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
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mr. Brown
    Even though his arrangements and slum-beautiful tracks are sublime, his vocal abilities leave much to be desired.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fashionably Late
    Nearly everything on Fashionably Late has a pristinely modulated solemnity, a refined, literal-minded perfection.... In a sense, Fashionably Late is too good--too enamored of the aesthetic straight and narrow, of reverse sentimentality--for its own good.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rated R
    You are way, way better off not projecting any kind of emotional subtext onto this record.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    When I Was Cruel
    Elvis makes you suffer for the good stuff with leaden conceits, overwrought hysterics, a useless reprise. And then he makes it all up to yoo-oo-oou.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    29
    Adams mines American Beauty and Workingman's Dead respectably, but his attempts at early-'70s Neil Young piano ballads come off as tear-stained love letters to himself, and hardly distinguish him as the guy who dropped out of high school to become Paul Westerberg.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Friend Opportunity
    [It] doesn't pack the out-of-nowhere melodic turns that enlivened Runners.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Avatar
    In terms of sheer intensity of sound, it's as if the Comets of old have been miniaturized and are looking up at you from inside a Grateful Dead lunch box.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Maladroit
    Maladroit picks up where the Green Album slacked off, relying on the same chunky sonics that set "Hash Pipe" apart from Weezer's earlier, more lithe singles.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Breakthrough
    The Breakthrough improves on 2003's Diddy-helmed misfire Love & Life but lacks the character of 1999's eclectic Mary.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Seadrum/House Of Sun
    Their most monotonous album ever.... It sounds beatific in paradise, or soundtracking vegan Thai cuisine and organic sunflower seed muffins.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dirty Dancing
    While it's tempting to write it off as but one more retro paste-up, Swayzak's uncanny sense of texture, timbre, and space justifies an approach that otherwise seems like a drift toward Alzheimer's.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Suburbs
    It's profoundly self-serious, expertly workmanlike, occasionally transcendent, but lacking that childlike volatility, that glorious willingness to look and sound ridiculous. It's rare that so much nonetheless leaves you wanting more.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crazy for You
    Her lyrics are a tricky thing-their literalism is both their greatest strength and a crippling weakness.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    So Divided
    As with most things Trail of Dead, it's bloated where it thinks it's profound.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    King of the Beach
    Williams's record is brisk, clocking in under 40 minutes. But it takes far more risks, dabbling in Animal Collective–ish psych pastiche on "Baseball Cards," Kurt Fauxbain dummy posturing on the riotous "Idiot," and Phil Spector homage not once but twice-on the magical "Da Doo Run Run"–lifting "Mickey Mouse" and, less impressively, with a rip of the "Be My Baby" beat on "When Will You Come."
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Danger
    A couple of creative notches below 2000's gleaming Black on Both Sides.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Information
    Information ultimately suffers from the same hollowness that weakened Guero, but it's bolder at its best and less derivative of previous victories.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Manzanita
    One problem though: Mia peaks too soon. That opener is by far the strongest song. The rest is by turns meditative, breezy, intimate, and snoozy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Goblin
    The repugnant misogynistic bullshit on Goblin sort of cancels any goodwill I have toward the guy. Particularly because it feels more like search engine optimization; Tyler makes no bones about his desire to hit the pop charts, and on too much of Goblin, he's doing it in the tawdriest way possible.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Televise
    Televise's second act stumbles through a glut of mid-tempo glumness.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Venomous Villain [VV:2]
    VV:2 does have a bit of a for-hire feel.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Too Old To Die Young
    Too Old to Die Young is a fully plugged-in affair that expands on the muscular sighs of its predecessor and ups the rhythmic ante.
    • 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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    First Impressions Of Earth
    First Impressions of Earth is the sound of the Strokes taking a formal, technical, and emotional leap forward, but leaving the tunes behind.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Burned Mind
    Every track is a pure battle, with searing bursts of abrasion chopping at lava flows of insane density.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Reanimation
    Why didn't they travel this far out of the box initially?
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
    Nicely mimics the timbre of Tony Visconti-ville circa '71-'74.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    DIRTY BABY
    The result comes across like the score to a film that never quite stays in focus, except for a bit of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone in the second movement.
    • Village Voice
      • Posted Dec 22, 2010
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Get Born
    The best tunes here have that boys'-club vibe of the best early-to-mid-'70s hard-rock bands, dead-on and nailed.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Hair, The TV, The Baby & The Band
    They've become lapidary masters. The trouble is, who's listening and learning?
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Red Bedroom
    These scuzzy Voidoids are as immature as Blink-182 were; they just have hipper ways of hiding it—like pretending punk and new wave were the same thing.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant
    Hand-clappable tunes and delicious cover design aside, sharp narrative-driven writing has been what saves the band from being merely annoying or silly or cute; too bad Fold Your Hands Child entirely abandons the vivid narrative vignette model.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hotel
    Impeccably made, hedonistic, lovelorn, catchy, compelling. But spiritual, messianic, visionary? Not by a long shot.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Id
    The Id suffers from the conundrum of all post-breakout second albums. You're disappointed either because the songs are not enough like the first one or because they're too much like the first but not quite as good.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ten
    Clouddead's problem is their stubborn refusal to express anything.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Como te Llama
    ¿Cómo Te Llama? is best when the songs seem to shake and quaver within their candy-coated shells; fittingly, that’s when they’re at their Strokes-iest.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ten New Songs
    Ten New Songs is all introspection, closer in sound to a technologically updated Songs From a Room.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kasabian
    Still waiting for the next Lo Fidelity Allstars album? Wish there were more Stereo MC's-like stuff in car ads? Wondering where great songwriting teams like Gallagher/Gallagher have gone? Then Kasabian were made for you! They offer all the same thrills of the aforementioned artists, and they sound like Primal Scream, too!
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wincing The Night Away
    While Mercer's writing is still more satisfying than that of his peers, filler tunes like "Pam Berry" and "Black Wave" are a far cry from the tenacious stuff that made Chutes the subject of lavish hyperbole.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ghosts I-IV
    It's basically a minimalist record that coasts on one's predilection for NINoise.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Receivers
    Receivers is what die-hard fans refer to as the record too far.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Born This Way
    For as overblown as Born is clearly intended to be, it's very difficult to love it for its nature--its gentler moments are more rewarding.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Can't Stop
    I Can't Stop works as return to form, as proof that Green's groove, voice, and riffs are largely intact. But Green gets tied down when production's slathered on a bit too thick, as if every Hi Rhythm soul lick must be utilized to substantiate the comeback.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stadium Arcadium
    Neither disjointed embarrassment of riches à la The Beatles nor conceptual magnum opus like The Wall, Stadium Arcadium is two hours of sometimes middling, sometimes masterful, mostly pleasurable mainstream rock.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    On My Way
    Beatles-style tunes crank out with steady snares, blaring power riffs, and languid keyboard interjections, but feel mundane.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All Jacked Up
    Yeah, Jacked contains a few shadowy rewrites of Here for the Party tunes, but the players this time are more in sync with the star--the music is louder, beerier.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Revolution Starts Now
    It makes sense that, of the improvised songs, the rockers turned out best.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Here I Stand
    A little too sitting-on-the-dock-of-the-bay for Chris Breezy–trained earbuds, perhaps, Here I Stand is pure grown-man bidness.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Doctor's Advocate
    Doctor's Advocate isn't really all that dire, especially if you can get past the constant--and constantly labored--airing of, shall we say, grievances.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweat
    Anchored by predigested melodic hooks, Nelly's songs seem composed with the sole intention of ending up as your next ringtone. [Combined review of both discs]
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Good Girl Gone Bad
    Good Girl never settles on a sound, and Rihanna vacillates between aping Gretchen Wilson, Ashanti, Gwen Stefani, and Pink. Nonetheless, she often sounds every bit like the superstar she clearly intends to be.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    II
    This is a definite step up from the all-pall-and-no-pulse feel that made Espers' 2004 self-titled album too stuffy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Party Music
    Many of the lyrics on Party Music amount to no more than slogans, maxims, opinions.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Body Of Song
    Sure, the electrifying attack of Zen Arcade and New Day Rising is a distant memory. But Body of Song closes with two guitar anthems oversized enough to point back to Mould's best work in Sugar.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Electric Circus
    Beautifully engineered, Circus sounds chocolaty and recombinant even when it doth protest the Enlightened Guy angle too much.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    H.N.I.C. Pt. 2
    The Mobb Deep don sounds beyond frayed, barely restraining his byzantine gangster paranoia while scratching out his own self-convinced logic evoking both grief and menace.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    It's zany, antiseptic kitsch, like the soundtrack to the ultimate Old Navy commercial.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tha Last Meal
    Compared to the patchwork G-funk on Dead Man Walkin, Tha Last Meal is a sonic wonderworld. Dr. Dre and Timbaland gussy up Snoop's drag with their unique shuffles, making his descent into even deeper banality irrelevant.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Planet Pit
    It's cocky, it's manufactured, it's too reliant on industry pal-downs, ugh, it's inorganic. Then again, it's perfectly of a moment where "All I Do Is Win" is the must-have self-fulfilling prophecy, and Planet Pit sounds like it's winning. And even if it isn't, well, it all but tells you to go ahead and groan.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Some Loud Thunder
    [Fridmann's] atmospheric flourishes have always been heavy handed, but here they muddle tightly conceived pop tunes that would've sounded better scrappy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
    Imagine the cheerful fatalism of "Float On" without the hooks, which is bizarre: Hooks would seem to be Marr's specialty.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bow Down To The Exit Sign
    And while Holmes can't be faulted for applying cut-and-paste to mood and drama as well as sounds and beats, his tracks' lack of freshness still adds up to an ambitious letdown.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Back To Me
    Edwards's lapses are largely counteracted by her sturdy melodies, her hard-hitting session drummers, and, mostly, her voice, which conveys acres of chin-up melancholy without even rolling up its heart-bedecked sleeves.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Drag It Up
    Drag it Up doesn't have the gut-level impact of the older stuff.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Digital Ash In A Digital Urn
    Up against the carefully realized Wide Awake, Digital Ash is a mess, and not just sonically.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Conspiracy of One
    Conspiracy of One? It's fine. Is there anything here as cute as "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)"? No: Like with Ixnay on the Hombre, their follow-up to the megahit Smash, this follow-up to the even more megahit Americana finds them in dance-with-the-girl-what-brung-you mode--more punk, less pop.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black Mountain
    I'd call it "psych-drone-sludge" except it's more tuneful and lively than those words imply.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Together We're Heavy
    Grandiloquent, glorious gobbledygook.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dynamite Steps
    Gorgeously produced by the Syndicate, many of these tracks are piano-driven, mid-tempo dirges that take a while to get rolling; occasionally, as on "Be Invited," they just circle the block.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome
    The result is impressive genre prowess--especially when he invites Austin unknown Deon Davis (a/k/a Element 7d) to contribute some post-rap boogie on 'Crystal Lite,' or rips off Wham’s 'Everything She Wants' on 'I Choose You'--but Pants might still be flexing prematurely.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Theater Of The Mind
    As a consequence of his preoccupation with acting and "lyricism," Luda neglects to do what he does best: make fun music.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Only By The Night
    Through headphones or computer speakers, Caleb's echoey vocals just don't ring credible. Their Black-Crowes-go-new-wave choruses are exciting enough, but they feel unearned after tiresome, oversung verses.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    9
    As it was on 2003's O, Damien Rice's songs are so naked emotionally that even listening is akin to eavesdropping on a bad breakup.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rolling Papers
    The idea of ascension, both literally and figuratively, is the album's prevailing motif, and it's the tracks that focus most intensely on this theme that are the strongest.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Peace Love Death Metal
    The two-man, woogie-filled boogie team is fine for 30 minutes.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Suit
    Anchored by predigested melodic hooks, Nelly's songs seem composed with the sole intention of ending up as your next ringtone. [Combined review of both discs]
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cross
    It's all very outsized and uppity, falling right in line with the current dictum in dance music that every song must be able to be mashed up with both Kanye West and this week's indie-rock star.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
    A handsome channel 13 complimentary tote bag of an album that polishes his image as the fantasy rebellious son who hangs at socialist bookstores and swipes your Gram Parsons records.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fire Songs
    Fire Songs isn't a masterpiece, but it's in the right ZIP code.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    4:21 ... The Day After
    Meth serves up relatively safe, occasionally dope, and consistently scruffy boom-bap.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Eraser
    Yorke's voice... has rarely sounded better, although the context ultimately disappoints.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ta-Dah
    Arch and ostentatious, their music both falls victim to and exalts in Warhol's 15-minutes-of-fame declaration. Like a screenprint of a soup can, it's at once timeless and pointless.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Little Bit Longer
    Too many of these songs get bogged down in chord changes and lyrics likely to sound worn-out even to a 10-year-old.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Grey Album
    Of course it's a gimmick, but about half of it works anyway.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nancy Sinatra
    Jack White took Loretta Lynn indie-rock Nashville with an unquenchable musical hunger and attainment that never had to feel sheepish about following the work of a music maestro as juicy and august as the late Owen Bradley. AJ Azzarto, Matt Azzarto, and Don Fleming, Sinatra's producers, do something else. They craft an indie-rock Nancy Sinatra, way too much of which is way too 1994.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Zoomer
    At times it's a bit like a post-techno Jesus and Mary Chain, burying tambourine rattle and two-chord bangers beneath an avalanche of clicks and static.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    L.A.X.
    Somehow, the Game is still coasting on wispy, West Coast–nostalgia fumes--chronic, red rags, lolos, etc.--but the goodwill, at this point, has pretty much exhausted itself.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hunger For More
    Banks lacks 50's humor, vocal playfulness, and stone-cold articulation.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sunday At Devil Dirt
    Although Devil Dirt has its rewarding moments, they're usually matters of arrangement rather than execution or personality, which means it's more about the chemistry of boy-meets-girl than about the specific boy or girl.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Black Parade
    For all that sonic triumph, the lyrics feel like an empty gesture, sub–Trapper Keeper woe-mongering that'll thrill suburban teens but sounds odd coming from guys old enough to know better.
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