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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    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Malpractice
    His old-school MC sensibilities clash with his need to make unit-shifting quotas, and it trips up the record.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Danger
    A couple of creative notches below 2000's gleaming Black on Both Sides.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everyday I Said A Prayer For Kathy And Made A One Inch Square
    Wheat's scrappy though sometimes endearing fourth album is clearly a stylistic protest against their only major-label release, 2003's bland, vexed, much-delayed-by-Sony Per Second, Per Second, Per Second . . . Every Second.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
    Hitsville's unrelenting smoothness verges on kitsch and quickly becomes grating.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Welcome To The Dollhouse
    These gals are older, more cohesive, and more enchanting than before, plus Maxim-approved.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    America's Sweetheart
    America's Sweetheart is one big, juicy fuckup, and fortunately for Courtney, there will always be little girls who hate being little girls, and are looking for a fairy godmother to show them how to self-destruct. Unfortunately, Karen O, Brody Dalle, and Amy Lee all made cooler records.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ten Thousand Fists
    The best mainstream metal release since Judas Priest's Angel of Retribution.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mr. Brown
    Even though his arrangements and slum-beautiful tracks are sublime, his vocal abilities leave much to be desired.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    TheFutureEmbrace
    Corgan does his level best to make the whole affair as joyless as possible.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Flamingo
    Though the record is more believably grown than his main band's overblown 2006 Bruce ode Sam's Town, it's still a bit heartbreaking to see such a lovable peacock purposefully fading his colors.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soul
    His signature baritone, with its raspy textures and controlled intensity fits well with Southern soulster styles. However, he rarely diverts far from the original arrangements.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Maroon
    Throughout Maroon, though, producer Don Was mercifully dispenses with mawkishness in favor of a theatrical approach tailored for arena consumption.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Zeitgeist
    Thanks in part to the presence of Pantera producer Terry Date, this is the Pumpkins' hardest-rocking record ever.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Lies For The Liars
    An album of the same-old, same-old.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Anywhere I Lay My Head
    Against all odds, Anywhere I Lay My Head doesn't feel like a vain stunt. Mostly.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Autobiography
    [Courtney Love's] American Sweetheart is tragic and blasted and pissed-off and pathetic and desperate and sad; Autobiography is all those things, plus it has Fruit Stripe bubblegrunge guitars and insanely chewy melodies and an ear-tickling production job.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Goodbye Lullaby
    Faced with competing for "pop" ambitions this "rock" wannabe never really had, she instead strides toward brunette-dom on the new, stalwartly unfun Goodbye Lullaby, which--if you couldn't tell from the piano on the cover-means Vanessa Carlton and Michelle Branch. This is the death of Auto-Tune, moment of silence. Except, you know, for the single.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Curtis
    Curtis is stuffed with tightly wound 21st-century pop songwriting, full of that invisible craft and flow that renders a thing eminently listenable even if it's gratuitously raunchy, politically reprehensible, and sexually retrograde.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Senor Smoke
    Half the time, we get songs of ambiguous quality, with more filler lines than killer ones, a big change from Fire's all-or-nothing approach.... But when everything comes together, the results are massively more rewarding than anything on Fire.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Schizophrenic
    Agreeably pervtastic.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Songs From an American Movie Vol. One: Learning How to Smile
    The new album is looser in the rhythm, has less wall of slash, relatively more lilt and funk, and more variety in the sound ... but in general the music is too diffuse.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Human After All
    Human After All is determinedly monochromatic aurally, compositionally, and mood-wise. Gosh, they really are robots--the music is flat, barely inflected, sitting there like a vending machine waiting patiently for your quarters.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mad Season
    What lots of people loved about "Push" isn't much in evidence here, but neither is what lots of people hated about it.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Until The End
    Tenaciously mindless and effortlessly grim.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Around The Sun
    Structure trumps texture throughout: "Make It All OK" is a formally tight breakup ballad, with spiritual overtones, that could fit neatly on a good singer-songwriter record, and others are arranged semi-acoustically, highlighting Stipe's cleanest melodies and most inviting vocal performances in years.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bionic
    Left unasked is the question of whether you needed that-the bondage theme, the 10-octave tantrum, the synth war, all of that-but don't expect the rest of her new album, Bionic, to inquire, either.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nothing But the Beat
    Overall the album is a triumph of collective will and creativity, but not every track fits every performer perfectly.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Stripped
    t's nü-Mariah on mood stabilizers, extended with pseudo-pastiches of semi-popular songs.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Morningwood
    Calculated space-age power rock.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Blood Money
    It takes nearly 13 cuts in on the new, G-approved Blood Money before you hear anything that sounds like a real Mobb Deep record.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Heathen Chemistry
    Nowadays, the Gallaghers can only offer stylized guitar murk and hookless acoustic ditties; even scarier, you can understand their lyrics, which are more mush-headed and lovey-dovey than you'd expect from a band this self-satisfied.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    White Lilies Island
    There's an overwhelming tinny ring that starts on the second track, "Beauty on the Fire," and ends with the last track--it's this young possum's voice.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Somebody's Miracle
    On Somebody's Miracle, Phair is more confident than on her previous mass-appeal bid, 2003's Liz Phair.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mail On Sunday
    The result is so robotic in its attempt to jolt every single pleasure center every single second that any twist of human joy, lust, awareness, or reflection is assimilated into its brittle, crunky Borg cube.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Boomkatalog One
    They're just two talented Hollywood kids proving how fun it can be to watch TRL.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Chronicles Of Life And Death
    Good Charlotte have hooks for days and the fun, gloomy Life and Death sounds like a moody missing link between Fountains of Wayne and Thrice.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gold Cobra
    The album plays to the band's strengths, but there's simply nothing here as catchy as "My Way" or as infectiously fun as "Break Stuff."
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love, Shelby
    Mostly all manner of shiny, happy pop.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The DeAndre Way
    I increasingly doubt I'll crank much of whatever comes next from this self-enamored rascal nearing the limits of his gig, but he's had his uses: He's vexed all the right sticklers and coined ample catchy hooks during the commercial breaks.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose
    The Diane Warren and Desmond Child faux-Steinman stuff is far worse, but the inescapable message of Bat III is that even Meat's former partner hasn't been at peak strength for at least a decade.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Seventy Two & Sunny
    Confused rock and r&b conceits wander into onrushing 16-wheelers of c&w—barbershop quartet-ish background vox, crisp git-fiddle plucks, lyrics equal parts syrup and cheer. The tightrope he's walking is dental floss, but he still leans into every note.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    This Is Me... Then
    Jennifer Lopez makes albums for the same reasons you and I give holiday gifts to people we don't exactly like: vanity and obligation.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Size Matters
    Hamilton's vocals are occasionally plotted now with pronounced melodies, which is nice. But his strikingly affectless, prep-school delivery is abandoned in favor of a gritty, generic bark.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Unpredictable
    Unpredictable is pure product, buffed-and-shined modern r&b.... But Foxx has also created a work geared toward sexual pleasure that will work its way into many a late-night floating-world session.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    20 Y.O.
    Sexuality doesn't sink 20 Y.O. as much as the beats do.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace
    The patchwork of styles thrown around here distracts you from the album's strengths.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Chapter II
    Padded with medleys and between-song skits, hampered by a demonstrable lack of both personality and hooks, it's craven, depressing, and irresistible all at once.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Invincible
    To really care about this album you have to be able to get into the pure hard sounds of the dance-track percussion and the way Michael tends to garnish them with his voice.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Street Dreams
    Most tracks trade impact for cheesy hooks, skittery beats, and rudimentary keyboard riffs that can't help but evoke that jiggly seizure-type shit Puffy's dancers were big into a few years back.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Untitled
    Much of the music bears little resemblance to the down-tuned chug-and-glug found on the band's early records.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Winning Days
    Winning Days is still more interesting than any album by obvious progenitors Oasis because the good parts come up at the most random moments--spontaneous solo here, appealing harmony there.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Lost And Found
    The lamest album that'll be released this year.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water
    On the whole, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water feels like an interminable groan, a harried hustle toward obsolescence. Rather than creating a cathartic requiem for, say, the impending dotcom depression, this turgid non-effort doesn't even live up to the mookish reputation refuted with such salacious fervor on "Take a Look Around."
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dark Horse
    Their latest is ridiculously brazen, comically outsized, and defiantly Bruckheimer-esque.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Can't Be Tamed
    A lot of its songs are ballads that ooze sap like an abandoned sponge.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    It's zany, antiseptic kitsch, like the soundtrack to the ultimate Old Navy commercial.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Brooklyn's Don Diva
    Take Foxy Brown's (belated) fourth album, Brooklyn's Don Diva, as the latest missed opportunity.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hotel
    Impeccably made, hedonistic, lovelorn, catchy, compelling. But spiritual, messianic, visionary? Not by a long shot.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Crown Royal
    Ultimately, most Run DMC fans would have been much happier with old-school Run, D, and Jay than with a smorgasbord of Billboard chart-toppers for hire.
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