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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    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Get Born
    The best tunes here have that boys'-club vibe of the best early-to-mid-'70s hard-rock bands, dead-on and nailed.
    • 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
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Damage
    Damage seems yoked to the early '90s.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ghosts I-IV
    It's basically a minimalist record that coasts on one's predilection for NINoise.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    So Divided
    As with most things Trail of Dead, it's bloated where it thinks it's profound.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Not Too Late
    That voice is still "that voice," but gravity was never what made it fly.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nancy Sinatra
    Jack White took Loretta Lynn indie-rock Nashville with an unquenchable musical hunger and attainment that never had to feel sheepish about following the work of a music maestro as juicy and august as the late Owen Bradley. AJ Azzarto, Matt Azzarto, and Don Fleming, Sinatra's producers, do something else. They craft an indie-rock Nancy Sinatra, way too much of which is way too 1994.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Has Been
    On the scale of Singing Shat, Has Been ranks above the Shakespeare rap in Free Enterprise, but below "Mr. Tambourine Man."
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant
    Hand-clappable tunes and delicious cover design aside, sharp narrative-driven writing has been what saves the band from being merely annoying or silly or cute; too bad Fold Your Hands Child entirely abandons the vivid narrative vignette model.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    World's Apart
    It's all so precious; let's hope they still break shit live.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Heavier Things
    While he's technically adept at playing the blues, it's perfectly clear the only heartache Mayer knows how to emote comes the morning after a night of hearty partying.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweat
    Anchored by predigested melodic hooks, Nelly's songs seem composed with the sole intention of ending up as your next ringtone. [Combined review of both discs]
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fire Songs
    Fire Songs isn't a masterpiece, but it's in the right ZIP code.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Ecleftic 2 Sides II a Book
    So while Ecleftic ain't wack, it's no carnival. It realizes the B-boy boho dream much better than caricaturist "hiphop metal" acts, but Clef served our interests much better last time at bat.
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