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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    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Notes on a Conditional Form
    A Brief Inquiry is a hard album to top, and Notes is, perhaps, the most disjointed and unclassifiable of the 1975’s works. It serves best, perhaps, as a long and intermittently lovely outro to that defining record.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    folklore
    These 16 tracks (17 on the deluxe version) play out quite pleasurably in their entirety, the joins between Swift, Dessner and Antonoff ultimately only of niche interest. But Swift’s powerful songs reach their climaxes with bittersweet orchestrations, rather than blows to the solar plexus or a ringing in the ears. Everything hovers; little truly lands.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Such Pretty Forks in the Road
    Yes, musically, these songs – all co-written with former Morrissey sideman Michael Farrell –are for the most part her stock-in-trade windswept power ballads and unremarkable soft rock. But while there’s nothing as thrillingly angry as You Oughta Know, it’s a far more palatable set than 2012’s insipid Havoc and Bright Lights.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All the Time
    Her third album stays close to the formula, though with a slightly darker, starker turn.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Brightest Blue
    True, her say-what-you-see lyrics are still too pedestrian; seas remain dark and stormy, lines between opposing things are thin. Yet the music often soars. Goulding should trust herself more: she might need more ego, but she doesn’t need EG.0.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Healing Is a Miracle
    Her fourth album is inspired by a return to instinct. If it feels less ambitious than its predecessor, 2016’s Will – which explored acoustic settings from a Moog factory to a motorway underpass – it’s also more ravishingly beatific.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pure Luxury
    The lyrics to the album’s title track might undercut the fantasy of a luxe life, but the music is all opulence. Disco strings scythe; backing vocals dissolve into spatially aware stereo pans. Everything is buttery; only once does Lovett jump the shark, on Opening Night’s space-prog-funk solo.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    So When You Gonna...
    They careen through a wide range of moods – coquettish, horny, craving approval, irony – with a zeal you rarely hear in other bands. Occasionally those stories can come across as a little juvenile, but where they lack finesse (and, indeed, it’s great to hear a punk band that still sounds like one, the edges unsmoothed), they make up for in ambition.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Homegrown
    Separate Ways and Try are wounded but tender breakup songs, Kansas a gentle reflection on a one-night stand. An unremarkable band blues and an unlistenable finger-on-wineglass affair contribute little to an album that’s well-found but, like much of Young’s recent output, for the committed.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Godfather 3
    Sometimes this feels a bit like being lectured in a pub car park on a Friday night.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    To Love Is to Live
    As ever, Beth’s theorising is air-tight, but ironically, the album stutters most when it is being most provocative.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Chapter 1: Snake Oil
    It’s a perfectly serviceable album, as one might expect, given the pedigree of those involved. But it’s hard to imagine it being met with anything but bemusement at the Grand Ole Opry.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ghosts of West Virginia
    There are more reflective moments, like Time Is Never on Our Side and If I Could See Your Face Again, where fiddler Eleanor Whitmore sings a widow’s part. Numbers such as Black Lung complete the evocation of thankless blue-collar toil, though Earle has done as much before on 1999’s The Mountain, when no one was voting for Trump.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Warnings
    The record is most effective when Lindén sounds more animated, as on I’ll Be the Death of You and the nimble, propulsive, Kraftwerk-influenced Neon Lights. Unfortunately these moments are overshadowed by lengthier excursions that give longueurs a bad name.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It Was Good Until It Wasn't
    Sonically, it can blend a little into one, but the closing feature from the late rapper Lexii, a friend and collaborator of Kehlani’s, is a rousing, poignant end to a largely accomplished set.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep
    Sometimes, everything combines arrestingly: sounds, words and resonance. ... Where this record falters is when Ghostpoet’s writing turns prosaic, and when the echoes of other artists become impossible to ignore.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Making a Door Less Open
    The new styles don’t all gel.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The New Abnormal
    The New Abnormal remains a frustrating listen despite its gleam. Faster tempos would have helped.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It Is What It Is
    The drawback here is not that Bruner hasn’t made the out-and-out pop album his narrative arc as an artist might demand. Nor is it that he is showcasing his conservatoire-grade talents. It is, perhaps, that he doesn’t sit with one emotion, be it high or low, for a sustained length of time.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    925
    925 packs in more than a few disruptive ideas. But Sorry haven’t yet acquired the musical vocabulary to pull them off.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Saint Cloud
    There’s a sharpness in these songs that still unsettles. It’s there in Crutchfield’s vocals, louder and fiercer than before, and on songs such as Fire, which is also difficult to love. Her lyrics, tackling subjects including addiction and self-hatred, often feel too verbose, but they become surprising and refreshing on closer listen.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Put the Shine On
    It’s a shame that the album overstays its welcome a little. As always, the Casady sisters are best in small, surreal doses.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Out of My Province
    These arrangements are never overloaded, the brass remains stately and discreet. If Reid never quite poleaxes you with her insights, this remains a thoroughly lovely record.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Heartbreak Weather
    There are hints of experimentation, such as Nice to Meet Ya’s swaggering hybrid of Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian, but it’s the excellent title track’s flirtation with glossy, synth-tinged MOR that suggests where Horan might be headed next. Proof that it’s often the quiet ones you need to keep an eye on.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Traditional Techniques
    The more direct songs work best – most notably the simmering Shadowbanned and the contrastingly carefree bonus track Juliefuckingette – but there is just as much to enjoy in the album’s hinterlands too.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Main Thing
    An album overloaded with artfully polished tedium.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Suddenly
    It can feel a little lacking in direction – honed down from more than 900 home experiments, it’s eclectic almost to a fault, though there’s enough to treasure among its dreamy meanderings.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Always Tomorrow
    Great art doesn’t have to come from a place of great discomfort, but it often helps. Always Tomorrow always chooses cosseting its audience over confronting more painful truths.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Pilgrim's Tale
    The Mayflower’s story is compelling, featuring hardship, hunger and the righteous pilgrims plundering grain from the Wampanoags, and is helped along by artful narratives spoken by the actor Paul McGann.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Changes
    There are welcome changes of pace – the rib-rattling Forever featuring Post Malone a highlight – but the tempo drops again for a suite of acoustic sketches that touch on God (the title track), patience (Confirmation) and, on ETA, the joys of online surveillance (“Drop me a pin so I can know your location”). It’s a subdued end to an album that feels like a purely selfish endeavour on Bieber’s part.
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