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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    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Reveal
    Mike Mills's and Peter Buck's acoustic midtempo strummings and electronic ambience match 1992's Automatic for the People for lethargy, without the looming darkness or catchy sentimentality that made it compelling.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    You're the One
    So You're the One, like all of Simon's work since Graceland, has to be judged a failure.... Image be damned, but pop doesn't just flow out of groove and penmanship.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Before The Poison
    Unless you dig Nick's poetry, grab the Polly songs and run.
    • 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."
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    SelmaSongs: Music from the Motion Picture Dancer in the Dark
    Too much dark and not enough dancer--textured passages that might sound great with luscious visuals, but are mere din from a cheap CD boom box.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    When I Was Cruel
    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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    At War With The Mystics
    This is the sound of a band run dry.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ten New Songs
    Ten New Songs is all introspection, closer in sound to a technologically updated Songs From a Room.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Apropa't
    This is the kind of thing indie boys put on when they want to have sex.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Can't Stop
    I Can't Stop works as return to form, as proof that Green's groove, voice, and riffs are largely intact. But Green gets tied down when production's slathered on a bit too thick, as if every Hi Rhythm soul lick must be utilized to substantiate the comeback.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rated R
    You are way, way better off not projecting any kind of emotional subtext onto this record.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Black Holes & Revelations
    Takes rock to Seussian levels of ridiculousness.
    • 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
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ten
    Clouddead's problem is their stubborn refusal to express anything.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Gotham!
    By the second and third tunes, the game is up. We get it: Gang of Radio 4. This is Radio 4 Clash. And so on.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    On My Way
    Beatles-style tunes crank out with steady snares, blaring power riffs, and languid keyboard interjections, but feel mundane.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Revolution Starts Now
    It makes sense that, of the improvised songs, the rockers turned out best.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Peace Love Death Metal
    The two-man, woogie-filled boogie team is fine for 30 minutes.
    • 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.
    • 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
    • 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.
    • 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.'
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Televise
    Televise's second act stumbles through a glut of mid-tempo glumness.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fashionably Late
    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.
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