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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    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
    A conceptual wonder.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twelve
    Smith shifts much of her focus subtly away from the instrumentation and toward a song's intention and lyrics, with often revelatory results.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Favourite Worst Nightmare
    There's nothing wrong with singing witty lyrics fast and loud; there's just nothing very special about it.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    23
    23 is exactly what we've come to expect from this trio: a tension-filled exploration of the human psyche, blistering but still atmospheric.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn
    Once they could juggle being both captivating and grating. Today, they're just the latter.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Traffic And Weather
    The left-bent, middle-class everymen in these songs are consistently disarming.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Don't Mess With The Dragon
    You could always dance to Ozo's beats, but this time they supply more hip-churning swing than alt-rock stomp.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Living With The Living
    It's more blunt than 2004's already pointed Shake the Sheets, and more streamlined as well.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Armchair Apocrypha
    Armchair is a bit more accessible and less subtle [than Eggs], less of a single statement, but with more individual standouts.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Out Of The Woods
    A masterpiece showcasing Thorn's voice, songwriting, and taste.
    • 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
    • 70 Critic Score
    Myth Takes
    Yet even if the lyrics actively discourage the application of your undivided attention, this is !!!'s most songful work yet.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pocket Symphony
    The mood is lulling, narrative, and pictorial even when the lyrics disappear—all subtly melodic and gloriously smudged.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Neon Bible
    There are growing pains here, there's doubt and sadness and confusion. And there's fear.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We All Belong
    They're totally authentic about being inauthentic. Like Guitar Bob, that makes them easy to love.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone
    Whether it inspires bosom-heaving, jersey-rending, or chopper-flagging, Explosions in the Sky will have true believers again faint with praise.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ash Wednesday
    At its best, Ash Wednesday recalls the command of Arcade Fire's Funeral, as Perkins finds empathy through his whimsy-fueled, sad-bastard songs of experience.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Magnetic Wonder
    Both familiar and surprising.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yes, I'm A Witch
    A good number of the cuts here take up the thread she's been working lately, adding factory-floor dance beats to old vocal tracks.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Good, The Bad & The Queen
    The music, however lean, is the most poignant vision Albarn's devout Anglo-centrism has offered: a beautifully dark, boozy, overcast dream of London, cinematic in its scope and careful in its craft.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
    Fauna's first half is cosmic pop turmoil of the highest degree, as only a master songwriter could create.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ce
    The brightest, weirdest spots—lags are around but ultimately forgivable—are thrilling.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hip Hop Is Dead
    A Dante-channeling journey through the many diverse facets of hip-hop.
    • 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.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hell Hath No Fury
    Make no mistake: Hell Hath No Fury is a major event.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
    This is nightmare music--a blue-collar purgatory made of American mythology and populated by its grotesques.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me
    The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me builds on its predecessor's articulate wordplay, with lush tones that evidently evolved over the band's extended break.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Songbird
    [It] feels more like record label franchise building--"And let's get Willie to sing a Grateful Dead song!" "Cool!"--than an actual, like, album.
    • 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.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose
    The Diane Warren and Desmond Child faux-Steinman stuff is far worse, but the inescapable message of Bat III is that even Meat's former partner hasn't been at peak strength for at least a decade.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Once Again
    There are a number of words to describe contemporary mainstream r&b, but "elegant," "mature," "breezy," and "sophisticated" aren't usually among them. Luckily, they apply to John Legend's subtle follow-up to 2005's Grammy-winning, multiplatinum Get Lifted.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Black Swan
    As profound as anything in his oeuvre.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gang Of Losers
    Strangely, what the sloppier approach really does is highlight bandleader Murray Lightburn's wondrous voice.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Knives Don't Have Your Back
    Stripped of their cosmetics, some tunes on Knives Don't Have Your Back seem underdeveloped, but they prove what always needs to be proved in the vortex of postmodern pop--that an artist like Haines can do more than hide behind her influences.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Release Therapy
    Alas, despite dipping into conscious rap territory, Luda's freaknik is still in full effect.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Like Red On A Rose
    2006's uncanniest country record.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Food & Liquor
    As for that perpetual hip-hop debate as to whether an MC is better served by his beats or his words, the Chicago rapper is deft enough in both arenas that you could carry these lyrics around in your head for days... while message boards light up with claims that hip-hop's first truly great instrumental album lies embedded somewhere in all this.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    So This Is Goodbye
    Junior Boys' brand of synthpop can't help sounding rooted in the '80s, and with Scritti Politti and thePet Shop Boys recently resurfacing to scratch the same itch, there may be no burning need for what Manitobans Jeremy Greenspan and Matthew Didemus do. Which doesn't mean they don't do it well.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pieces Of The People We Love
    Propulsive, addictive, ego-driven bursts.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
    Defiantly eclectic.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Game Theory
    They've resurfaced sounding dark, mysterious, and pissed off.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nightlife
    It still cuts, just not quite as deep.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Audience's Listening
    The Audience's Listening is not only witty and lighthearted, but also artfully constructed, and you can hear the depth in its machinations.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Black Holes & Revelations
    Takes rock to Seussian levels of ridiculousness.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Avalanche: Outtakes & Extras From The Illinois Album
    More of the same, but we don't mind.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Eraser
    Yorke's voice... has rarely sounded better, although the context ultimately disappoints.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fundamental
    Trevor Horn's production has a pleasing fullness, opening the melodies without smothering them.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    News And Tributes
    Their latest one-ups the competition with punk that's theatrical and unrefined, melodic but treacle-free.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Big Bang
    Busta's best record yet.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Time Being
    He emerges from a two-record slump contemplating sand though the hourglass with perspective beyond his 42 years.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Boxing Mirror
    Subtract [a few tracks] and Los Lobos could've made this album if they, too, got John Cale to produce. That's a compliment to all involved.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living
    These tunes function like dispatches sent from the front lines back to chums stuck in Nowheresville; he's updated his characters and settings, but Skinner's working-class fascination with humanity's endearing fallibility is still his thematic calling card.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pick A Bigger Weapon
    Their low-slung rhythms imagine what might have happened if Reagan-era Prince had been less into getting some action and more into kicking up some activism, or if P-Funk had dabbled in politics as well as psychedelics.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bitter Tea
    It's a unique and occasionally maddening formula, but what makes this supremely rinky-dink fourth-grade-production-of–Pirates of Penzance racket captivating is the unflappable way they sell all this circuitous dream logic, instead of just reverting to uncaring, insufferable twee.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    At War With The Mystics
    This is the sound of a band run dry.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ringleader Of The Tormentors
    A simmering, sultry affair.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Charm
    Quality genre work from an artist with visionary potential.
    • Village Voice
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Show Your Bones
    No, local slump-spotters, this isn't the Yeahs' Room on Fire. Far from it.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fishscale
    Ghost's Fishscale is the most creative album to come out of New York hiphop since his own 2000 Supreme Clientele.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    'Sno Angel Like You
    Most of Gelb's seven new songs hold their own with four primo re-rolls.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    3121
    The best thing about 3121 is the opportunity it affords its maverick creator to school the children by recontextualizing historically resonant pop riffs and icons.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Morph The Cat
    Fagen's triumph of rendering post–9-11 New York most recalls how perfectly Steely Dan caught LA on 1980's 'Gaucho.'
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Supernature
    Supernature is their most radio-friendly work yet.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Believer
    What, besides an extra layer of production syrup, can Believer cuts like "Ain't That Strange" and "Delicate" offer that almost any Old 97's barn burner can't?
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    OK Cowboy
    Listening to it from start to finish is so bracing it's overwhelming; it sounds like what it would feel like to drink six cups of black coffee chased down with a bucket of ice water.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Destroyer's Rubies
    The stupendous Destroyer's Rubies, recorded with a full, swaggering band, is maybe his best and certainly his least theoretical album.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Congotronics 2: Buzz'N'Rumble From The Urb'N'Jungle
    The pace isn't all breakneck; vocal approaches range from blanket chanting to raucous call-and-response, and some stretches are plain-gasp--pretty.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ghetto Classics
    His most musically ornate and stylistically conservative [album] to date, almost bold in its timidity.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Cadillac
    She emerges with her genius for genre-bending intact.
    • 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.
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