Observer Music Monthly's Scores
- Music
For 581 reviews, this publication has graded:
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64% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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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: | Hidden | |
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Lowest review score: | This New Day |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 376 out of 581
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Mixed: 195 out of 581
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Negative: 10 out of 581
581
music
reviews
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- Critic Score
At less than 40 minutes long, Vampire Weekend sounds paradoxically both brimming with confidence and something put down as a marker for the future.- Observer Music Monthly
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Ultimately, there is something refreshing about MGMT's lack of cynicism and the winning way in which they fuse hippy and punk ideals.- Observer Music Monthly
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Consistently framed around a beat, a piano and her voice, her plucky and at times eccentric songs generally stick to themes of female neurosis, emotional fragility and, occasionally, what she likes to eat on her toast.- Observer Music Monthly
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For the most part, the lyrics are so reliant on stock phrases - 'feel your touch', 'hold me', 'shoulda known', etc--that you could read anything you like into them without them carrying any personal feeling at all. If you can listen to that fluting, fierce, clear, dirty, magnificent voice while simultaneously shutting out the banality of what it's expressing, you'll have hours of pleasure from this gorgeously melodic, curiously old-fashioned album.- Observer Music Monthly
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For all American Gangster's conceptual flair, the purest joy comes from 'Success', a tune which could have slotted into any Jay-Z album.- Observer Music Monthly
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Whether live or unplugged, though, the effect is much the same: disbelief that one band can convey this much emotion when, for all the unearthly beauty of the music, the lyrics amount to little more than gibberish.- Observer Music Monthly
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Britney has delivered the best album of her career, raising the bar for modern pop music with an incendiary mix of Timbaland's 'Shock Value' and her own back catalogue.- Observer Music Monthly
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As wonderful as it is unexpected, Dirt Farmer is a strong candidate for comeback of the year.- Observer Music Monthly
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It's also about love, loss, the British urban landscape, laughing at yourself, great guitars, exciting chord changes, tight rhythms, the Stones-Who-Kinks-(Small) Faces-Clash-Jam-Smiths-Happy Mondays-Stone Roses-Oasis-Blur history of Britrock, rich, simple production, songs with layers, a really good band and a singer who has relocated his voice.- Observer Music Monthly
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Backed with the gusto of big horns, Young's guitar is once again a thing of wonder on this track, now slashing and burning, now playing transcendent dance riffs.- Observer Music Monthly
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Tankian has always got one more surprise up his sleeve. But his scatter-shot approach does not detract from the acuity of his polemical insights- Observer Music Monthly
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This kind of electro-glam was acceptable in the Eighties, and Hourglass proves that it still is.- Observer Music Monthly
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Raising Sand is an album of deep, dark Americana, a scintillatingly stitched patchwork of country, R'n'B and singer-songwriters that represents what Plant describes as "the America I have always loved musically."- Observer Music Monthly
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Overpowered's bubbling, sensual, and soulful glitterball gems effortlessly tap into the perennial glory of feeling lost and lonely at the disco at the end of the world.- Observer Music Monthly
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The quality veers wildly, but every so often he hits upon a great song. 'Just As You Are' in particular sets the smoothest of melodies and a haunting cornet solo from Wyatt against the most world-weary of lyrics.- Observer Music Monthly
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Magic is a record aimed squarely at radio, stadiums, open car windows and the solar plexus of guys who don't notice passing musical fashion. Magic sounds big. And it sounds great.- Observer Music Monthly
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Check out the dissonant 'Womankind' ("Wish I had a lover who could turn this squalor into wine"), while the show stopper is 'Sing'--a collaboration with 23 female superstars that is incandescent.- Observer Music Monthly
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Nothing Harvey has done in the past, however, can prepare you for her eighth album, White Chalk, whose cover is as singular as the tunes therein.- Observer Music Monthly
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'My Dearest Friend' ("I am going to die of loneliness I know / I am going to die of loneliness for sure") is among the most tender tunes that Banhart has produced.- Observer Music Monthly
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This album proves that when Earle reconnects to the sheer joy of making music the results can be powerful.- Observer Music Monthly
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Best is the title track, a roll call of compassion that embraces the darkness of 'Frankenstein technologies' and the hope of "a safe place for kids to play/ bombs exploding half a mile away." Both sombre and defiant, it's Mitchell at her finest.- Observer Music Monthly
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Once Upon a Time in the West is a well-written, well-recorded, mainstream rock record.- Observer Music Monthly
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Drastic Fantastic feels neither brave nor raw; Steve Osborne, working with Tunstall for the second time, has produced an album of flawless pop hits.- Observer Music Monthly
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A unique combination of masculinity and creativity, Let's Stay Friends is proof that few bands rock quite like this.- Observer Music Monthly
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The best track on this typically polished but ultimately quite disturbing album (the back-to-basics self-examination of 'Everything I Am') is a brave attempt to confront such uncertainties head on.- Observer Music Monthly
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