The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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For 2,612 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: 1,226 out of 2612
  2. Mixed: 1,368 out of 2612
  3. Negative: 18 out of 2612
2612 music reviews
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    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All Born Screaming
    From the noisy low end of lead track Broken Man, through Flea’s prowling industrial pop and the superlative goth jazz, Bond-like theme of Violent Times, it’s a loud and unapologetically varied work.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Other Side
    A crafted, lustrous meditation.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nonetheless
    Essentially, there are three types of Pet Shop Boys albums: life-changing, great and OK. This one’s great.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue Eclipse
    The overall sound may seem too polished and wary of explosive emotion, but it’s nonetheless a consistent and confident foundation – one primed to launch Blue Lab Beats into the spotlight as formidable producers and performers.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
    Ultimately, this may be Swift’s most Swiftian album: the unhappiness profound, the details generous, the lessons absorbed.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    sentiment
    There are no cathartic singalongs in the album’s downbeat cello or swelling drones. Its relatability stems from somehow managing to recreate the specific texture of loneliness.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sun Without The Heat
    While the heavier, distorted guitars of Tower and Love We Had feel somewhat jarring in the ebullient context of the album, Sun Without the Heat is a freewheeling and joyous listen, with McCalla employing her knowledge of musical traditions to produce fresh combinations.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
    The emphatic playing of Hutchings’ more exhortatory bands (chiefly Sons of Kemet) has given way to a more impressionistic delicacy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A La Sala
    Khruangbin’s strengths exist in relative quietude, making their intricate music sound so gentle that it lulls the listener into a newly imaginative state.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    COWBOY CARTER
    It feels like a feast at a time when pop is offering up scraps. As she mentioned herself when announcing the album to a mix of anger, intrigue and confusion: “This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.” It’s also her fourth classic in a row.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Moves In The Field
    The greatest satisfaction is that she does not jump the shark: everything here is possible-sounding, humanistic and full of emotion; only slightly uncanny.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Interplay
    It’s their most adult album yet, and it suits them.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran
    Vocally, the “queen of Latin music” isn’t particularly distinctive, but she ranges from seductive to strident in a single line and makes both equally appealing. Her Majesty’s moods are despondent (rare), thirsty (much less rare) or proudly powerful (nearly always) and she ensures you’re buffeted by every emotion billowing past.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Songdreaming
    The record’s dreamlike atmosphere is seductive and disquieting; a moving tribute to Albion’s troubled soul.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    WORLD WIDE WHACK
    It all makes for a multi-textured, multi-hued portrait of an artist who playfully seeks out the primary colours but remains very frank about the shade.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eternal Sunshine
    Refined and subtle, but with the right amount of bite (see the darkly hued True Story), Eternal Sunshine feels like a clearing of the emotional decks.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Letter to Yu
    Letter to Yu finds this dancefloor native expanding his already imaginative sound design. It’s sad, but also full of diversions, with Pupul’s curiosity and squelchy sense of fun ever-present.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Filthy Underneath
    Filthy Underneath feels like an intelligently calibrated vehicle in which musical and emotional progress is made, even as suffering laps at the running boards like flood water.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where's My Utopia?
    Musically, meanwhile, Where’s My Utopia? marks a huge leap forward, with co-producer Remi Kabaka Jr of Gorillaz helping to realise soaring ambitions.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Underdressed at the Symphony
    You might file her body of work under 70s-tinged alt-country. But Webster’s subtle accessorising – her eclectic production choices, like Feeling Good Today’s Auto-Tuned multitracking – always render these miniatures next-level.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Liam Gallagher John Squire
    As eloquent as Squire’s guitar is, his lyrics can often be trite. Sometimes, though, Gallagher sings something that makes you sit up.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Past Is Still Alive
    There are words of love for suicidal addicts (Alibi) and a sense of the distance travelled, while remaining constant: an outlier whose solidarity with the runaways and the marginalised endures.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    nublues
    An innovative homage to tradition.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    TANGK
    No longer just parochial rabble rousers, Idles are moving on up.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All Life Long
    For those expecting Malone’s all-enveloping instrumental embrace, the churchiness of the voices can startle. But the younger artist came to music through choirs, and the sorrowful grace of the words makes plain emotions she previously only implied.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Phasor
    At just 35 minutes, Phasor might not be as all-enveloping as his previous efforts, yet it offers enough scraps of melody and moments of wonder that you won’t feel cheated.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What Now
    It’s an aural through line as she dazzles us with her range: unexpected dancefloor bangers (Prove It to You), pellucid vintage soul and exultant funk.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What Do We Do Now
    As usual, the words he drawls are blankly impenetrable – the gorgeous I Can’t Find You could be about friendships, a relationship or his car keys. Still, this is a wonderfully agreeable album and, if you miss the roar, there should be more Dinosaur Jr in a year or two.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Peacemaker
    Peacemaker balances its polished Nashville musicianship with uncanny textures, resulting in a record so atmospheric you’d swear you could hear the rustle of her white prairie dress in the breeze.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    People Who Aren't There Anymore
    Here are grownup, weighty ruminations on devotion, sacrifice, separation and Covid, but The Tower and King of Sweden are also perfectly constructed pop.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sadness Sets Me Free
    Thought-provoking words, lush instrumentation – what’s not to like?
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue Raspberry
    Her second album, written in Nashville, continues to make up for lost time, moving on in both craft and playfulness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wall of Eyes
    The subtle, unfurling I Quit, meanwhile, marries guitar, piano and percussion to create an arpeggiating Doppler effect strafed by electronics. “This is my stop, this is the end of the trip,” sings Yorke. In the same breath he’s ruminating on “conscience” and “brotherhood” and “a new path out of the madness, to wherever it goes”. That path may well be shaped like a smile.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Rope
    There is no right way to grieve, but it feels as though shock and sorrow have only made Sleater-Kinney seize their day and prioritise.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Big Sigh
    But where its predecessor was louche and hook-driven, this fourth studio album skulks deeper into her psyche, its occasional moments of catharsis upended by sombre piano interludes and bleak lyricism.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Orquídeas
    Orquídeas’s variegation means it’s not quite the no-skip concept album that was Red Moon. But in a rapidly decompartmentalising pop landscape, where Spanglish is increasingly a lingua franca, Uchis’s flair and depth cuts across whatever notional cultural barriers might remain.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Think Later
    At 14 songs, there are misfires that could have been pruned – Run for the Hills is generic, algorithmic trap-pop – but overall, Think Later feels like McRae’s ticket to the big leagues.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Before and After
    The only slight misstep is Mother Earth, which swaps the original version’s distorted guitar for pump organ – but as it’s Young’s voice that still takes centre stage, that feels more of a cosmetic change than the imaginative reworkings elsewhere.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Raze Regal & White Denim Inc.
    Over 10 tunes, Regal and Petralli fashion taut, soulful pop nuggets out of jazz fusion licks, a sound not a million miles from Tame Impala meeting Thundercat, but gnarlier and different at every turn.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    i/o
    The magnificently eerie Four Kinds of Horses is the record’s peak, while maternal elegy And Still feels like the most open, vulnerable song he has ever sung.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Integrated Tech Solutions
    Integrated Tech Solutions is another assured slam dunk: a loose concept album about our dystopian tech consumerism with bouncy retro production that crackles with vim.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Madres
    It peaks with How Music Makes You Feel Better, in which a techno-infused beat anchors a euphoric, arena-sized synth line, expressing Kourtesis’s belief in music’s capacity to heal the spirit.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Chronicles of a Diamond
    From first note to last, Chronicles of a Diamond swaggers from the speakers. Even the love songs have new light cast on that hoary old topic by the roaring fire of Burton’s voice, while Quesada layers psychedelics and electronica into the orchestral mix, always conjuring new charms from familiar elements.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pearlies
    It’s a successful enough reinvention for Anderson surely to be wondering why she didn’t make a solo record sooner.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    how i'm feeling now
    If these songs are more off the cuff than before, nothing here sounds unprofessional. Some lyrics have not exactly been sweated-over – “I love you forever, even when we’re not together,” goes Forever – but they chime with people feeling acutely separated from loved ones.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crazymad for Me
    Crazymad, for Me doubles down on CMAT’s self-knowing “too muchness” with a meatier sound and more vaulting ambition.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Paint My Bedroom Black
    If the lyrical content often favours navel-gazing, nearly every song comes with an expertly crafted, big pop chorus or a sonic gear-change – Flatlining, for example, shifts from warm synths to a four-to-the-floor beat and tumbling electronics.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Set It Off
    It is, of course, too long. But its peripatetic nature means you can easily assemble your own collection from its 21 tracks. Tense, urgent Broad Day, eerie Night Vision, or feisty duets Fine As Can Be and Princess Cut should all make that list.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Javelin
    Most songs here start bijou and intimate, and swell to a clanging, polyphonic crescendo. My Little Red Fox begins by underlining the similarities between Stevens and Elliott Smith, before building to a rococo fantasia. Shit Talk features Bryce Dessner on guitar and stretches to eight minutes of shape-shifting, elegiac misery.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Halo
    His singing is better than ever, whether reminiscent of Billie Eilish’s lean-in intimacies (Facts_Situations) or Kele Okereke’s husky confessionals (I’m Done). Yet mostly Halo feels like an inch rather than a leap forward.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Protect Your Light
    By turns angry, celebratory, mournful, hopeful, here’s an album for complex times.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    We Buy Diabetic Test Strips
    An exceptional record that deserves your time and headphones.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heaven
    If these songs occasionally feel underwritten – many are brief, jazzy sketches that seem to wander in and meander back out again – they contrast pointedly with the overwritten, attention-deficit music crafted to punch out on today’s Spotify playlists. Sometimes all you need is a little tenderness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    softscars
    This harsh, noise-fuelled musical heartbeat is a thrilling new phase, cementing Ćmiel as a fearless creative voice.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tension
    You Still Get Me High and Story are full-on 80s pop, expertly executed with hooks, vocal performances and a widescreen feel. Even better are breezy retro cuts such as Hands, a frisky disco/R&B outing with rapped sections. One More Time, meanwhile, packs in handclaps, housey disco and more party-for-two promises.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Relentless
    A Love and Let the Sun Come In recall the jangle of their early-80s imperial phase. The ballads are equally well executed, most notably the closing I Think About You Daily, with Jonny Greenwood’s hypnotic string arrangement imbuing Hynde’s uncharacteristically swagger-free vocals with a powerful sense of regret and vulnerability.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
    Throughout, Mitski’s voice has never sounded sweeter or more exquisitely measured, even as she sings of protagonists vomiting cake, alcoholism (Bug Like an Angel), men, dogs, God and the devil.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Valley of Heart's Delight
    What’s never in doubt is the authenticity of the “missteps and redemption” detailed in its songs, or their engaging, personal delivery.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Guts
    Overall, Guts is perhaps missing Sour’s big pop moments, but as a snapshot of an upturned life it’s consistently fascinating.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Club Romantech
    At 15 tracks, Club Romantech can feel relentless in its rhythmic energy. Yet if you surrender to the sound, it’s hard not to find the album infectiously danceable. It is a brave new world for Icona Pop, one that finds them closer to Ibiza than Katy Perry.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die (world war)
    A punk disposition suffuses many of these nine tracks, immolating assumptions around the j-word. Fly Or Die III (for brevity) rocks, rolls and generally throws itself around.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jump for Joy
    In a world of diminishing returns, not many artists hit their peak 11 (or so) albums into their career. That only makes Jump for Joy even more of a triumph.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jaguar II
    Although Monét is still finding her voice, her production, overflowing with euphoric horns and silky melodies, fits her soft cadence and carefree lyrics like a bespoke suit.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Unreal Unearth
    Strengths lie in Eat Your Young’s supple funk, a light-footed take on Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, and the itchy urgency of De Selby (Part 2). There’s a chilling, unforgettable beauty to closing pair Unknown/Nth and First Light.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Struggler
    Struggler continues to convey his strife with a remarkable singularity.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Central City
    Central City bears the hallmarks of all this success, in its own vintage guest list (Ciara, Faith Evans, Lil Wayne), high production values and songcraft.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mid Air
    The result is a full-length debut that is acerbic, vulnerable and swaggering all at the same time.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prestige
    While it’s a little repetitive in places, Prestige is a sumptuous collection that finds a polished band leaning into the joys of being playful.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Barbie: The Album
    It’s no surprise that Barbie World, the song she shares with her protege Ice Spice, is 109 seconds of pure plastic bliss. Like much of the soundtrack, it fizzes with moreish, sugary filth, simultaneously R-rated and child-friendly.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Ballad of Darren
    [The Ballad Of Darren] finds late-life Blur on eloquent, emotional form. It’s an album that often looks back, while summoning textures and nuances that only add to their toolkit.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    City of Gold
    A whirlwind set.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    IRL
    When unaccompanied, it’s clear that her 12 years in the industry have given the singer ample voice and a formidable ear. On IRL, there was little need for big names, since Mahalia is star enough to hold her own.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Angels & Queens
    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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Inside the Old Year Dying
    This might not be Harvey’s most immediate collection, but it’s as fascinating and rewarding as ever.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
    Recorded quickly, with most of the 10 songs featuring Anohni’s original vocal takes, it’s an album that manages to wear its heaviness lightly and quickly buries its way under your skin.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chaos for the Fly
    Chatten’s vocals and writerly voice are instantly recognisable – declamatory on the three-legged wooze of Last Time Every Time Forever, or folk-adjacent on The Score. All of the People, meanwhile, is a bitter broadside against the kind of false friends the singer in a successful rock band might have to contend with.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stories From a Rock 'n' Roll Heart
    It’s a relief to find Williams as thought-provoking and moving as ever.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Further Out Than the Edge
    The group maintain control throughout, making this a flawless and packed debut – one that has been worth the wait.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Michael
    Throughout, he remains prickly and eloquent.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Omnichord Real Book
    As a whole, it’s a confident imagining of her infectious future funk sound.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Age of Pleasure
    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.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fountain Baby
    This is a sexy, sparkling snapshot of borderless youth in 2023, with Amaarae emerging as an ascendant star.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Archangel Hill
    The third album since Shirley Collins’s renaissance at 81 turns out to be the finest.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sus Dog
    Clark’s falsetto, reminiscent of Caribou’s Dan Snaith or executive producer Thom Yorke, is used carefully as a texture that neither distracts nor dominates, counterbalancing the occasionally abrasive electronics.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte
    There’s not a weak song here. A genuine pleasure to listen to.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Leaves Completely
    If some of Young’s ballads feel more conventional, the jazz-tinged Pretty in Pink reveals an artist who questions, but ultimately knows who she is.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    London Ko
    It’s a sprawling, chequered affair, with six of its 14 tracks co-written with Albarn (she on guitar, he on synths), while the rest co-opt a stellar cast of collaborators. There’s much to admire.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Animals
    Animals continues seamlessly, using a raft of guest musicians and rappers, its rhythms shuttling between drum kit and electronica.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Seven Psalms
    Starring his voice and nimble guitar, with subtly dramatic instrumentation adding texture throughout, this is less a record than a dream state designed to wash over the listener in one sitting.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gag Order
    Though interludes from the late guru Ram Dass feel a little hokey, overall Gag Order is polished, powerful and affirming.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Good Lies
    This is an album full of emotional ambushes.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Secret Measure
    Perhaps Money Plant is overlong, but the mournful coda of Ladder more than makes up for it. Yes, it’s a little one-dimensional, but it’s a lovely dimension.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Rat Road
    The spacious, wiggly drum’n’bass of You, Love outclasses much of the jungle 2.0 around now, while You Broke My Heart but Imma Fix It is so nimble and textured it’s impossible to pin down. The slight downside: The Rat Road remains dominated by voices that are not Jerome’s, so it’s hard to hear the autobiography. But that’s a small caveat.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Enigmatic Society
    While many mainstream acts lean on jazzists to lend some flair, it’s rare that it goes the other way. But Dinner Party bring serious chops to contemporary music’s top table.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Voice Notes
    Voice Notes is conceptually and musically accomplished, flourishing with inspired narratives and sensuality at every turn. It seamlessly blends jazz, soul and electronica without overpowering the singer-songwriter’s supple vocals. There’s so much to love and savour.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Multitudes
    The record is a career highlight from an accomplished artist producing luscious, storytelling music from experiences so foundational that they defy neat narrative.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Came from Love
    While it’s an emotional listen, I Came From Love is not a difficult record, musically.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Requiem for Jazz
    The usual downside of a live recording is that you’re left with a somewhat faint imprint of the feeling in the moment. But this album elevates the form, and further marks Dawid out as one of the most vital avant-garde artists of her time.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With a Hammer
    This 13-track album is a more emphatic, even angry work charting her emotional evolution [than mixtape What We Drew].
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stereo Mind Game
    Her singing is excellent throughout, whether coolly confident on Be On Your Way’s account of letting a long-distance relationship lapse, or glassy and slightly numbed during Party’s hymn to hard-won sobriety. It takes a while to absorb how cleverly arranged songs such as Junkmail and Future Lover are, as 12 Ensemble’s delicate string orchestration adorns robust performances from Haefeli and Aguilella.
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