Observer Music Monthly's Scores

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For 581 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Hidden
Lowest review score: 20 This New Day
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 376 out of 581
  2. Mixed: 195 out of 581
  3. Negative: 10 out of 581
581 music reviews
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    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Build A Nation
    It doesn't stray too far from their original template but it is focused and involving.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At My Age
    Lowe pulls it all together with warmth, wit and searing emotional honesty.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Theology
    Word-heavy, tune-light songs don't help... Worse, O'Connor's delicate voice can be heard puffing, straining and - horrors - singing flat!
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Desire
    Eight years after his last album, Pharoahe's return doesn't disappoint.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dylanesque
    There's a tasteful shimmer over all the tracks.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Astronomy For Dogs
    It really shouldn't hang together but somehow does, and effortlessly so, without ever seeming gimmicky.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Icky Thump
    This is a heavyweight album in every sense of the word.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Era Vulgaris
    Homme's ever-catchy formula remains, but the mood is uneasy and brooding, with tracks such as 'Sick, Sick, Sick' revealing a venomous new band that's finally learned to separate business and pleasure.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Someone To Drive You Home
    Someone to Drive You Home is undeniably derivative, and over 12 songs the appeal of Jackson's fruity voice can dim. Still, with its cynical heart and high-octane bite, it's impossible not to warm to its visceral, lusty company.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Memory Almost Full
    It's a way more focused album than usual.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tromatic Reflexxions
    Every track contains something to surprise and delight.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ma Fleur
    Though this is their most vocal-oriented album yet... it's actually the instrumental tracks - 'Child Song' and 'As the Stars Fall' - that have the most depth.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Maths + English
    Essential.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good Girl Gone Bad
    Beyonce's superstar status is not in danger, but she should hand her A&R man a copy of this album.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mirrored
    Battles combine the power of hard rock with an experimental aesthetic.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strange House
    Although packed full of nerdy Sixties tributes and Spider Webb's dizzying antique organ sound, it's not stuck too far in the past.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Release The Stars
    Complex, melodramatic, ambitious, vain, beautiful and frequently magnificent - Release the Stars may not yield many chart hits, but it feels like an album that will endure.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sky Blue Sky
    The closer you listen to the jazzy guitars, Beatles touches and easy, shuffling rhythms ... the more it transpires that Tweedy is simply allowing the songs sufficient room to speak up for themselves.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Volta
    Listen intently, repeatedly, and you'll hear much to widen your consciousness... But listen for, you know, enjoyment and you'll be left wanting.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Moon
    Smith's trademark combination of breathy - almost whispered - vocals, deceptively resilient acoustic melodies, and sombrely introspective lyrics, is shown off to sufficiently good advantage here to make New Moon a worthy companion piece to 1995's Elliott Smith and 1997's Either/Or.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Send Away The Tigers
    While James Dean Bradfield's melodic gifts shine through on occasion, particularly on first single 'Your Love Alone is Not Enough', this is a pedestrian retread of former glories.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Magic Position
    Detractors will complain that there's nothing to rival the brutal impact of his earlier recordings, but only towards the end does the new-found positivism grate.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beyond
    It sounds exactly like a Dinosaur Jr album should.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twelve
    Smith's rock poet muse is certainly alive on most cuts, her deep voice declaiming, yipping, soaring, and investing old lyrics with fresh dignity and rhythm.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Favourite Worst Nightmare
    On the evidence of Favourite Worst Nightmare, the Arctic Monkeys are playing at the very top of their and everyone else's game.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    We'll Never Turn Back
    The angry funk of 'Down in Mississippi' proves too good to last, but only 'We Shall Not Be Moved' is (predictably) dull.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grinderman
    This is mostly a brutal-sounding, and often brutally funny, record full of odd surprises.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nux Vomica
    There are lugubrious shades of Tom Waits and antipodean gothfather Nick Cave here, but Nux Vomica has its own type of elegant, seductive power.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Jarvis
    Beautifully sequenced, Jarvis makes the case for albums as opposed to downloads.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Because Of The Times
    Kings of Leon have spent much of the past couple of years in potentially soul-sapping support slots on extended US stadium tours by the likes of Bob Dylan, Pearl Jam and, most significantly, U2. But rather than be ground down by that experience, they've used it as the jumping-off point for a bold expansion of their own parameters.
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