Village Voice (Consumer Guide)'s Scores

  • Music
For 223 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 73% higher than the average critic
  • 0% same as the average critic
  • 27% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 9.3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 82
Highest review score: 100 Pick A Bigger Weapon
Lowest review score: 16 A Day Without Rain
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 2 out of 223
223 music reviews
    • 72 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Crucially, his knack for simple punk tunes remains unchanged; also crucially, these do fine at moderate tempos, and one even gives off a whiff of Brecht-Weill. There are worse ways to come down off a multiplatinum high-lots of them.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    At her best--which must not come easy, or they'd release more and more consistent albums--Rennie Sparks is a great American realist.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Mouthy, destructive, confused, sexed-up but no sex object, Jemima Pearl is the pearl.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    This is the stuff of one-shot art-punk.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    OK, more news event than musical milestone. But a really great news event.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    In a time when so many bands don't know why they exist but keep on vanning anyway, his honest tale is touching and instructive.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The music is so minimal that you won't return that often. But when you do, you'll remember she loves you.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Working on the humane assumption that all screamo records can't be equally horrible, the reviewerati have singled out this big-ticket effort... Unburdened by theory, however, I find that its distinction boils down to slightly subtler tunecraft and dynamic range.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    His comic timing and mixture of slangs--not to mention his musical conception... are all so much more fully developed that he's actually made a record that's fun to play in the background.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    We shall overkill, he means.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    His lesser songs would be dookie gold on an ordinary undie-rap album.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    No other Brazilian composer defies cultural boundaries so eloquently.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    With American Idol rampant, it's nice to have this emotional hipster sticking her celebrity cred in the stupid world's face.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The stories are as vivid, brutal, and thought-out as any noir.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    It could be argued that music this masterful waives all claim to the sound of surprise--until you pay attention.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    He thinks he belongs up there in front of that expert new band, singing or shouting whatever banality, profundity, or turn of phrase he's written down, and his level of enthusiasm combined with his level of craft will convince anyone who still likes, you know, songs.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Many details are too U.K.-specific for Yank-yob gratification. But aesthetes will come to enjoy Taylor's nuanced adenoids and his bandmates' thought-through arrangements.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    This being anthropology, pretty much, a sampler is the ideal introduction.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Brit accents on the pseudo-triumphalist, vaguely Jeezy-sounding four-cameo opener are grime enough for me--most gripping grime I know, in fact, and pretty damn fine Jeezy-sounding pseudo-triumphalism to boot.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Though the singer-with-backup music relies on formula that won't set anyone's life straight, her melodic chops--sweet as a writer, supple as a singer--put the songs across.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    29
    These meanderings are the kind of indulgence that ends label deals.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    [Bell Orchestre] varies its cunningly sequenced, gratifyingly brief instrumental tracks with such old-fashioned amenities as textured melodies, pleasing dynamic shifts, and passages that, if they don't actually r-o-c-k, at least bound down the road in an excited manner.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    If anything, it's more a dance record, leaving those of us with a sentimental weakness for distinct parts a little lost.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    David Berman joins a pickup band that includes his close personal friend Stephen Malkmus to explore realms of vocal inexpressiveness undreamt by Stephin Merritt or the Handsome Family.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The melodies don't falter, and Wonder's unexpectedly and perhaps unfortunately influential vocal attack is as mellifluous as ever.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Both guys are so irrepressibly playful that they get serious at their peril--they're better off as a nonstop musical goof.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Pond's songs are the alt-rock equivalent of what used to be called New Yorker short stories: subtly realized domestic epiphanies often involving tame nature imagery.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Although Mike Elizondo adds momentum, Jon Brion's colors still predominate, and the melodic and structural contours are all Apple's.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    They've gotten unmistakably louder and unmistakably gayer--or perhaps I mean, hate the term, more metrosexual.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    There's no more accomplished crew in alt-rap, and though that can make their messages seem slick sometimes, on ['The Craft'] their booming beats, lucid raps, and articulate rhymes are technically miraculous.