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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Else
    The Else, is as tuneful and rockin' as all the rest.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Make Sure They See My Face
    The greatest thrill, however, is that Kenna's square-peg edges still never quite line up with the mainstream hole.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Vespertine
    Vespertine is an album for small curtained establishments, for taking your "little ghetto blaster" onto back streets, for intimate and precious occasions.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Congotronics 2: Buzz'N'Rumble From The Urb'N'Jungle
    The pace isn't all breakneck; vocal approaches range from blanket chanting to raucous call-and-response, and some stretches are plain-gasp--pretty.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Some Are Lakes
    Like her game soprano, which breaks apart with the same lucid strength it sometimes uses to soar with trepidation, Land of Talk's music unleashes its own aggressive logic.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stephen Malkmus
    A swell record: personal but easy-going, distinctive, with a lot of picaresque personal narratives occasionally conveyed through exaggerated fantasy elements.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's All Around You
    Tortoise may be the only band that can match the everything-mashup steez, sonic skills, conceptual ambition, and breakbeat heat of the Roots.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One Beat
    One Beat is ruthless with SuperGlue riffs that reach back a decade or more, from the Go-Gos pogo of "Oh!" to the stuttering Cure guitars of "The Remainder" to the Buzzcocks toolings of "Hollywood Ending."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Discipline
    Discipline is the most cohesive deep-groove album from La Jackson since "Control."
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Is This It?
    If you like one Strokes song, you'll like their whole album.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Good, The Bad & The Queen
    The music, however lean, is the most poignant vision Albarn's devout Anglo-centrism has offered: a beautifully dark, boozy, overcast dream of London, cinematic in its scope and careful in its craft.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Taste The Secret
    It's a hilarious critique of right-wing reactionaries, hypocritical lefties, hyper-commercial consumerism, and the slave-service industry. Like if someone smoked a lot of weed, and turned Fast Food Nation into a hit Broadway musical.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Silent Movies
    You also come away wondering why Ribot isn't as widely celebrated as Frisell. Don't tell me contemporary jazz has room for only one high-plains drifter.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Now Here Is Nowhere
    Too bad FM radio still has its head stuck up its pre-1980 ass, 'cause the album is so FM—so non-single-driven AOR—but in such a cool robot-from-the-2004-future-sent-to-save-rock-in-the-past sort of way.
    • 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
    • 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
    • 80 Critic Score
    Release
    Release sounds at once like a last gasp and a reinvention, which makes it all the more moving.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    1988
    Blueprint is the antidote to 12 months of Kanye overexposure. His gritty beats pour sand in West's glossy modernist Vaseline, and his rhymes have the anti-anti-intellectual attitude of a loudmouth braggart you'd be proud to have on your quiz bowl team.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Goodbye
    With Goodbye, he's finally got the levels just right. By moving even closer to the shoegazer sound, the result sounds less like pilfering and more like reinvention.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quaristice
    Quaristice demands to be heard, but stubbornly refuses to be the soundtrack of your life. That's art, and perhaps it's only pegged as "difficult" because it won't sing along with you; neither will the Chrysler Building, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful.
    • 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).
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Street Horrrsing
    Street Horrrsing is, to your dad's ears (unless your dad is Lou Reed), a whole lot of noise. But what virtuosic, complicated noise it is.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Schizophrenic
    Agreeably pervtastic.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am Shelby Lynne
    Don't misunderstand. I Am Shelby Lynne is a standout... Still, if the range of reference marks Lynne's hard-won liberation from cookie-cutter Nashville, there's a different sort of plasticity to this sound, which may explain why it broke not in the heartland or on VH1, but the U.K.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ten Thousand Fists
    The best mainstream metal release since Judas Priest's Angel of Retribution.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Magic Place
    The Magic Place, Barwick's first release on Asthmatic Kitty (after two self-released albums), trails a dreamlike reverie across its 45 minutes.
    • 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...
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Solo
    It's easy to hear what Iyer means when listening to Solo, his latest disc. For sheer cohesion, it tops Historicity, and since he's alone at the piano throughout, his reflective streak is telegraphed.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where You Go I Go Too
    While Where You Go may not be his masterpiece, as a distillation of the space-disco aesthetic, it's unparalleled.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Party Intellectuals
    No surprise, Ribot's versatility as a guitarist is the main draw here.
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