inspired form, ready to take risks while knocking out a track a day.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    808s & Heartbreak
    It might seem harsh but let's hope he doesn't find too much happiness in the meantime. Loneliness is proving quite the muse.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Day & Age
    With neither the sugar rush of "Hot Fuss" nor the blustery thrills of "Sam's Town," this is the Killers' most beguilingly strange record. As an accurate reflection of its frontman, it succeeds handsomely.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Safe Trip Home
    This album is a mature and thoughtful collection of songs and a fine memorial to her father, who would have been right to be proud.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fearless
    She writes everything, and has a feel for timeless songwriting that means she can cover Eminem's 'Lose Yourself' live, and it works.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Renaissance
    At the end of an extraordinary year in America, hip hop is witnessing the start of its lost icon's second term.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Off With Their Heads
    Mostly band and producer Mark Ronson have done what both parties needed to do in late 2008: avoid the ordinary and obvious, namely glossy stadium-indie and retro-soul horns respectively, and aim for the extraordinary.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Is Overtaking Me
    This set has 21 unreleased folk and pop tracks, their conventional framework unable to contain the childlike dreaminess that marks their creator's best work, whatever the genre.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Ice
    AC/DC have stuck to their guns with electrifying results.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At Carnegie Hall [Live]
    This live double album, recorded in July 1998, offers another take on those great songs.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dig Out Your Soul
    It won't win them any new fans, but those that believed the truth last time will dig this.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Offend Maggie
    Offend Maggie is head-spinning bliss from beginning to end, and proves that the quartet are the best prog-rock post-punk Afro-Oriental art-pop folk-jazz band in the world.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
    Not everything is perfect here, the five live cuts, in particular, not particularly inspired choices. But you could lose yourself in these recordings.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Ear Park
    This second album (featuring Grizzly Bear's Chris Bear and Chris Taylor) is a sumptuous sequence of symphonic meditations on memory and loss that somehow manage to give a more expansive twist to the already elegiac mood of Arcade Fire's Funeral.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Another World [EP]
    If we are going to go, the magnificently mournful title track of this EP may as well be the soundtrack.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alegranza
    The 24-year-old's debut is a tropical soundclash of spiralling steel drums, looped, gnarled local songs and untrammelled joy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    London Undersound
    The chatter of modern culture might make such a response to 7/7 unfashionable, but such a thoughtful voice, and so deeply felt a record, shouldn't go unheeded.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Leucocyte
    Profound and intense, they had reached a level of interaction most bands can only dream of. Svensson's loss goes deep.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Luna
    Luna is a psychedelic delight.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Hawk Is Howling
    Masters at building tension upon tension then gently letting it go, their cyclical instrumentals are both sorrowful and consoling.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Only By The Night
    The dreamy 'Cold Desert' is the perfect maudlin end to this short, sharp, 42-minute, no-filler album, revelling in every miserable blues-rocker cliché as Matthew's guitar goes all shoegazey and then briefly threatens to turn the whole thing into a 'Purple Rain' wig-out.
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