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
    Third
    The good news for people who love bad news is that Portishead have gotten better, too.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Late Registration
    Each of these songs offers more exquisite details than I could earmark in twice this space, many of them literary, which the English prof's dropout son rightly claims as his calling. But secret brilliance is more likely to emerge from the sops to his hip-hop base.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stay Positive
    Though the result doesn't quite reach the rarefied heights of 2005's Separation Sunday or the following year's nearly equally great follow-up, Boys and Girls in America, it fits nicely alongside LCD Soundsystem's "Sound of Silver" and the National's "Boxer" as a poignant example of veteran artists maturing gracefully, capturing that feeling you get just after the peak, when you've started noticing the decline but haven't figured out what to do about it yet.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Laulu Laakson Kukista
    It's chaotic, but extremely beautiful and endlessly fascinating.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mezmerize
    Mezmerize should be enough to keep A.D.D.-ers occupied for six months.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Source Tags & Codes
    At least it captures the fuzzy-math sound from too many gray-area indie bands--and it rocks hard where geezers like Mercury Rev just drift away.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Oceans Apart
    McLennan's guitar enlivens even Forster's sketchier contributions ("Mountains Near Dellray" is a complete enigma); his own writing is harder to get behind.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Real New Fall L.P. (Formerly Country On The Click)
    What makes Real New real good is that it's got more of the really good shit.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Soft Bulletin
    The Lips may have been inspired by the easy-listening craze, but the seeker's quality within their music tugs against that style's instinctive cheapening of sentiment.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
    Defiantly eclectic.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kish Kash
    It's not stretching to suggest that they've complicated house music's ease so effectively that Kish Kash often resembles, well, postpunk.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
    A conceptual wonder.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One Beat
    One Beat is ruthless with SuperGlue riffs that reach back a decade or more, from the Go-Gos pogo of "Oh!" to the stuttering Cure guitars of "The Remainder" to the Buzzcocks toolings of "Hollywood Ending."
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Emeritus
    Scarface remains trapped in the four-cornered room of his mind, but he seems to have found a measure of peace in solitude, turning out quietly masterful albums like this one, and letting time turn him into a weathered monument.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fever To Tell
    Guitarist Nick Zinner's greatest advantage over his contemporaries is his complete lack of an attention span.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kaputt
    He's the smartest guy in the room and bent on walking into rooms where nobody wants to listen to him [...] These are the juxtapositions that make Kaputt-and all of Bejar's music-smart and worthwhile.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue Cathedral
    The trick to their aural freak-out is not too different from those in the past; it hides in the arcane black box manned by Noel Harmonson. The echoplex, with its Möbius strip of tape loop, warps the guitars and yowls like parallel sheets of Mylar and sheets of acid, focusing the entire band into ray-gun pulses that match the pounding of Utrillo Belcher.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Play
    A perfect blend of sacred and secular--exactly what Moby's been looking for all along.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Medulla
    Where 2001's Vespertine was erotic, Medulla is reflexive and awestruck.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D.
    Had little, lyric-less Out Hud arrived in 1993, their recombinant shoogity-oogity would have eliminated the need for a Tortoise, and I never would've had to pretend Iannis Xenakis was "interesting" or take that junket to Nobukazu Takamura's ostrich farm.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Evening Of My Best Day
    Her magnetism radiates as powerfully as ever.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    ONoffON
    MoB trounce obsolescence because their typical peak moment is a flash of hard truth about a situation, a bolt of clarity about action to be taken.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Cadillac
    She emerges with her genius for genre-bending intact.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
    Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the group's sixth album, boasts an instrument roll call that might look swollen - trumpet, Chamberlin, cello, koto, flamenco guitar - but Spoon wear it well.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Extraordinary Machine
    The title track and "Waltz" bookend Extraordinary Machine. Both excel, set to Brion's signature command of crisp, idiomatic, Van Dyke Parks-influenced Hollywood symphonics. But the Elizondo-Kehew tracks top them.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Pretty Toney Album
    "Hip-hop soul" is supposed to be for r&b singers, but Ghostface's latest redefines the term.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
    The lyrics are often corny and thin.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    We Love Life
    A magnum opus four years in the making, We Love Life is, like This Is Hardcore's epic cold sweat, a disco-nnection record, well stocked with mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits. But Pulp's glamorama has never tingled so invitingly, thanks to the full-body massage administered by producer Scott Walker.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
    Godspeed's records will either blow your head off or leave you shrugging, depending on where your personal quest for freedom is taking you.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Violet Hour
    The more involved the songs get, the more ethereal they end up, and not always to the good.
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