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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    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Easy Tiger
    The lived-in songs and careful presentation of Easy Tiger make for one of the strongest records of his second career as a solo artist.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ear Drum
    Ear Drum marks the self-proclaimed BK MC's third full-length feature, and astoundingly, it's a captivating, cocksure rejoinder to everyone who abandoned him.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    College Dropout
    West's witty, self-produced solo debut, College Dropout, frolics in this space between should and can, between playful hyper-awareness and young, willful naïvete.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Majesty Shredding
    Majesty Shredding is the band's first new studio album in nine years, vigorous and kicking, much more so than you'd have right or reason to expect out of a band this deep into their career.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Death Is This Communion
    DITC will still melt your speakers. Jack Endino's clean yet full-tilt production fills out the sound, but it's drummer Des Kensel's ability to push forward and hold back--not simply pound monochromatically from start to finish--that truly creates the thriving, volatile atmosphere here.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Power Of Negative Thinking: B-Sides & Rarities
    These guys were rubbish as careerists, essentially banishing much of their stronger material to the depths. So think of The Power of Negative Thinking as the great unveiling.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Thousand Shark's Teeth
    [The album] exude grace and vocal excellence in the realm of Art Garfunkel or Kate Bush--a consequence of the earth-shattering stakes at hand. The rub is that Shark's Teeth is better than good.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Room Noises
    The spine of nearly every one of their grainy black songs glows with a luminous vocal melody.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Musicology
    Musicology is noticeably spare and controlled. This development gratifies its admirers, and rightly so.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twelve
    Smith shifts much of her focus subtly away from the instrumentation and toward a song's intention and lyrics, with often revelatory results.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    X
    It's not the production, as copiously sexy as it is, that makes this great: It's that Kylie has an ear for fantastic pop-rock tunes restyled for 2008, and she approaches them not as merely amusing sonic glitter, but as totally vital music.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kid A
    It's... really different. And oblique oblique oblique: short, unsettled, deliberately shorn of easy hooks and clear lyrics and comfortable arrangements. Also incredibly beautiful.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
    Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! should prove an exhilarating listen for most fans of Cave's oeuvre. It has a lot of the rawness and jagged edges of a classic Bad Seeds album, hopped up with off-kilter beats and loads of loops contributed by violinist Warren Ellis.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cee-Lo Green Is The Soul Machine
    There are chakra-smacking pleasures here that could only have come from an artist of Cee-Lo's expansiveness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Why Should The Fire Die?
    With any luck (and some marketing muscle), this excellent album will find the Dashboard Confessional fans it deserves.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One Word Extinguisher
    The rhythms have grown more techy and layered, wilding with drill-happy 16ths (on "Busy Signal," he and L.A.'s like-minded Daedalus cut up a human beatbox then go machine-gunning with piano notes), or throbbing and crackling out of an electronic ether (the radio-transmission lurch of "Detchibe") as though he's been studying glitchy Europeans.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Amnesiac
    Where Kid A couldn't help but be seen as a reaction to fame and intense scrutiny, Amnesiac illuminates what Radiohead are now, and will likely be for a long time: an evasive, willfully experimental rock band who feel uncomfortable in their own skins.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You Are The Quarry
    The Moz croon is more succulent than ever, and the music productively splits the difference between Your Arsenal's thrusting butchness and Vauxhall & I's voluptuous enervation.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Arular
    Not for a moment does the violence seem vindictive, sadistic, or pleasurable. It's a fact of life to be triumphed over, with beats and tunelets stolen or remembered or willed into existence.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Trouble With Being Myself
    Macy's decision to team with [producer Dallas] Austin this time around gives her anarchic brilliance just the right creative counterbalance.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Confessions
    Confessions is a top-of-the-line pop-soul showcase that... manages to be commercially savvy without coming off as too desperate.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    End Of Love
    It's sweet and sad and frequently hilarious.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No More Drama
    This is Blige's most rhythmic album ever, and even the ballads that can drag r&b down here bristle with bumping beats.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grown Backwards
    [A] marvelously sophisticated, extremely political album.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Play
    A perfect blend of sacred and secular--exactly what Moby's been looking for all along.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Purple Haze
    Intricacy and economy rarely cohabitate in a rapper's flow, but Cam is a model of both, packing an obscene number of rhyming syllables into each line, and sustaining the effect for lengthy runs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Saturnalia
    The result's a bit grungy, sure--but there's also an undercurrent of dark, sinister country and blues that suggests they're not just rehashing old times.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
    Byrne's singing was never exactly the first thing you loved about him--he so often has the high-pitched blankness of a sustained yawn. But he sounds lovely here, age bringing a surer and rawer tone along with more confidence in his question mark.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Supernature
    Supernature is their most radio-friendly work yet.
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