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
Like Michael Kiwanuka, Carner’s first two albums were occasionally terrific but his third is a masterpiece.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 24, 2022
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- Critic Score
There's plenty to like about Neil Young and Crazy Horse's first work together for nine years, a collection of cover versions of essential American tunes.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 5, 2012
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- Critic Score
The continuity stressed between body and tool, folk history and future, like the work of Meredith Monk or Björk, lures the listener away from the twin traps of techno-evangelist complacency and technophobic retreat with sweet inspiration.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 13, 2019
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- Critic Score
RTJ4 supersizes their outsider aesthetic without squandering any hard-won authenticity. Icy disquisitions on the missing soul of modern America jostle with good-natured boasts from the golden age of hip-hop, yielding a remarkable hit rate.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 8, 2020
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- Critic Score
The record’s dreamlike atmosphere is seductive and disquieting; a moving tribute to Albion’s troubled soul.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 19, 2024
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- Critic Score
Every song is a wonder. It is unlikely Angels & Queens will inspire many imitators of its retro-future soul, its damaged doo-wop. It’s simply too good to be copied.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 10, 2023
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- Critic Score
Perhaps Tempest’s greatest achievement is not to fall prey to the pressure for unnecessary revolution; her work sits more comfortably in the tradition of perfecting the groove, not changing it. That perfection might be illusion, but its pursuit can produce wonderful work, as it has right here.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 10, 2016
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Over seven elegant tracks, White and his musicians achieve the kinds of loveliness that Spiritualized, Lambchop, Cat Power and the Beta Band have tilted at, at different times in the past, and quite often missed.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 22, 2013
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- Critic Score
At their best, which is often on Gigi’s Recovery, the Murder Capital combine muscular drama and skeletal grace with a confidence that Radiohead would be proud of.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 23, 2023
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 17, 2016
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- Critic Score
It is full of indecipherable songs, swaddling the brutal clarity of the techno DJ-producer duo’s early singles in something unpredictable, off-kilter. Choral vocals make you feel everything from terrified to strangely soothed.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 14, 2018
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- Critic Score
Summer is traditionally the season for unearthing treasures from the jazz archives, and this is a real prize.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 17, 2015
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- Critic Score
Recorded over the course of five years, this extraordinary collaboration deserves excellent speakers and a soft couch to catch the swooning listener.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 30, 2021
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- Critic Score
Its 10 songs are stark but powerful, their anguish and insight given a deft, minimalist treatment by producer Kenny Greenberg. ... An aching, moving testimony, beautifully realised.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 25, 2019
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- Critic Score
Brown’s storytelling is as witty as ever, with pungent bars that pop like pimples, spattering tracks with quotable filth. His best work by a distance.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 7, 2019
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- Critic Score
Small Town Heroes may mourn victims of violence but it is emphatically a record stuffed with good times.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 31, 2014
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- Critic Score
Ultimately, all are visions, alternately haunted and comforting. Subtle evolutions in mood and instrumentation come to peaks that are made all the more stunning by their scarcity.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 7, 2019
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- Critic Score
Hip-hop is constantly being tweaked and nudged in new directions, but rarely is it reconfigured as radically, and thrillingly, as on this second album from Shabazz Palaces.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 28, 2014
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- Critic Score
Comparisons with such late-career highlights as Johnny Cash’s American Recordings albums and Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker are inevitable, but Negative Capability really does belong in such exalted company.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 5, 2018
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- Critic Score
Bevan has jettisoned the sleep paralysis pop of his early work for something even more dissociated and peripatetic. You might head for the vicious rave of Rival Dealer or Nightmarket’s sumptuous, pealing melody first, to swerve some long, austere, beatless passages, but this is a compilation of rare bravery and beauty.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Dec 16, 2019
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- Critic Score
To Believe is heartbreakingly brilliant: a collection of exquisitely assembled songs that appear delicate from a distance before revealing a close-quarters core strength. ... A triumph.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 18, 2019
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- Critic Score
There’s not a weak song here. A genuine pleasure to listen to.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 30, 2023
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- Critic Score
Released from both internal and external shackles, Muna feels like phase two for one of pop’s best bands.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 27, 2022
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- Critic Score
An exceptional record that deserves your time and headphones.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 2, 2023
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- Critic Score
This is an album whose bone-deep grief sits inside music that’s very easy to tap a toe to.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 8, 2021
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It’s an unsettlingly raw album, the sparse instrumentation – Nastasia’s soft voice and acoustic guitar, recorded, as ever, by Steve Albini – making her lyrics all the more stark and powerful. ... An astonishingly moving record.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 25, 2022
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- Critic Score
With less dissonance and psychedelic experimentation than Jon Hopkins or Four Tet, Fragments may be too care-home comfort for some, but it’s brilliant, wondrous work.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 18, 2022
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- Critic Score
The band’s intoxicating, questing spirit throbs through the strongest suite of music Coombes has assembled in 20 years.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 30, 2023
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- Critic Score
In an increasingly fraught world, it’s an unashamedly sunny sound. It makes for a gorgeous record in which to lose yourself for 40 minutes.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jun 15, 2020
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- Critic Score
If the interplay between the band’s instruments makes gleeful mincemeat of genre, singing guitarist Isaac Wood’s equally remarkable lyrics regularly float to the top of the mix. Half-spoken, half-sung, they riff on granular scene references (“I told you I loved you in front of Black Midi”) and Gen-Z witticisms, but pack in plenty of timeless tenderness and anomie.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 8, 2021
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