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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    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Red Thread
    Arab Strap mix the stoic, set-permanently-at-dawn folk whispers of last year's Elephant Shoe with the beat-friendly sense of their best early singles: "The First Big Weekend," "(Afternoon) Soaps," "Cherubs." The music sheds its amateur charm for the sound of a band in control of its art and its drum machines.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heretic Pride
    While he looses some duds ("New Zion," "So Desperate," and "How to Embrace a Swamp Creature" are skippable) and a set of slightly duller lyrics, the conceits of the songs—the central images of good floundering in an evil world, of contented monsters, of the naiveté of the faithful—serve to substantiate the album as a whole more than any one line, verse, or song does.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Feels Like Home
    If the choice of songs and beat and instrumentation were sometimes restrictive, still the piano and the voice endured.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Challengers
    The Pornographers work better when they move quicker and don't overthink.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Devil, You + Me
    Fortunately, The Devil, You + Me shows that the Notwist been keeping their ears to the street and their asses in the studio since releasing 2002's indie-synth breakthrough "Neon Golden."
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lost In Space
    Lost in Space finds Mann in a rut, albeit one with clear sightlines on relationship stasis, occupational drift, and the balm of (unspecified) addictions.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Murs For President
    So with Murs for President, he just did what he does, churning out another strong album of choppy retro samples that pretend chipmunk-soul and snap never existed.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rabbit Habits
    Rabbit Habits, the Philadelphia group's first for Anti-, turns down the amps, reduces the Jolt intake, and generally bids for newfound maturity and restraint. The surprise is that it mostly works.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Barricades & Brickwalls
    Chambers's two solo records are more fun than a barrel of Foster's, mostly because she doesn't sound daunted by the history of the music.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kissin' Time
    At times smart, sometimes schlocky, and frequently both, there's an unmistakable hit-seeking aura to Kissin' Time that flirts with Tina Turner's Private Dancer career-resurrection formula without stooping to be conquered by it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take Them On, On Your Own
    The sheer mass of sound, the density, the volume, the elaborate little codas at the end of every song are designed to impress and certainly do.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Cookbook
    The results of this musical promiscuity are mixed, but The Cookbook yields far more bangers than bombs.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Trouble With Being Myself
    Macy's decision to team with [producer Dallas] Austin this time around gives her anarchic brilliance just the right creative counterbalance.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pieces Of The People We Love
    Propulsive, addictive, ego-driven bursts.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    None Shall Pass
    You can't decipher most of what he's saying, and sometimes you're better off. And the beats, provided variously by Blockhead, El-P, and Aesop himself, are rarely more than serviceable. Still, when things come together, as on the title track, we're reminded why many consider this guy the reigning champ of indie rap.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Philadelphia Freeway
    Works its way up to a lively, beat-wise sleekness.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Let It Come Down
    Spiritualized's latest aural triumph... In truth, half of Let It Come Down is just sludgy crap, but the half of the chalice that's full truly runneth over into the realm of, um, the awe-inspiring. If not the sublime.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Some Are Lakes
    Like her game soprano, which breaks apart with the same lucid strength it sometimes uses to soar with trepidation, Land of Talk's music unleashes its own aggressive logic.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nightlife
    It still cuts, just not quite as deep.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Attack Decay Sustain Release
    It's love song 'I Believe,' really sets the group apart from 2007's other big-beat revivalists, draping ex-Simian bandmate Simon Lord's FutureSex'd croon in Italo-disco shimmer. By keeping its heart, the result edges out Justice's more brutal † for most exciting, um, "blog house" debut of the year.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Is Not The World
    This Is Not the World sounds more like a Buzzcocks record--a merry collection of punk cut-ups.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Else
    The Else, is as tuneful and rockin' as all the rest.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ear Drum
    Ear Drum marks the self-proclaimed BK MC's third full-length feature, and astoundingly, it's a captivating, cocksure rejoinder to everyone who abandoned him.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Asa Breed
    Throughout much of Asa Breed, Dear achieves a serendipitous balance between the uplifting and the eerie, the hummable and the hypnotic, the tuneful and the texturally adventurous.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fearless
    Swift may not possess the vocal power to fully sell her more lyrically generic material (Underwood's great gift), but for the most part, this remarkably self-aware adolescent's words don't falter, masterfully avoiding the typical diarist's pitfalls of trite banality and pseudo-profound bullshit.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shine
    Estelle turns Shine into a durable debut, pleasant and shrewd.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Finding Forever
    With Forever, Common delivers the expected--political, lover-man, and battle rhymes told with wit and complexity over street-commercial beats--in spades.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We All Belong
    They're totally authentic about being inauthentic. Like Guitar Bob, that makes them easy to love.
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