Observer Music Monthly

"Weaknesses" tho needn't prevent a top mark. If the flaws in something don't actually impact on the things that make it amazing, and the amazing things are amazing enough, then sure it's '5 stars'. Top marks need not mean flawless - anyway a 5-point scale is tiny, surely it should mean "in the 81st-100th percentile of records"!

this is getting to be a big problem for magazines, with labels refusing to furnish promos of albums until release dates (way past print deadlines) and offering playbacks instead. but many of the listening-party versions of albums i've reviewed have differed to the finished album, in terms of extra tracks and different takes...

anyway, the omm gave the kings of leon album 5/5 too. so that shows you how stringent they are with ratings. i thought 5/5 should be damn near unattainable, not given out a couple of times a year.

Basically the point of the OMM is to have something to grumble at over your kippers, though.

because every album has weaknesses.

Basically the point of the OMM is to have something to grumble at over your kippers, though.

Heh, I once brought this up with a Q bod, wondering why the Os Mutantes best of only got 3 stars. I didn't expect it to get 5 but 3?
His response was, yeah, but would you want every Q reader to hear it?
YES! I replied.
As the Q review style guide urges you not to hand out 5 stars willy nilly, it does make you wonder why they gave Semisonic 5 stars. I remember one issue from around 95-96 where, obviously sensing they'd been a little parsimonious in the past, they went batshit crazy and gave 5 stars to Van Morrison, Therapy? and Ali Campbell from UB40.
All that "not for everyone but good within its field" thing condemns anything that isn't mainstream pop rock to 3 stars.

time out has recently instituted a six-star rating system. six stars not to be given except in once-in-a-lifetime-type cases. we'll see how long that lasts. i gave sugababes five stars with the aim of testing this system immediately.

i note that rachel stevens doesn't even get a full review in this month's omm.

I don't mind the Stylus report card style. Pitchfork's system is just percentages decimalised, and would be tolerable if their descriptions for each level weren't so lame (what is the point of trying to put out the difference between 6.0-6.4 and 6.5-6.9???)

Ha! I enjoyed reading Marcello's review of OMM far more than I enjoyed reading OMM. I think I might get that Amerie album today! Poss. also that MES/Mouse on Mars collab. if I can find it.

The letters about the Iron Maiden article in the previous issue were ok.

they gave the new dizzee album 5/5. something is not right. apart from the XL-OMM synergy i mean.

I have never read OMM

they'll balance it out by giving Kala 1

titchy the dizzee album is v good!

What's the point in reading and reviewing in depth a publication you have never enjoyed?

lex plz give me a copy!

None of your business (xpost).

"What's the point in reading and reviewing in depth a publication you have never enjoyed?"

see also: ILX :-(

good question braveclub

i guess (maybe?) MC's point is that OMM *should* be readable and enjoyable

if so, its a good point, difficult to argue. but somehow...i dont feel it. it would take a lot for me to want to read something like the OMM, though it would be nice if it were better

And much less like Saga Radio attempting to rock.

ffs, Schoenberg's 12-tone works actually have too much feeling within.

Maxwell Davies lecture ws a bit LOLz but what I've heard of his stuff for the Fires of London ensemble in the mid-70s is white-hot fury but also quite funny, better than anything the ppl in that list have written.

April 2007:
"'Earth Intruders' is pretty good, too, its martial robo-stomp lent much-needed soul by experimental Congolese band Konono No 1 (no, me neither)."
(Bjork, Volta review, Craig Mclean)

July 2008:
"A gorgeous cover of Fleetwood Mac's 'Over & Over' (no, me neither)"
(Primal Scream, Beautiful future review, Caspar Llewellyn Smith)

Are these just examples of stunning ignorance, or is there some running gag that I've missed? I don't even know what he's trying to say in the second one.

No, me neither.

Now, alas, with Malc's departure, we're left with Jason 'J' Brown, 'formerly of the boy band Five' it says here (no, me neither); and... former Catatonia singer Cerys Matthews. (Casper Llewellyn Smith, November 2007)

'no, me neither' is nearly as bad as '(x), anyone?'

"Heroes of rock like Farnham (no, me neither)" James Anthony, Guardian blog, March 2007 (having already mentioned Farnham twice so it doesn't even make sense)

"Dutch fashion label B-Young (no, me neither)" Tim Lusher, Guardian blog, Sept 2004

Looks like Caspar's just taking the piss though.

For some reason (no, me neither) sounds about 8million times less smug when referring to Dutch fashion labels rather than African musicians. By all rights it shouldn't.

you need to stop hanging out with the lex

PRIMAL SCREAM Beautiful Future (B-Unique) £11.99 *****

No, me neither. Worst album I've heard all year.

With OMM "writers," Paul Weller's song "Empty Ring" comes to mind.

omm is all albums: FIVE STARS. because music is a must have lifestyle accessory.

MIKA on the cover w/ the strapline "pop's next superstar" WTFFFFFFF is this a real thing?

smells of payola. on what planet is mika a significant recording artist in 2009? the whole article is written like a giddy PR release: "it's worth saying, Mike is VERY strange" oh come on

Spectactularly unreadable on Sunday actually. An article about session musicians, woo.

Just googled to find this piece online and erroneously clicked on a 49-page thread about the article at mikafanclub.com :/

nothing wrong with articles about session musicians as long as they are interesting and well written; unfortunately this was neither.

given that mika had a number one album and single in 2007 and has new stuff coming out you have to grit your teeth and deal with the fact that omm readers will be interested in him.

but then omm isn't really "our" universe is it? it's written by old people for old people (hmmm...), it is what it is, we're never going to get on there. maybe i'm just mellowing out of late but really there are bigger fish to fry. not a coin flip, just moving on.

It can on occasions still be worth reading - not last month though. I'm sort of glad it's there even when I don't care about it.

Did any of youse get "Sleeve Notes" in yr inbox today?

Basically, a 'digest' of Guard/Obvser Music columns via Tim Jonze....

to be fair i didn't know about the major lazer album and i was intrigued by mulholland's review.

If Mika is actually going to go above and beyond his first-album status, which was some way short of 'pop superstar', when a new thing comes out, then fine... OMM just seems to be out there on a limb with that one is all

this mag seems more and more pointless. the reviews are so tame.

i've seen some pretty scathing three star reviews in this

So there hasn't been an OMM since last month. In fact, there hasn't been any monthly supplements in The Observer recently, after all those stories about closure and cost-cutting started going around. RIP?

I'm sure I read that the all the various monthly magazines had been put on hold during August due to some rubbish about people going on summer holidays and therefore not having time to sit around reading on the weekend, and not at all to do with the fact the Observer's head of magazines has left to join The Times?

Am pretty sure the next food mag is due for mid-september.

(didn't like the way popstars were shoe-horned into today's gardening special).

RIP: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/10/observer-sections-redesign

I have to say I never really rated The Observer Music Monthly; I disagreed with their opinion an awful lot. But what I did like was it was probably the best coverage a national paper was offering, and the writing often was of a great standard, I just happened to disagree a lot.

Its another sad blow for British music journalism.

It had a lot wrong with it but what doesn't i guess. The first press piece ever written about Xenomania was in the Observer Music Monthly, well certainly the first proper long article. Must have been a good 5 years ago now. God the rest of the uk music coverage in the national dailies sucks so hard.

I saw a copy of The Sun (on a train, yeah I know etcet), and was surprised by it's coverage.

Maybe coloured by the fact I was more expecting it to be on the level of "Katie Price is making a new album about her life over the past 6 months" standard, I dunno.

The Sun's pop coverage is nuts. They'll make Six Organs of Admittance their lead story and give Dead Moon albums 5 stars and stuff.

If you have to appear in a specific music page buried in the middle of the Sun then you are de facto not pop music. The Sun's pop coverage is X Factor and pictures of Amy Winehouse falling out of nightclubs, not reviews of the hobbyhorse indie bands of the editor of a section that is probably even less read than the City pages.

You have to admit it's pretty weird how someone gets free rein to just casually drop stuff like that in there though - I mean they don't have a comparable situation in any other area of the paper AFAICT

Yeah it's because no one gives a shit. They probably have to fill it with jobbing indie bands because any pop star of status gets bumped forward to the news section or Bizarre.

The Sun covers that stuff because Simon Cosyns, who edits the SFTW section, is an assistant editor of the paper and therefore senior enough not to have other people fucking with his commissioning. The fact that the Sun thinks its worthwhile lies in the fact that he is given a staff to run it with.

Whether it actually makes much difference or not ... Well, the PR firms are all happy to go with a paper that sells 3m copies, but they don't expect to sell many Black Mountain albums on the back of it. However, readers to read those pages. In Jan 06 I had the misfortune to be in a pub with Dan Treacey. A couple of weeks earlier the Sun had tipped the TVPs as one of their "six for 06". Which was obviously madness. Anyway, Treacey said the previous couple of weeks had been a nightmare of white van drivers shouting at him: "You was in the Sun, fella."

Good god!

Still, dammmed if you do...

http://www.rocksbackpagesblogs.com/2009/11/music-magazine-malaise-another-one-bites-the-dust/

OMM did a decade issue on November 29th, so will there be a final OMM end of year issue on Sunday: December 27th?

as from January 3rd 2010 should see a new look Observer

Observer makes raft of appointments

Paper gears up for relaunch with four weekly sections next year
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/11/observer-appointments

Guardian News & Media's Sunday title will have four weekly sections – news, sport, an expanded Review section and the Observer Magazine.