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
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Medulla
    Where 2001's Vespertine was erotic, Medulla is reflexive and awestruck.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is Not A Test!
    There's no great leap forward--or backward, depending on your theory of pop--of any sort here.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Laulu Laakson Kukista
    It's chaotic, but extremely beautiful and endlessly fascinating.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Real New Fall L.P. (Formerly Country On The Click)
    What makes Real New real good is that it's got more of the really good shit.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Boxing Mirror
    Subtract [a few tracks] and Los Lobos could've made this album if they, too, got John Cale to produce. That's a compliment to all involved.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Real Emotional Trash
    With Malkmus, a spade is never a spade, and his usual counterinclinations set Trash aquake with tension: pop that's coy but direct but rambling but surreal.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    TP-2.com
    TP-2.com is a magnum opus of the genre, milking both Kelly's recent reflection and his baser inclinations for all they're worth.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chain Gang Of Love
    While a certain sameness sets in after minute 30, glittering amid the downtuning are perfect bazooka pop songs, both bubblegum and firepower.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Raising Sand
    Though Alison Krauss and Robert Plant make strange bedfellows indeed, the result is an engrossing, powerfully evocative collection.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We All Belong
    They're totally authentic about being inauthentic. Like Guitar Bob, that makes them easy to love.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Last Train to Paris
    Paris looks back to dance music as soulful catharsis and emotionalism, not the cold thump that's taken over as of late.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Uh Huh Her
    Uh Huh Her is as discrete--and ravishing--as her other works.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stag
    Stag is a diverse non-Indigo mix (the only song that makes me go hmmm starts, "She brings me Spanish clementines, I eat them by the waterside"), intermingling Ray's canny ear for melody with a lo-fi, raw sensibility and attitude aplenty.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Attack Decay Sustain Release
    It's love song 'I Believe,' really sets the group apart from 2007's other big-beat revivalists, draping ex-Simian bandmate Simon Lord's FutureSex'd croon in Italo-disco shimmer. By keeping its heart, the result edges out Justice's more brutal † for most exciting, um, "blog house" debut of the year.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take off Your Pants & Jacket
    The carping is intercut with elegiac little pauses that align Blink 182 with a branch of punk rock you could trace back through the Replacements and Ramones Leave Home, to the more ethereal of early Who songs.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Grand Don't Come For Free
    What hasn't gone away is Skinner's ability to put you right there, in the middle of the action, and that goes for his production as well as his lyrics.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Silent Alarm
    Bloc Party borrow the soaring melodic guitar lines of Television and sinuous noodling of New Order and the Cure to add a lushness that makes these songs sonically beautiful as well as rhythmically aggressive.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alligator
    The rest of the band plays straight man, setting up Berninger's punchlines and peeling him off the floor at the end of the night.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nocturama
    Cave's molasses ballads take you to a warm spot where the big bad world's cynicism gets disabled and the numb parts thaw.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hercules And Love Affair
    The party holds strong into the second half, where the comedown always muddles the songwriting a little. Surprise: Antony's dramatic ululations return to rescue the trawling sonics.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Seven Swans
    His beliefs take periodic diva turns, but Seven Swans is still far more preoccupied with the banjo than God: Stevens's tenderly picked chords fly higher than any golden harp, and his delicate, lapping vocals lovingly complement all that tinny stroking.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fort Nightly
    Nearly embarrassing levels of enthusiasm, sincerity, and energy inform Fort Nightly, the band's surprisingly meaty debut.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The First Lady
    Her tightest set yet.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Teflon Don
    The ridiculously extravagant and extravagantly ridiculous new Teflon Don is certain to only rile folks up further; in its sound, scope, ambition, and arm's-length relationship to reality.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Simply Grand
    Her voice is rich, finely textured, and more expressive now than when it hit r&b charts in the 1960s. But her recordings can sound monotonous. That's not true here.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take Them On, On Your Own
    The sheer mass of sound, the density, the volume, the elaborate little codas at the end of every song are designed to impress and certainly do.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pocket Symphony
    The mood is lulling, narrative, and pictorial even when the lyrics disappear—all subtly melodic and gloriously smudged.
Page: