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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    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Best Little Secrets Are Kept
    Nicely mimics the timbre of Tony Visconti-ville circa '71-'74.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Amputechture
    It's solid, but as with Radiohead's Kid A follow-up Amnesiac, it highlights its predecessor's brilliance rather than asserting its own.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The R.E.D. Album
    When there is a firm hand reining him in, Game can still make good rap music. Left to his own devices, however, he produces a dismaying mess.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Walk It Off
    Problem is, Walk It Off is recorded like a single, 45-minute Big Event, rendering the alleged omniharp, tubular bells, and timpani mere liner-note abstractions.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Mix-Up
    Tossed-off, underdone, monotonous, unfinished, and redundant maybe, but not bad.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    18
    Nearly every song sounds like either a redux of or reject from its predecessor.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Yours Truly, Angry Mob
    They're the English equivalent of Fountains of Wayne.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Waiting For The Sunrise
    If Vandervelde's new set struggles to generate the same charge, maybe that's because it doesn't approach its source material with the same aggression or playfulness.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Last DJ
    Tom's not quite so lovable when he's preaching his anti-non-Petty doctrine in a series of songs that often don't rise above the level of mediocrity themselves.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Winter Women / Holy Ghost Language School
    Without Sis, Matthew still does just fine, but let's be honest: You know the style by now.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    T.I. Vs T.I.P.
    T.I. vs. T.I.P. makes for a confusing listen, which is a shame—fans would probably never have questioned who T.I. is until he started questioning himself.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flashy
    The world only needed one Electric Six album, but for a few understated moments, this one makes the case for a second.
    • 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.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Reanimation
    Why didn't they travel this far out of the box initially?
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Release Therapy
    Alas, despite dipping into conscious rap territory, Luda's freaknik is still in full effect.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Merry Christmas II You
    The near-crazed desperation to please listeners for her own sake is all over Merry Christmas II You: A "gift" to her fans (or so she claims) that they, of course, must pay for, it's her fascinating, career-long saga of self-obsession in a nutshell.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trilla
    Like any good corporate-mandated sequel, it reprises the strengths of its original product with as little variation as possible, to predictably diminished returns.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Malpractice
    His old-school MC sensibilities clash with his need to make unit-shifting quotas, and it trips up the record.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Danger
    A couple of creative notches below 2000's gleaming Black on Both Sides.
    • 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.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
    Hitsville's unrelenting smoothness verges on kitsch and quickly becomes grating.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    America's Sweetheart
    America's Sweetheart is one big, juicy fuckup, and fortunately for Courtney, there will always be little girls who hate being little girls, and are looking for a fairy godmother to show them how to self-destruct. Unfortunately, Karen O, Brody Dalle, and Amy Lee all made cooler records.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Goodbye Lullaby
    Faced with competing for "pop" ambitions this "rock" wannabe never really had, she instead strides toward brunette-dom on the new, stalwartly unfun Goodbye Lullaby, which--if you couldn't tell from the piano on the cover-means Vanessa Carlton and Michelle Branch. This is the death of Auto-Tune, moment of silence. Except, you know, for the single.
    • 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.
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