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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    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gold Cobra
    The album plays to the band's strengths, but there's simply nothing here as catchy as "My Way" or as infectiously fun as "Break Stuff."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The R.E.D. Album
    When there is a firm hand reining him in, Game can still make good rap music. Left to his own devices, however, he produces a dismaying mess.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    God's Son
    Nas doesn't ruin a decent beat, but rarely is he able to improve one.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pink Friday
    Pink Friday is full of boring....the most confounding thing about Pink Friday is that it lacks style, lacks weirdness, whatever your opinions of how deeply that weirdness goes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Planet Pit
    It's cocky, it's manufactured, it's too reliant on industry pal-downs, ugh, it's inorganic. Then again, it's perfectly of a moment where "All I Do Is Win" is the must-have self-fulfilling prophecy, and Planet Pit sounds like it's winning. And even if it isn't, well, it all but tells you to go ahead and groan.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rated R
    You are way, way better off not projecting any kind of emotional subtext onto this record.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Born This Way
    For as overblown as Born is clearly intended to be, it's very difficult to love it for its nature--its gentler moments are more rewarding.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Goblin
    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.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rolling Papers
    The idea of ascension, both literally and figuratively, is the album's prevailing motif, and it's the tracks that focus most intensely on this theme that are the strongest.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Femme Fatale
    Even more telling is her frequently blank-eyed delivery: She's never been a great vocal interpreter, but on Fatale she sounds about as present as she did on Blackout.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Goodbye Lullaby
    Faced with competing for "pop" ambitions this "rock" wannabe never really had, she instead strides toward brunette-dom on the new, stalwartly unfun Goodbye Lullaby, which--if you couldn't tell from the piano on the cover-means Vanessa Carlton and Michelle Branch. This is the death of Auto-Tune, moment of silence. Except, you know, for the single.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dynamite Steps
    Gorgeously produced by the Syndicate, many of these tracks are piano-driven, mid-tempo dirges that take a while to get rolling; occasionally, as on "Be Invited," they just circle the block.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    DIRTY BABY
    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
      • Posted Dec 22, 2010
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
    The reason this convoluted rock opera can't match the Who, U2, Green Day, or even Styx is that Danger Days is a story constructed without rising or falling action.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Merry Christmas II You
    The near-crazed desperation to please listeners for her own sake is all over Merry Christmas II You: A "gift" to her fans (or so she claims) that they, of course, must pay for, it's her fascinating, career-long saga of self-obsession in a nutshell.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Flamingo
    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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Body Talk, Pt. 2
    And what a voice it is, dominating Body Talk Pt. 2 to a severe degree. Her alto, which sometimes mimics but never goes as far out as Kate Bush or Cyndi Lauper's, is like a fluorescent light on her music, washing out everything in its wake. If you love her voice, great; if you don't, it will cloy you to death.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Suburbs
    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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    King of the Beach
    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."
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crazy for You
    Her lyrics are a tricky thing-their literalism is both their greatest strength and a crippling weakness.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Can't Be Tamed
    A lot of its songs are ballads that ooze sap like an abandoned sponge.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bionic
    Left unasked is the question of whether you needed that-the bondage theme, the 10-octave tantrum, the synth war, all of that-but don't expect the rest of her new album, Bionic, to inquire, either.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Theater Of The Mind
    As a consequence of his preoccupation with acting and "lyricism," Luda neglects to do what he does best: make fun music.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sunday At Devil Dirt
    Although Devil Dirt has its rewarding moments, they're usually matters of arrangement rather than execution or personality, which means it's more about the chemistry of boy-meets-girl than about the specific boy or girl.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soul
    His signature baritone, with its raspy textures and controlled intensity fits well with Southern soulster styles. However, he rarely diverts far from the original arrangements.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Call Me Crazy
    Call Me Crazy arrives and hedges the bet: Downy pop blooms next to pedal-steel-driven barroom weepers. The title is apt--this one’s got a pronounced multiple-personality disorder.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flashy
    The world only needed one Electric Six album, but for a few understated moments, this one makes the case for a second.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Receivers
    Receivers is what die-hard fans refer to as the record too far.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Only By The Night
    Through headphones or computer speakers, Caleb's echoey vocals just don't ring credible. Their Black-Crowes-go-new-wave choruses are exciting enough, but they feel unearned after tiresome, oversung verses.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gift Of Screws
    When he flexes his craft, he corrals multi-tracked vocals of himself that coast over static guitar arpeggios, like a priest who prefers to clack his rosary beads in his bedroom rather than pray aloud in a chapel with his peers. If there's a Lord, he's grateful for the devotion, but for eavesdroppers, it does get tedious.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    All The Way
    Despite creating some killer drones in '03 and '04, the duo has been in decline for more than two years now, and the trend continues with All the Way.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    L.A.X.
    Somehow, the Game is still coasting on wispy, West Coast–nostalgia fumes--chronic, red rags, lolos, etc.--but the goodwill, at this point, has pretty much exhausted itself.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Little Bit Longer
    Too many of these songs get bogged down in chord changes and lyrics likely to sound worn-out even to a 10-year-old.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Waiting For The Sunrise
    If Vandervelde's new set struggles to generate the same charge, maybe that's because it doesn't approach its source material with the same aggression or playfulness.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Como te Llama
    ¿Cómo Te Llama? is best when the songs seem to shake and quaver within their candy-coated shells; fittingly, that’s when they’re at their Strokes-iest.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fire Songs
    Fire Songs isn't a masterpiece, but it's in the right ZIP code.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Viva La Vida
    When the pastoral Eno flourishes that started Vida off so promisingly return for a quick coda, Martin reverts back to his suavely crooning self, but blows it with his first four words: "And in the end . . . . " Bam, you're thinking 'Abbey Road,' and while Vida is far from a dog, it's just another unflattering comparison that the record itself needlessly invites--an extremely overconfident way to handle a crisis of confidence.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace
    The patchwork of styles thrown around here distracts you from the album's strengths.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Diamond Hoo Ha
    Now Diamond Hoo Ha, find Supergrass mired in a sort of stasis. We always knew the lads were limited to just three chords; with efforts that feel measured, contrived, and dawdling, they finally sound like it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Here I Stand
    A little too sitting-on-the-dock-of-the-bay for Chris Breezy–trained earbuds, perhaps, Here I Stand is pure grown-man bidness.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome
    The result is impressive genre prowess--especially when he invites Austin unknown Deon Davis (a/k/a Element 7d) to contribute some post-rap boogie on 'Crystal Lite,' or rips off Wham’s 'Everything She Wants' on 'I Choose You'--but Pants might still be flexing prematurely.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Narrow Stairs
    It's their mediocre album.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Brooklyn's Don Diva
    Take Foxy Brown's (belated) fourth album, Brooklyn's Don Diva, as the latest missed opportunity.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    H.N.I.C. Pt. 2
    The Mobb Deep don sounds beyond frayed, barely restraining his byzantine gangster paranoia while scratching out his own self-convinced logic evoking both grief and menace.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    From The Valley To The Stars
    Serene but emotionally flat, Valley feels like too much church on a cold Sunday afternoon.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ghosts I-IV
    It's basically a minimalist record that coasts on one's predilection for NINoise.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Walk It Off
    Problem is, Walk It Off is recorded like a single, 45-minute Big Event, rendering the alleged omniharp, tubular bells, and timpani mere liner-note abstractions.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Do It!
    Do It! is the first Clinic record that seems assembled from bits of old Clinic records, its personality the result of combined ideas rather than new ones.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mail On Sunday
    The result is so robotic in its attempt to jolt every single pleasure center every single second that any twist of human joy, lust, awareness, or reflection is assimilated into its brittle, crunky Borg cube.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Odd Couple
    A hastily crafted follow-up, a subpar sequel, much more "Rocky V" than "The Godfather: Part II."
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Too Old To Die Young
    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.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trilla
    Like any good corporate-mandated sequel, it reprises the strengths of its original product with as little variation as possible, to predictably diminished returns.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In The Future
    Too quick and severe on the brakes, Black Mountain stunt their own grandiosity in the name of dynamics or patience.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Portrait Is Finished & I Have Failed To Capture Your Beauty...
    Together, they craft lilting, light-hearted art-folk that recalls something akin to Joni Mitchell sitting in with '80s British popsters Prefab Sprout at best, or some Renaissance Faire troubadour's best attempt at improv at its most mediocre.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Shelter From The Ash
    Shelter doesn't settle into one sound--which is fine--but it's never able to harness its manic energy into anything coherent.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
    Hitsville's unrelenting smoothness verges on kitsch and quickly becomes grating.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World For Tomorrow
    Overall, the songs are weaker than before--too many feel cheesy, bland, half-baked.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Alchemy Index Vols. I and II: Fire and Water
    Some of the sound makes for gorgeous fury.... But a little concision--and a bit of Pete Wentz's tune sense--would've gone a long way.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Random Spirit Lover
    Lover's defects stem less from long length than from how densely Krug packs each nervous tic.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Cease To Begin
    With 10 tracks adding up to a mere 34 minutes, this follow-up is much more wan and insubstantial than its predecessor.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Magic
    Magic, a maddeningly uneven record that often sounds like legends coasting, most apparently on 'Living in the Future' and 'Last to Die.'
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Happiness Ltd.
    So while '5 Times Out of 100' and 'My Best Friend' revive old times, you miss Steve Bay's unhinged vocals and jagged keyboards elsewhere when HHH instead try to compensate with a funky chant- rocker ('Give Up') or a big-drama Raspberries tribute (the title track).
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Hair, The TV, The Baby & The Band
    They've become lapidary masters. The trouble is, who's listening and learning?
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Untitled
    Much of the music bears little resemblance to the down-tuned chug-and-glug found on the band's early records.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Planet Earth
    Anti-war, pro-environment, religious ('Chelsea Rodgers' only gives up trim if you're baptized), and funky, Planet Earth is still merely an excuse to tour.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cross
    It's all very outsized and uppity, falling right in line with the current dictum in dance music that every song must be able to be mashed up with both Kanye West and this week's indie-rock star.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    T.I. Vs T.I.P.
    T.I. vs. T.I.P. makes for a confusing listen, which is a shame—fans would probably never have questioned who T.I. is until he started questioning himself.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Mix-Up
    Tossed-off, underdone, monotonous, unfinished, and redundant maybe, but not bad.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Good Girl Gone Bad
    Good Girl never settles on a sound, and Rihanna vacillates between aping Gretchen Wilson, Ashanti, Gwen Stefani, and Pink. Nonetheless, she often sounds every bit like the superstar she clearly intends to be.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square
    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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Release The Stars
    Beneath the haughty schmaltz of his fifth LP—embodying Herb Albert one moment and a particularly peach-scented Little River Band the next—there are only momentary flashes of the high-quality torch songs we fell for so long ago.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Yours Truly, Angry Mob
    They're the English equivalent of Fountains of Wayne.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
    Imagine the cheerful fatalism of "Float On" without the hooks, which is bizarre: Hooks would seem to be Marr's specialty.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Turn The Lights Out
    [The album] s clogged with reverb-choked guitar riffs too woozy to propel the garage rock they ought to carry.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Abandoned Language
    Abandoned Language is film noir compared to the group's previous claustrophobic slapstick, and unfortunately that newfound seriousness isn't such a good thing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    West
    If the poisoned well of bad love has soused some of her most brutally detailed observations (see crushers like Essence's "Reason to Cry" or World Without Tears's "Overtime," for starters), confronting mortality seems to have thrown Williams into wandering, formless meditations.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Some Loud Thunder
    [Fridmann's] atmospheric flourishes have always been heavy handed, but here they muddle tightly conceived pop tunes that would've sounded better scrappy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Not Too Late
    That voice is still "that voice," but gravity was never what made it fly.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Friend Opportunity
    [It] doesn't pack the out-of-nowhere melodic turns that enlivened Runners.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wincing The Night Away
    While Mercer's writing is still more satisfying than that of his peers, filler tunes like "Pam Berry" and "Black Wave" are a far cry from the tenacious stuff that made Chutes the subject of lavish hyperbole.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Evolution
    Perhaps if she'd just kept it crunk, she could have produced something really deffer and fresher, instead of merely pleasantly reminiscent of the past.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    So Divided
    As with most things Trail of Dead, it's bloated where it thinks it's profound.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Doctor's Advocate
    Doctor's Advocate isn't really all that dire, especially if you can get past the constant--and constantly labored--airing of, shall we say, grievances.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    9
    As it was on 2003's O, Damien Rice's songs are so naked emotionally that even listening is akin to eavesdropping on a bad breakup.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Public Warning
    It's all very funny and cheeky, but after a full album's worth it grows cloying, like a good Saturday Night Live skit that's two minutes too long.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Endless Wire
    Townshend's faith in rock 'n' roll as an appropriate vehicle for his biggest ideas is admirable, but Endless Wire does little to justify his devotion.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In The Absence Of Truth
    In the process of adding new facets to their sound, Truth winds up reinforcing self-imposed limitations.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Black Parade
    For all that sonic triumph, the lyrics feel like an empty gesture, sub–Trapper Keeper woe-mongering that'll thrill suburban teens but sounds odd coming from guys old enough to know better.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Information
    Information ultimately suffers from the same hollowness that weakened Guero, but it's bolder at its best and less derivative of previous victories.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mr. Brown
    Even though his arrangements and slum-beautiful tracks are sublime, his vocal abilities leave much to be desired.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    20 Y.O.
    Sexuality doesn't sink 20 Y.O. as much as the beats do.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ta-Dah
    Arch and ostentatious, their music both falls victim to and exalts in Warhol's 15-minutes-of-fame declaration. Like a screenprint of a soup can, it's at once timeless and pointless.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Release Therapy
    Alas, despite dipping into conscious rap territory, Luda's freaknik is still in full effect.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Amputechture
    It's solid, but as with Radiohead's Kid A follow-up Amnesiac, it highlights its predecessor's brilliance rather than asserting its own.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    4:21 ... The Day After
    Meth serves up relatively safe, occasionally dope, and consistently scruffy boom-bap.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Avatar
    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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Winter Women / Holy Ghost Language School
    Without Sis, Matthew still does just fine, but let's be honest: You know the style by now.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Highway Companion
    This rarely works as the heart-heavy traveling music Petty has in mind; while he flees or revisits dark corners in every song, Petty sings like he has nothing at stake.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Black Holes & Revelations
    Takes rock to Seussian levels of ridiculousness.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Eraser
    Yorke's voice... has rarely sounded better, although the context ultimately disappoints.
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