Village Voice's Scores

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For 764 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 The Naked Truth
Lowest review score: 10 God Says No
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 517 out of 764
  2. Mixed: 199 out of 764
  3. Negative: 48 out of 764
764 music reviews
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    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Don't Believe The Truth
    In the end, it's Oasis's attempts to capture former pinnacles, from trying to re-create the simple sunny-side-up pleasures of "Live Forever" to trying for another album-ending mountain like "Champagne Supernova," that keep their latter-day output so entirely forgettable.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Plans
    Death Cab succeed by refusing to offend. That can be an admirable trait in a person, but never in a musician.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Exciter
    Like nearly any DM record, Exciter, their 14th album, mostly leaves one hungry for the inevitable remixes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Bravery
    Endicott, who jumps skin from Julian Casablancas to Robert Smith to the guy from the Killers in just three tracks, has less charisma than a mustard plug.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    TheFutureEmbrace
    Corgan does his level best to make the whole affair as joyless as possible.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    White Lilies Island
    There's an overwhelming tinny ring that starts on the second track, "Beauty on the Fire," and ends with the last track--it's this young possum's voice.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    With Teeth
    A record that's half as long as The Fragile but just as plodding and mummified.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Good Time
    Jackson's songs don't seem uninflected so much as just plain skimpy, but their word-shy inertia suggests a sly detumescence that only the very successful can imagine, let alone turn to the service of their art.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    TP.3 Reloaded
    Somebody press more charges against this fool--he's losing focus.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    This Is Me... Then
    Jennifer Lopez makes albums for the same reasons you and I give holiday gifts to people we don't exactly like: vanity and obligation.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Crown Royal
    Ultimately, most Run DMC fans would have been much happier with old-school Run, D, and Jay than with a smorgasbord of Billboard chart-toppers for hire.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    22 Dreams
    22 Dreams, Weller's ninth solo effort, is complete bollocks.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Audioslave
    Less than the sum of their parts, the album and the band don't even amount to an interesting failure, because the known quantities do what they have always done only this time in tandem.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    It Won't Be Soon Before Long
    There's nothing wrong with making music for tweens, or lighter-lofting boomers. It's simply a matter of execution, and here these chums are scattered and grasping.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    It's A Bit Complicated
    Here and there, Complicated sets up some promising scenarios—worrying about a platonic friend's reaction to a mix tape, or trying to initiate sex for the sake of outdoing a girlfriend's exes—but they never pan out.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Lies For The Liars
    An album of the same-old, same-old.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Heathen Chemistry
    Nowadays, the Gallaghers can only offer stylized guitar murk and hookless acoustic ditties; even scarier, you can understand their lyrics, which are more mush-headed and lovey-dovey than you'd expect from a band this self-satisfied.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Body Language
    There's something rote and antiseptic about the album's party mood--the electro-beats' clean squelch, the undercooked hooks, the odd primness of Kylie's singing.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Human After All
    Human After All is determinedly monochromatic aurally, compositionally, and mood-wise. Gosh, they really are robots--the music is flat, barely inflected, sitting there like a vending machine waiting patiently for your quarters.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Highly Evolved
    The Vines have trouble faking both the depth of feeling and the noisome mischief that good garage-punk requires, and the two rote Britpop numbers they tack on don't help.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Tha Carter IV
    This is a bad rap album, and one that needed the shock of Internet promotion that the Jay-Z diss on "It's Good" gave it when C4 leaked.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Blood Money
    It takes nearly 13 cuts in on the new, G-approved Blood Money before you hear anything that sounds like a real Mobb Deep record.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Until The End
    Tenaciously mindless and effortlessly grim.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Devotion
    Rather than fading into you, they're content to simply fade away.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Stripped
    t's nü-Mariah on mood stabilizers, extended with pseudo-pastiches of semi-popular songs.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dark Horse
    Their latest is ridiculously brazen, comically outsized, and defiantly Bruckheimer-esque.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Probot
    There is some entertainment value in Probot. The manufactured praise accompanying Grohl, supplied by a corps of pro fuglemen who lead and escort the illustrious on his vanity venture, is grand.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    To The 5 Boroughs
    The Beasties of 5 Boroughs seem scared--reluctant to innovate; serving up nonsense lyrics and numbing production that are just plain lazy... sensing that there's nowhere to go but down, so better to establish a passable holding pattern than risk an inexcusable backslide toward irrelevance.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Icky Thump
    The affecting style that made them the most imaginative revivalists of their generation has been replaced by half-assed and half-hearted prog rock.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
    The piano twinkle and mere droplet of a beat on 'Like the Rest of Us' sounds like Slug doing Regina Spektor; the coos and plucks of 'Me' are Yael Naïm; the barista-strum acoustic rap of 'Guarantees' aims for Elliott Smith and ends up with Uncle Kracker; the skipping hand-clap gospel of 'Puppets' is pure Moby Playtime; and, for some reason, 'Dreamer' sounds like Michael McDonald--funkless, martial, stiff, and innocuous, perfect for an upwardly mobile 21-45 demo that seeks neither boom nor bap with their soy latte.
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