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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    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Antics
    What makes Antics such an improvement over Bright Lights is how capable Interpol have become at complementing Banks's lovely ambiguity with an increasingly precise post-punk throb.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Scene Of The Crime
    LaVette sings Scene as if she's been backed into a corner and relishes the sensation.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gang Of Losers
    Strangely, what the sloppier approach really does is highlight bandleader Murray Lightburn's wondrous voice.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Liars
    A masterpiece? No. Disturbingly solid noise? Sure.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All That You Can't Leave Behind
    All That You Can't Leave Behind returns to the grand gestures of old. Practically every song a potential hit single. Soulful, exuberant, at peace with its own clichés, this is one U2 record that will never be called antianything.... Call it their R.E.M. album, monster rock filtered through a sophisticate's restraint.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Desire
    What Desire offers instead is at times cerebral and at times depraved, but invariably provocative.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
    Much more realized than last year's Young Liars EP, it's also a bit more conventional.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Give Up
    album hits people who love the sound extravaganzas of overdubbed guitar symphonies, can't hang with the folkiness full-service singer-songwriters inevitably preserve, and expect melodic flair and beats, yet sometimes want to hear words.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Year Of The Gentleman
    Ne-Yo's fantastic third CD, The Year of the Gentleman, reconfigures "grown and sexy" by detailing relationships with an often uneasy mix of heartache, reflection, wit, lust, and resignation.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hip Hop Is Dead
    A Dante-channeling journey through the many diverse facets of hip-hop.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Last Summer
    There's not much screaming on Last Summer. Like I'm Going Away, it's a basic, modest studio-rock record, the kind common in the '70s, with flavorful detours reminiscent of that era.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nextdoorland
    It definitely doesn't disgrace the Boys' past, but that might be because Hitchcock's wise enough not to try to upend his classic material.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Way I See It
    Even while Saadiq pays homage to soul's golden era, he brings his own flavor through his tell-tale tenor; still, if it ain't your cup of tea, just slip this in your parents' record collection and they won't notice a thing.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    See You Next Tuesday
    This time everything has coalesced and expanded, double the propulsion, twice the emotional range, the beats doing the ping and the boomerang.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    So...How's Your Girl?
    Albums like this one ... are by definition not great personal statements, nor even necessarily artistic peaks for the acts involved. But they keep going, A to the B to the C to the D, and right now that's more than enough.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Youth & Young Manhood
    Youth & Young Manhood is 2003's finest rock debut.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Show Your Bones
    No, local slump-spotters, this isn't the Yeahs' Room on Fire. Far from it.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Autumn of the Seraphs
    Opener 'From Nothing to Nowhere' also makes the case that Pinback's ready for some new fans: It's fast and furious, nicely setting a tempo that suggests they're not fucking around while conveying a (much-needed) immediacy through Rob Crow's voice.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is Not A Test!
    There's no great leap forward--or backward, depending on your theory of pop--of any sort here.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Reminder
    Listening to this thing is like watching a pitcher throw a no-hitter.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Teflon Don
    The ridiculously extravagant and extravagantly ridiculous new Teflon Don is certain to only rile folks up further; in its sound, scope, ambition, and arm's-length relationship to reality.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Week
    On This Week, Grae's tracks sound diverse and accomplished but rarely more than serviceable.... There are few sounds, or peers, in hip-hop right now who can do justice to Grae's emotional sophistication.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Supernature
    Supernature is their most radio-friendly work yet.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dedication
    Zomby's early work stood out for the care with which it was created, but even given that, there's something startlingly mature about the production here.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Music For Imaginary Films
    A&C really cook, no matter how low-key or deliberately trivial they're sounding, and this is one way that they (usually, not always) avoid being camp or kitsch or cute.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat
    It's like each song on the album has the dynamics and reach of a DJ set, ramming David Bowie and Fats Domino into K.C. and the Sunshine Band, then gluing it together with full-throated sugar-pop harmonies and a rhythm section worthy of the Beatles at Hamburg's Star Club.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beaucoup Fish
    A shiny little appliance that fragments its 11 tracks into nearly as many subgenres, doing away with the seamless sprawl of their earlier records.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Uh Huh Her
    Uh Huh Her is as discrete--and ravishing--as her other works.
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