Village Voice's Scores

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. Negative: 48 out of 764
764 music reviews
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Even though his arrangements and slum-beautiful tracks are sublime, his vocal abilities leave much to be desired.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nearly everything on Fashionably Late has a pristinely modulated solemnity, a refined, literal-minded perfection.... In a sense, Fashionably Late is too good--too enamored of the aesthetic straight and narrow, of reverse sentimentality--for its own good.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    You are way, way better off not projecting any kind of emotional subtext onto this record.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Elvis makes you suffer for the good stuff with leaden conceits, overwrought hysterics, a useless reprise. And then he makes it all up to yoo-oo-oou.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    29
    Adams mines American Beauty and Workingman's Dead respectably, but his attempts at early-'70s Neil Young piano ballads come off as tear-stained love letters to himself, and hardly distinguish him as the guy who dropped out of high school to become Paul Westerberg.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    [It] doesn't pack the out-of-nowhere melodic turns that enlivened Runners.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What lots of people loved about "Push" isn't much in evidence here, but neither is what lots of people hated about it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In terms of sheer intensity of sound, it's as if the Comets of old have been miniaturized and are looking up at you from inside a Grateful Dead lunch box.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Maladroit picks up where the Green Album slacked off, relying on the same chunky sonics that set "Hash Pipe" apart from Weezer's earlier, more lithe singles.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Breakthrough improves on 2003's Diddy-helmed misfire Love & Life but lacks the character of 1999's eclectic Mary.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Their most monotonous album ever.... It sounds beatific in paradise, or soundtracking vegan Thai cuisine and organic sunflower seed muffins.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    While it's tempting to write it off as but one more retro paste-up, Swayzak's uncanny sense of texture, timbre, and space justifies an approach that otherwise seems like a drift toward Alzheimer's.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's profoundly self-serious, expertly workmanlike, occasionally transcendent, but lacking that childlike volatility, that glorious willingness to look and sound ridiculous. It's rare that so much nonetheless leaves you wanting more.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Her lyrics are a tricky thing-their literalism is both their greatest strength and a crippling weakness.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    As with most things Trail of Dead, it's bloated where it thinks it's profound.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Williams's record is brisk, clocking in under 40 minutes. But it takes far more risks, dabbling in Animal Collective–ish psych pastiche on "Baseball Cards," Kurt Fauxbain dummy posturing on the riotous "Idiot," and Phil Spector homage not once but twice-on the magical "Da Doo Run Run"–lifting "Mickey Mouse" and, less impressively, with a rip of the "Be My Baby" beat on "When Will You Come."
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A couple of creative notches below 2000's gleaming Black on Both Sides.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Information ultimately suffers from the same hollowness that weakened Guero, but it's bolder at its best and less derivative of previous victories.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One problem though: Mia peaks too soon. That opener is by far the strongest song. The rest is by turns meditative, breezy, intimate, and snoozy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The repugnant misogynistic bullshit on Goblin sort of cancels any goodwill I have toward the guy. Particularly because it feels more like search engine optimization; Tyler makes no bones about his desire to hit the pop charts, and on too much of Goblin, he's doing it in the tawdriest way possible.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Televise's second act stumbles through a glut of mid-tempo glumness.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    VV:2 does have a bit of a for-hire feel.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Too Old to Die Young is a fully plugged-in affair that expands on the muscular sighs of its predecessor and ups the rhythmic ante.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wheat's scrappy though sometimes endearing fourth album is clearly a stylistic protest against their only major-label release, 2003's bland, vexed, much-delayed-by-Sony Per Second, Per Second, Per Second . . . Every Second.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    First Impressions of Earth is the sound of the Strokes taking a formal, technical, and emotional leap forward, but leaving the tunes behind.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Every track is a pure battle, with searing bursts of abrasion chopping at lava flows of insane density.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Why didn't they travel this far out of the box initially?
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nicely mimics the timbre of Tony Visconti-ville circa '71-'74.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The result comes across like the score to a film that never quite stays in focus, except for a bit of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone in the second movement.
    • Village Voice
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Though the record is more believably grown than his main band's overblown 2006 Bruce ode Sam's Town, it's still a bit heartbreaking to see such a lovable peacock purposefully fading his colors.