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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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pick A Bigger Weapon
    Their low-slung rhythms imagine what might have happened if Reagan-era Prince had been less into getting some action and more into kicking up some activism, or if P-Funk had dabbled in politics as well as psychedelics.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black City
    The lyrics themselves--overstocked with darkness, paranoia, and bodily fluids--are as indecipherable as the vocals are buried. They're scene-setters. It's the death-disco groove that intoxicates and defines this City.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Take Care
    Take Care is a carefully crafted bundle of contradictory sentiments from a conflicted rapper who explores his own neuroses in as compelling a manner as anyone not named Kanye West.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Double Night Time
    His new Double Night Time is a relatively introspective affair. It's also more satisfying as headphone fodder, thanks largely to a phalanx of synthesizers (burbling arpeggios cushion most tracks) and vocals from Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grown Backwards
    [A] marvelously sophisticated, extremely political album.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Broken By Whispers
    Fey, coy, yet rich and deep, track after track on Broken by Whispers emits an exacting, well-crafted melodrama. Subtle electro touches only add to the wondrous acoustic guitars, wondrous and breathy declarations of love, and wondrous early morning seaside atmosphere. Those who balk at dreamy-boy nakedness will want to skip the bathos, but such people are called Americans...
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Seventh Tree
    This whole thing sounds great, though: rue, clenched fists, and closed eyes mixed at an arena pitch.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carried To Dust
    The group never abandoned its orquestra live, and that may be why this return to form sounds so welcoming.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Cease To Begin
    With 10 tracks adding up to a mere 34 minutes, this follow-up is much more wan and insubstantial than its predecessor.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Saint Dymphna
    These tracks are meticulously constructed to engulf and consume, making layers out of the Casiocore and stone-drones that contemporaries like Black Dice and Growing use to build careers.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Water Curses [EP]
    By submerging listeners gently, Water Curses never goes off the deep end.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hot Shit
    Protest songs that are both insidiously hummable and foot-stompingly rocking.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Mad & Faithful Telling
    'Basso Profundo,' sticks out like a sore thumb, overindulging the band's penchant for melting-pot quirk before the listener's had a chance to acclimate, throwing off the balance of an otherwise perfectly paced album.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me
    The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me builds on its predecessor's articulate wordplay, with lush tones that evidently evolved over the band's extended break.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Made In The Dark
    They're very much of their time--friendly indie kids from the Go! Team to Hot Hot Heat are cheerily dabbling in dance music nowadays--and much better than most of those peers.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sirens of the Ditch
    The record smoothly lures and detours familiar, '70s-based rock-blues-country sounds and expectations while highlighting Isbell's character-actor flair.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Friend Opportunity
    [It] doesn't pack the out-of-nowhere melodic turns that enlivened Runners.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night
    Love Is All's boisterous clamor is the real draw here. The band skips over cerebral tricks and hep posturing, instead going straight for adrenalized kicks, and it's a rush that lasts long after the record ends.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Magnetic Wonder
    Both familiar and surprising.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Stand Ins
    The Stand-Ins, reportedly taped at the same time as "Stage Names," is an improvement, not least because Sheff punishes himself (rather humorously) for the sin of relying on tragic heroes at all.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fort Nightly
    Nearly embarrassing levels of enthusiasm, sincerity, and energy inform Fort Nightly, the band's surprisingly meaty debut.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Guero
    Beck's sampler-songwriter m.o. feels freshest on songs evoking some version, real or imaginary, of Southern California.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    End Of Love
    It's sweet and sad and frequently hilarious.
    • 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
    • 60 Critic Score
    Receivers
    Receivers is what die-hard fans refer to as the record too far.
    • 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.
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