Reception and Reviews
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| The A.V. Club | (favorable) |
| betterPropaganda | (highly favorable) |
| Mojo | |
| NME | (7/10) |
| Pitchfork Media | (9.8/10) |
| Robert Christgau | A− |
| Rolling Stone | |
| Salon.com | (favorable) |
| Sputnikmusic | |
Most reviews mention The Moon and Antarctica as a concept album that emphasizes space and the afterlife. Another common theme discussed in the reviews of the album was the question of whether or not the raw and edgy aspects of the band were diminished by the move to a major label; reviews were differing on this point with some claiming that this album was "the weirdest record yet," and other's saying that the more docile "moody" middle tracks "downplay the edgy rock that helped make them indie stars."
Pitchfork Media ranked the album as the third best album of 2000, trailing Kid A by Radiohead and Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós. In February 2005, Pitchfork named it the seventh best album of the years 2000 through 2004. The Moon & Antarctica was voted the sixth best album of the decade by Pitchfork in October 2009. In 2008, betterPropaganda ranked the album number 23 in their Top 100 Albums of the 2000s. Tiny Mix Tapes placed it at number 51 on their list. The album ranked number 37 in Entertainment Weekly's "The New Classics," a list of the hundred best albums from 1983-2008. Rhapsody ranked the album #4 on its "Alt/Indie’s Best Albums of the Decade" list. In March 2009, the album was certified gold by the RIAA in the United States.
Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, reported an average score of 82 based on 22 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Read more about this topic: The Moon & Antarctica
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—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
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—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)