The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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For 2,620 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 37% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 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: 100 Gold-Diggers Sound
Lowest review score: 20 Collections
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,233 out of 2620
  2. Mixed: 1,369 out of 2620
  3. Negative: 18 out of 2620
2620 music reviews
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    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    We're All Somebody from Somewhere
    It starts very promisingly: the self-doubt expressed on the stripped-back opener My Own Worst Enemy is genuinely affecting, while Love Is Your Name boasts an irrepressibly upbeat chorus. I Make My Own Sunshine, meanwhile, might resemble a backwoods take on Catatonia’s Road Rage, yet it still possesses a certain charm. But the quality control suffers elsewhere.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A.K.A.
    Anybody who heard 2011's Love? won't find much new here, forgettable EDM-by-numbers floor-fillers jostling with marginally more inspired ballads.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    R.Y.C.
    Despite a couple of nicely turned meditations (the title track, A Meeting at an Oak Tree), Raw Youth Collage mainly transmits a confusion that is less generational than solely Mura Masa’s.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    What About Now
    Bon Jovi's 12th studio album finds them on familiar ground, arena-pleasing blue-collar anthems of everyday struggle sitting alongside overblown power ballads.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Everybody Looking
    The eerie emotional electricity and forensic detail of the single 1st Day Out Tha Feds dissipates across 14 songs that desperately lack variety and humour, and choruses that aren’t just Gucci grimly repeating the song’s title.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Essential Tremors
    There's no fresh spin on the hoary old Led Zep-isms of Sweat Shock and recent single Heavy Bells, while more ponderous material fails to distinguish them from a competent bar band.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Edgeland
    Hyde's stream-of-consciousness lyrics are more rambling than visionary.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Love Lust Faith + Dreams
    If Derek Zoolander made a record it would sound like Thirty Seconds to Mars: stadium rock so vapid and bombastic that if frontman Jared Leto were pulling off some kind of long-duration joke it would be genius.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Head and the Heart
    They may have plenty of heart but their heads are lost in the clouds.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Head Carrier
    It’s impossible to latch on to any of these songs as evidence of any late-period reflowering.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sound of a Woman
    Ultimately, too many promising tracks fall flat, and Kiesza’s strong, emotive voice is forced to do all the heavy lifting.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present LSD
    LSD underwhelms, even if you accept that three of the world’s most interesting musicians would always struggle to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hippo Lite
    While Hippo Lite does have its moments, well before the end you find yourself reflecting that Young Marble Giants, Rosa Yemen and the Raincoats did this far better almost 40 years ago.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Communion
    It’s wall-to-wall tish, tish, tish, yearn, yearn, yearn. There’s little rhythmic diversity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ghost Stories
    As it is, these ghost stories pack few chills.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Magnifique
    There is some charm in the Brooklyn duo’s method but, after five albums, it’s running thin.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Vows
    Not much here creeps up on you so engagingly [as on Gotye's "Someone That I Used to Know."]
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    LP1
    Spread over 17 songs that tick off genres with all the flair of an automated Spotify playlist, Payne’s anonymity remains the album’s default through line. Occasionally painful yet weirdly Payne-less.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    180
    The debut album by indie's latest great white hopes, however, is notable mainly for its crushing ordinariness.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    How Does It Feel
    As the album progresses, Plapinger’s vocals too often fail to engage, particularly on the more downbeat tracks, and there is a paucity of good ideas towards the end.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Handwritten
    Gaslight seem so hellbent on heroics, they often end up more Bon Jovi than Boss [Springsteen].
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Therapy
    The title track promises much but only plays lip service to emotional soul-baring, while Ed Sheeran’s lyrical motifs dominate Beautiful’s cloying attempts at self-empowerment. A missed opportunity to let a star shine.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Soberish
    Musically, this is unforgivably mediocre. A memorable chorus will occasionally appear from nowhere, as on Hey Lou (and Soul Sucker wins points for its unexpected nod to Blue Boy’s Remember Me), but for the most part the coffee-table pop on offer here is remarkable only for being so forgettable.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Jude
    Respite comes with the atmospheric closer, Gaia – a nicely understated duet with Elissa Lauper that also features the Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan – but it doesn’t make up for the pedestrianism elsewhere.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Where the Heaven Are We
    Too much of the rest of their material sounds like utterly unremarkable filler,
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Take the Crown
    Collectively, Team Williams (producer Jacknife Lee is on board, too) struggle to find a copper-bottomed, gut-feel voice for Robbie 2.0, settling for a variety of puzzling gambits that miss as often as they hit.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Big Dream
    The mood darkens further here--Lynch's croon is mired deeper in dirgey, junkyard blues--and it's harder work too, which rather militates against the carefully crafted unease.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Who's Feeling Young Now?
    The band's twinkle-toed banjo runs and acoustic duelling fall flat here, hobbled by dreary songwriting.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Given to the Wild
    Can only be described as… the sound of Coldplay.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Girl on Fire
    Ultimately, though, it still cleaves too close to the polite piano soul with which Keys has filled 10 years.
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