Village Voice's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Real Gone
    The result is a kind of compactness: a guttural groove so tight it helps Waits come off as a giant.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sumday
    Scattered with belated dispatches from the wreckage of the dot-bom, Sumday is knowingly archaic and all-consumingly derivative.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Renegades
    The most penetrating and engaging album of their career...
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lullabies To Paralyze
    They still cuss (in case you for-fucking-got), and they still gab about drinking and screwing and dabbing their noses in the c-c-c-c-c-cocaine, so all's good in that regard.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rancid [2000]
    Their new record rules, but in the party-punk, young-dumb-full-of-aplomb manner of their eponymous debut and the following year's Let's Go--not in the guitar-often-on-the-offbeat, more mannered manner of . . . And Out Come the Wolves (1995) and Life Won't Wait (1998).
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Handcream For A Generation
    Handcream is leaner and less exuberant than When I Was Born, lower on warm drone and Indian elements generally and higher on Singh's sardonic mode.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Now
    Maxwell continues to delve into the sensuality that drove 1996's spacious Urban Hang Suite as well as '97's often over-decorated Embrya, but with a newly pared-back attack. He's in top-notch voice...
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Transnormal Skiperoo
    Earthy rhythms provide both a welcome backbeat and a sense of history.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Employment
    Kaiser Chiefs flow so well that even given the nonstop electro-like riffs, hooks, and knowingly cornball solos played by guitarist Whitey, the songs as a group can over-egg the pudding as only powerpop can. But as a record-making matter, Employment is nearly without flaws.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    30 Year Low
    They've said their piece and torn each other into pieces–we're left to rubberneck at the crack-up.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP
    The ever increasing variety in Eminem's voice (drawled Southern-bounce cadences, impatiently curt throaty staccatos, flat Beck-like deadpans, crying and screaming) somehow feels completely conversational, and the musical backdrop (calypso/Caribbean, Gothic etherea, jiggy disco evolving into P.M. Dawn) is frequently, of all things, beautiful.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Revelling/Reckoning
    While the acoustic simplicity of Reckoning seems thin at first, particularly beside Revelling's sensual, bombastic joy, the croons and ballads grow on you, if not for their melancholy navel-gazing, then for their languid, old-school folksiness.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    stellastarr*
    Too bad John Hughes isn't making the kind of movies he used to, because stellastarr*'s self-titled debut is a prom soundtrack worthy of Ducky.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Promises Promises
    Shattered, scattered voice and guitar can't help planting some bizarre memory garden of l-u-v.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    So Stylistic
    Listening to FannyPack is, in a sense, aural pedophilia--two of the three girls are in their teens--and while the project carries the sheen of Radio Disney, these girls use their duff way better than Hilary does.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Hour of Bewilderbeast
    It putters here and there across 18 ditties and doodles gracefully arranged, but played with two left feet and recorded to match.... This English Elliott Smith's got a plainspeak voice that compels with repeated listenings, and the subtle tunes are likewise sneaky, enlivened by all sorts of quirky bits...
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers
    The record floats a Leonard Cohen-Robert Smith vibe or two, but references fail this outfit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ash Wednesday
    At its best, Ash Wednesday recalls the command of Arcade Fire's Funeral, as Perkins finds empathy through his whimsy-fueled, sad-bastard songs of experience.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Flesh Tone
    These songs, for all their Top 40 disco glitter (will.i.am. signed her to his label and executive-produces here), compel with their tradeoffs between vulnerability and euphoria, though if you aren't paying attention, they're slick enough to pass as merely exceptional pop-radio or club-floor fodder.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Everything, Everything
    A flat-out incredible live recording... it's Underworld as nonstop high, a disc that for 75 minutes keeps seizing and re-seizing the air.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey Venus!
    There's a newfound depth of feeling in their eighth-album expertise that bitters the sweetness of Beach Boys tributes like 'Show Your Hand.'
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Once Again
    There are a number of words to describe contemporary mainstream r&b, but "elegant," "mature," "breezy," and "sophisticated" aren't usually among them. Luckily, they apply to John Legend's subtle follow-up to 2005's Grammy-winning, multiplatinum Get Lifted.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Cool
    A neat trick folded into The Cool is that Lupe proves rap is still creative enough to indulge bugged-out ambitions, and he doesn't just brag about what a smart-ass he is.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quality Control
    As they proved on their debut EP a couple of years back, Jurassic aren't just Furious Five retro: They summon visions of lightly rocking grace like "I'll Take You There," the intro to "Dance to the Music," or the Harlem Globetrotters passing the ball around to "Sweet Georgia Brown." Like the more serious underground hip-hop acts, though, in the end they're not quite sure what to do with themselves beyond boasting.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar
    A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar will be the album of the Indian summer, warm and wistful all the way through.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chief
    Chief, like Church's other work, walks the line between hard Southern boogie and softie singer-songster sap, but with plenty of chug.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beautiful Dreamers
    In every way that matters, it's typical Frisell-as lyrical in approach as it is eclectic in outlook, touching on Stephen Foster, Blind Willie Johnson, Benny Goodman, the Carter Family, and Little Anthony and the Imperials, together with its characteristically wounding originals.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Fool
    Their stupendous debut full-length, The Fool, triangulates Moon Pix–era Cat Power's ghostly, morbid, gorgeous bedroom folk with the Slits' lithe, muscular post-punk.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sonic Nurse
    Percolates the same melancholy satisfaction and nervous maturity, entropy and growth, in and out--but with an urgency and impulsiveness that risks upsetting the balance.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground
    It is frankly sentimental music, lost in memory, full of mistakes. Give it a chance and it will take you backward to a time when you believed in something that you don't believe in anymore.
Page: