It really surprised me upon glancing at the reviews for Rosie Thomas’ latest release, These Friends Of Mine, that she is far from a critical darling. Whereas her counterpart, Sufjan Stevens earned the highest ranked album of ’05 with Illinois, Rosie’s new album is being described as ‘a mixed bag’, ‘Starbucks’-y, and ‘one-dimensional’. Yikes!

We happen to think it’s a beautiful (and multi-dimensional) album; our review of it can be found here. To see what everybody else is saying about the LP, hop skip and jump over to MetaCritic’s Rosie Thomas page.

In unrelated Rosie news, while we were busy seeing Placebo at the much-dreaded Roseland Ballroom, our good friend Qbertplaya was at Rosie’s Southpaw gig, of which Sufjan himself made an appearance. We’re insanely jealous. Check out her review of that show, including some amazing pics and video HERE!