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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    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Loose
    Furtado is game... but Timbo brings beats, not chemistry. Loose isn't a love child, but a bump-and-grind that never finds a groove.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    II
    This is a definite step up from the all-pall-and-no-pulse feel that made Espers' 2004 self-titled album too stuffy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stadium Arcadium
    Neither disjointed embarrassment of riches à la The Beatles nor conceptual magnum opus like The Wall, Stadium Arcadium is two hours of sometimes middling, sometimes masterful, mostly pleasurable mainstream rock.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    At War With The Mystics
    This is the sound of a band run dry.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Senor Smoke
    Half the time, we get songs of ambiguous quality, with more filler lines than killer ones, a big change from Fire's all-or-nothing approach.... But when everything comes together, the results are massively more rewarding than anything on Fire.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    From A Compound Eye
    That Eye is neither great nor terrible and often very good can be attributed to one part talent and two parts luck. But the fact remains that Pollard is far too willing to leave all the heavy lifting to the listeners.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Morningwood
    Calculated space-age power rock.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    First Impressions Of Earth
    First Impressions of Earth is the sound of the Strokes taking a formal, technical, and emotional leap forward, but leaving the tunes behind.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Breakthrough
    The Breakthrough improves on 2003's Diddy-helmed misfire Love & Life but lacks the character of 1999's eclectic Mary.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All Jacked Up
    Yeah, Jacked contains a few shadowy rewrites of Here for the Party tunes, but the players this time are more in sync with the star--the music is louder, beerier.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Body Of Song
    Sure, the electrifying attack of Zen Arcade and New Day Rising is a distant memory. But Body of Song closes with two guitar anthems oversized enough to point back to Mould's best work in Sugar.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Honeycomb
    The set is just a curio, banking everything on Black's low register, which has the texture but not the stamina to pull off so many slow, velvet lullabies about sour romance.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    It's zany, antiseptic kitsch, like the soundtrack to the ultimate Old Navy commercial.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Seadrum/House Of Sun
    Their most monotonous album ever.... It sounds beatific in paradise, or soundtracking vegan Thai cuisine and organic sunflower seed muffins.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hotel
    Impeccably made, hedonistic, lovelorn, catchy, compelling. But spiritual, messianic, visionary? Not by a long shot.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
    Nicely mimics the timbre of Tony Visconti-ville circa '71-'74.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kasabian
    Still waiting for the next Lo Fidelity Allstars album? Wish there were more Stereo MC's-like stuff in car ads? Wondering where great songwriting teams like Gallagher/Gallagher have gone? Then Kasabian were made for you! They offer all the same thrills of the aforementioned artists, and they sound like Primal Scream, too!
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Back To Me
    Edwards's lapses are largely counteracted by her sturdy melodies, her hard-hitting session drummers, and, mostly, her voice, which conveys acres of chin-up melancholy without even rolling up its heart-bedecked sleeves.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Aha Shake Heartbreak
    Only once do the Kings offer an identity worth bugging out in a club over, on the reckless and fantastic "Taper Jean Girl." The rest of the time, it all seems more confused and cynically gimmicked than inspired.
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