The Observer (UK)'s Scores
- Movies
- Music
For 2,616 reviews, this publication has graded:
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37% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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59% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 68
Highest review score: | Gold-Diggers Sound | |
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Lowest review score: | Collections |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,230 out of 2616
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Mixed: 1,368 out of 2616
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Negative: 18 out of 2616
2616
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
While there are still nods to the polite dinner-party soundtrack feel of her early work – the string-drenched Courage, for example – this is a much bolder statement of intent.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 20, 2020
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- Critic Score
This is a kaleidoscopic, hard-hitting record designed for the feet as much as the synapses, healing by frequencies.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 8, 2016
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 11, 2017
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- Critic Score
Damned Devotion embraces the messy as well as the smooth, and the balance here is as perfect as Wasser’s ever likely to strike.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 5, 2018
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- Critic Score
The results might sound something like north California-based DJ/songwriter/producer/singer Seven Davis Jr’s diverse yet cohesive debut.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 27, 2015
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- Critic Score
What emerges from their empathy is a thoroughly great record that adds punch and groove to Rebennack's humid party music.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 2, 2012
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- Critic Score
Juvenile shock tactics persist, but he’s now channelling his puckish energy into some thrilling experiments and the more time-honoured hip-hop touchstones Tyler brings into the mix.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 20, 2015
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- Critic Score
With Liberation, Aguilera is at her most artistically emancipated since Stripped (2002).- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 18, 2018
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- Critic Score
There is a depth--a willingness to experiment, a refusal to be pigeonholed--that rewards repeated listens and makes this their most coherent, most satisfying album since their debut. Where they go next is anybody's guess.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 9, 2013
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- Critic Score
When they lock into a winning riff, as on Confusion and Atlas, Rise!, there are still few better bands around.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 21, 2016
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- Critic Score
The album’s mix of soul, R&B, grime and trippy, jazz-tinged interludes is at times a little muddled, but Simz’s lyrical agility and deft rapping sit comfortably with a variety of production styles.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 3, 2017
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- Critic Score
Over 12 tracks there are break-up cliches Parker can’t help but stumble into--“I’ve been blue over you” is the revolutionary gist of a song called Blue--but there is enough viscera on show here to make up for these well-worn sentiments.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 22, 2017
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- Critic Score
Together [Radio Music Society and Chamber Music Society] they reveal the impressive range of this multi-talented young bassist/composer/singer.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 2, 2012
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- Critic Score
Call the Comet is a resounding success, the first of Marr’s three solo albums to feel properly crafted. The loose thread it follows is that, in turbulent times, even the simple act of picking up a guitar and making music is political.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 18, 2018
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- Critic Score
Even if the sex-angst of millennials is not your thing, FKA Twigs can still satisfy, and that is why LP1 (the title oozes confidence) is so special.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 11, 2014
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- Critic Score
Pleasingly, it’s Morrison’s new songs that impress most. ... Of the covers, Hooker’s Dimples is the standout, but in truth there isn’t a weak link here. Excellent songs, expertly rendered--what is there to dislike?- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Dec 10, 2018
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 4, 2019
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 14, 2014
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 11, 2016
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- Critic Score
Lush and exploratory, April / 月音 swirls Cantonese vocals, singing bowls, and samples of Hong Kong traffic lights into Moss’s folk-pop, and is all the more stirring for never really finding a safe resting place.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 12, 2020
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- Critic Score
Opener The Vain Jackdaw, based on an Aesop fable, recorded unaccompanied on a rooftop, is delightful, but elsewhere the mood remains relentlessly forlorn.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 26, 2017
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 16, 2013
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- Critic Score
Nothing builds to a blank, frazzled catharsis, while Sell It Back is an eerie, epic closer: these are torch songs written with petrol and a flamethrower.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 31, 2017
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- Critic Score
The English songwriter’s spacey, super-melodic, immaculately produced pop casts a wonderful spell when it works, particularly on lead single Religion (U Can Lay Your Hands on Me) or the swooning, filtered coda to The Stage, as endless as summer seems in early July.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 19, 2019
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- Critic Score
At times, its tonal shifts cause whiplash, but the real magic appears when Cook manages to coalesce these two sides in the same song.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 21, 2020
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- Critic Score
The album’s feminist slant is “implicit” and reggaeton – the Latin American style heavily influenced by Caribbean sounds – powers a handful of sassy party flexes, a first for this artist, better known for her flamenco background. Staccato rhythms figure heavily, maintaining this unconventional pop artist’s edge. All that energy is balanced out by heartbreak on quieter ballads such as Como Un G and a handful of tracks where Rosalía’s first-class voice is allowed to take more traditional flight.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 21, 2022
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- Critic Score
Her sixth studio album shows her versatility at its best, its songs not so much genre experiments as joyful costume changes.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 21, 2016
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- Critic Score
It's an ambitious step forward for the band (who hail from Oxford, not the Outer Hebrides) and, though only 44 minutes long, it feels like a bit of an epic.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 11, 2013
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- Critic Score
The 27-year-old Scot had taken five years to unleash this third album, an ambitious stab at morphing into a mature soul man. And it's worked.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 14, 2014
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- Critic Score
[Their collaboration] makes for a consistently delicious contrast between the unruliness of sound... and the cool affectlessness of both their voices as every song bursts with the interplay of these two eccentrics' ideas.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 24, 2012
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- Critic Score
Key to it all is intoner Aidan Moffat – “singer” would be pushing it. ... Indispensable, too, is Malcolm Middleton, who supplies musical raw material that he and Moffat work into oxymoronic excellence – cheap, tinny beats and thousand-yard-stare guitars, elevated by strings and saxophone.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 8, 2021
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- Critic Score
The record is beautiful but brief at 26 minutes; roll on Vol II.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 21, 2013
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- Critic Score
KiCk I offers up an even broader palette than previously, while keeping up a steady diet of trademark dissonance alongside those slightly more overground ambitions.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 29, 2020
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- Critic Score
Apocalypse, Girl is at once plaintive, savagely ironic and disconcertingly funny.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 8, 2015
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- Critic Score
Not surprisingly, many of the highlights of his fourth solo album – a treatise on capitalism and loss – nod to Power’s better-known band.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 19, 2019
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- Critic Score
On the band's gorgeous sixth album, there's a new directness to the songs.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 9, 2012
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Although there’s no hit to rival the Selma soundtrack epic, Glory, and a reunion with its vocalist John Legend is the worst of furrowed-brow, gluten-free beat poetry, this is intelligent, impressive work.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 7, 2016
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- Critic Score
Despite beats, synths and a signature “old Taylor” shout (“Nice!”), this is a return to pop that’s content to remain relatively subdued. In this smudged, low-lit headspace, Swift’s perspectives carousel round like a zoetrope.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 24, 2022
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- Critic Score
Indeed, this is one of those rare albums that reveals a little more with every play.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 29, 2016
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- Critic Score
Flotus is a calm, cumulative album about lasting love, unfussily filtering ancient through modern.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 7, 2016
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 13, 2022
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- Critic Score
Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs lends guitar touches and a clean, accessible production. A triumph.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 17, 2015
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- Critic Score
Bird conducts his experiments with the lightest of touches: his ingenuity matched by a gift for simple, lilting melodies.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 5, 2012
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- Critic Score
The meandering midsection of Warm Hands is a slight misstep, but this is another impressive addition to Segall’s canon.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 30, 2017
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- Critic Score
Although this album was written at her new house in Baltimore, when Sangaré got stuck there during lockdown, many of these tracks look to her home region of Wassoulou, whose sung heritage and stringed instruments she has turned into an international world music phenomenon.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 2, 2022
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 17, 2017
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- Critic Score
Heady and rooted in lustful disco, this album proves that the singer is a cornerstone of contemporary pop.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 29, 2020
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- Critic Score
A certain blank-faced cool remains a part of their appeal, but it’s combined with some terrific songwriting.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 8, 2015
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 9, 2012
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 16, 2013
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- Critic Score
Having parked her dystopian allegories, it follows that Monáe now feels a little more like an artist in a crowded partying field. But she has earned this mainstream place. Moreover, she remains distinctive.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 12, 2023
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- Critic Score
Musically we're in familiar folky, country territory, with long-time collaborator Mitchell Froom on production duties; the bluesy Snake Road and the ethereal string and French horn arrangement on Blind Eye are particularly good.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 5, 2013
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- Critic Score
There are sturdy melodies on the quietly charming Cosoco or Cálculos Y Oráculos, but even an apparently conventional song is soon transformed by her edgy and intriguing off-kilter soundscapes.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 9, 2017
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- Critic Score
Kitchen Sink is an album that slowly charms its way into your conscience, and is all the more pleasing for that.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 29, 2020
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- Critic Score
Partygoers collapse or embarrass themselves; strings, clarinets and lush Harry Nilsson-style moments all add to the snapshot of an accomplished new voice.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 23, 2016
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It’s clear the fierce, weird and wonderful Biffy still have plenty of ambition.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 11, 2016
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- Critic Score
His terrific second album is influenced by dawn motorbike rides rather than nocturnal regrets.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 9, 2012
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- Critic Score
Fascinatingly ambitious, and often extremely fun, this debut finds pop in safe and thrilling hands.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 1, 2019
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 13, 2023
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- Critic Score
One of the most exciting, assured hip-hop releases of the year, on which Princess Nokia asserts her claim to the throne.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 26, 2017
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She's irrepressible and the record sparkles with personality and elan, sealing her as a pop star worthy of the illustrious company she keeps.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 9, 2013
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- Critic Score
Second Love is a benchmark smashed and an affecting portrait of a millennial lost soul.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 14, 2016
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- Critic Score
It is a juicy, genre-crossing pop record ripe with the funk, which somehow combines Beyoncé’s Lemonade and St Vincent’s Masseduction with lashings of Lauryn Hill.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 28, 2018
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- Critic Score
There’s a lovely lightness of touch to each of these 10 songs and a real lushness to Auerbach’s production. Malibu Man and Stand By My Girl are the standouts, but really you’d be hard pressed to find a weak link here.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 5, 2017
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If it’s revealing to find the Dead rendered succinctly, this collection’s sonic ambition is also exemplary.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 23, 2016
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 29, 2016
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- Critic Score
At its worst this understated quality [astral rambling] produces the drear muzak of "Gar", but at its best ... it's sublime.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 21, 2012
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- Critic Score
We already know she’s good--but Sometimes… moves Barnett’s own story along with the easy percolation of one of her own songs, better produced and more varied than its predecessor.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 23, 2015
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- Critic Score
Occasionally it sounds like the worst sort of shallow, awfully English electronic funk, but mostly the seductive cradle-rock rhythms drag you in deeper, like quicksand for the ears.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 1, 2016
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- Critic Score
Because Because ends this gutsy, ambience-heavy record with joyous, Middle Eastern birdlike calls from Golding, calls that appear to answer themselves, thanks to Luthert.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 28, 2022
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This is an EP to fall into, as though in a swoon, its fine detail revealing itself over time.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 20, 2022
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Here, we have Hadreas’s desire to transcend his body and self--the no shape of the title--and glorious, inventive, shape-shifting music to match.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 9, 2017
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Thought-provoking words, lush instrumentation – what’s not to like?- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 29, 2024
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The album’s pace never really recaptures the Primal Scream vibes of the single. But the album is not much poorer for this equanimity, with its former teen star, elevated to instant mega-fame in the 2010s, pondering past lives, present happiness and future uncertainty with some deft writing, a gauzy feel and the odd Beatles melody.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 23, 2021
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Ebbing and flowing with daydreams and a glossy but gritty pulse, Lost & Found is quietly, confidently remarkable.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 11, 2018
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Bradfield supplies his usual tender bombast. Some of it could be sketches for a musical, and there’s real intelligence and verve to the electronic, acoustic and orchestral arrangements, with surprising yet successful touches of prog and psychedelia.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 17, 2020
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 30, 2012
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- Critic Score
Clearly Harding is still having fun, and while it can make for a somewhat jarring listening experience, her playfulness adds depth to this charming record.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 28, 2022
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Here are grownup, weighty ruminations on devotion, sacrifice, separation and Covid, but The Tower and King of Sweden are also perfectly constructed pop.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 29, 2024
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It is deliriously easy to listen to, while hooking the mind, and never once taking the easy path through period pastiche.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 16, 2015
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Stith creates musical friction in a way that’s brilliantly compelling, and there are passages of calm here too. Summer Madness, in particular, shimmers with impressionistic beauty.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 1, 2016
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Sub-zero synths and crashing drums resound through this fine second album, while the powerful, tremulous voice of frontwoman Katie Stelmanis instils even minor sentiments with a sense of operatic foreboding.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 17, 2013
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Throughout, there is so much going on that it takes many listens to absorb everything. But persevere and a tour de force of botanical rock takes form.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 29, 2021
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- Critic Score
Throughout, Nao balances some very aerated sulking about unsatisfactory relationships with defiantly old-school touches. You can hear everyone from Janet Jackson to Aaliyah in this confident artist’s deceptively dreamy tones.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 1, 2016
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She describes herself as a pianist who also sings, and when she’s doing both with her quartet there’s no one to touch her. For proof, listen here to Just You, Just Me, That’s All and Almost Like Being in Love.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 5, 2020
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Mostly Radical Romantics is witty, inquisitive about physical and psychological relationships, and less austere than before. The songs produced with Olof are excellent.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 13, 2023
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Throughout, he remains the master of bluesy honky-tonking and surprising modulations that he always has been.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 16, 2013
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The backings are polished modern country, but Presley’s vocal and lyrical touch are exceptional on an impressive state-of-the-nation album.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 30, 2015
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If the concept might seem a bit Brexit, the execution is flawless and winningly witty.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 5, 2017
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She tips the listener headlong into the scrum that is your 20s, when self-doubt and growing self-assurance wrestle one another to the mat. The emotional wrangle is skilfully handled, knife-sharp, funny lyrics carving out beautifully structured songs – co-produced by Gartland – with never a note wasted, dancing nimbly across styles.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 23, 2021
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Peppered throughout with snippets of audio from old home videos, Nothing’s Real feels like a properly curated album, and one of the year’s best.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 11, 2016
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You have to assume Bowie is tackling myriad theatrical voices as Blackstar throws up one unsettling scenario after another, with little obvious connection other than unease and the outrageously good soundtrack in which they are set--weighty with percussion and genre fusions, saturated with instruments, bleak, and unexpectedly, towards the end, resolved.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 11, 2016
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Carry On sticks to familiar virtues; Mason's gravelly tones are set to rootsy guitars and Carey exercises a light touch.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Dec 3, 2012
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The resulting album--Collins’s ninth solo effort--is a joy, brimming with ideas, but light of touch.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 1, 2019
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 27, 2012
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- Critic Score
Sugar for the Pill is desolate in its gorgeousness, and Star Roving sounds anthemic, victorious, as it should.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 9, 2017
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The more he works dissonant elements into these songs, the more thrillingly unbalanced they feel.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 16, 2014
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Generally, these songs set out to strip away some of the artistry and leave Bird more exposed, and as the heart-swelling sentiments of the closing song Bellevue show, it suits him well.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 4, 2016
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It’s a curious mixture, but by no means a job lot. They all have something new to reveal.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 20, 2019
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Thanks to a propensity for insurrectionary non sequiturs that are big on abstract nouns but shakier on sense. But this is still their most exhilarating album since 2000's superlative Xtrmntr.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 13, 2013
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