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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    • 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.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For Emma, Forever Ago
    While none of Bon Iver's background notes scream "new"--dissolved love affair, check; band breaks up (Vernon's freak-jug outfit, DeYarmond Edison), check--the chilling, rusty grandeur of For Emma will stop you in your snow tracks, however little it snows around here.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Leaves Turn Inside You
    Where Unwound's songs have usually been jagged or drained, Leaves Turn Inside You remains level for two discs (almost 80 minutes), making it one of the darkest, most placid hard rock records since Soundgarden's Superunknown.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Decoration Day
    Darker, more personal than political, Decoration Day rocks easier and rolls harder than Southern Rock Opera, but nevertheless proves beyond a doubt that the DBT engine's got enough horsepower to keep on.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Showtime
    A brash, dazzling dispatch from a parallel universe.
    • 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.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Dirty South
    Although this could get tired eventually, the Truckers haven't run out of stories yet, and their acute awareness of themselves and their forebears suggests they'll know when to say when.
    • 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.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Franz Ferdinand
    Frantic and rhythmic Scotpop with many echoes of so-'90s Blur in the sardonic jabs at middle-class bromides.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Neon Bible
    There are growing pains here, there's doubt and sadness and confusion. And there's fear.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
    Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is basically a good album, even a great album if you're in the mood, though if you listen to a lot of hip-hop (or house music or basement bhangra or any other genre not dominated by white people), it probably won't be the most extraordinary album you'll hear all month.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Phrenology
    Phrenology reveals pulsating growth--a surprising bump on our skulls that some didn't feel before, while others banged their grapes wishing for it.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Let England Shake
    this time, she has found a middle ground therein, an appropriately murky backdrop as she channels another of her early inspirations: Bob Dylan. Like vintage Bob, Shake pores over history's indignities with a fine-toothed comb.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Who Kill
    Garbus's engagement is loud and hard to ignore. That she engages without despair is the part I find most admirable of all.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bon Iver
    Vernon seems torn between selling his lyrics and using his voice as just another emotional cue in the thick mix. But if you're looking for an album to get lost in, who knew a guy previously feted for stripped-down "realness" would provide the year's best?
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Robyn
    Her appeal is questionable when she tries to sound like an American rapper, but on tracks where she just sings--the immaculate junk symphony of 'Be Mine,' the excellently Japanese 'Bum Like You,' the Autobahn power-ballad 'With Every Heartbeat'--she gives Europop a swift Swedish energy and presence.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rings Around The World
    SFA uses 21st-century tools to achieve pop timelessness.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beautifully Human: Words And Sounds Vol. 2
    Beautifully Human isn't quite the conceptual masterpiece it strives to be: Too often, the music falls short of Scott's lyrical brilliance.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    'Sno Angel Like You
    Most of Gelb's seven new songs hold their own with four primo re-rolls.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    LCD Soundsystem
    LCD Soundsystem shares some of Slanted & Enchanted's sloppy-but-right brio, but where Pavement used their album to expand, LCD's first disc... sounds like a contraction, each song its own discrete postcard from a field trip rather than a canvas on which to mesh multiple ideas.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Harps And Angels
    Newman is a master of sardonic humor, be it subtle or slapstick. Harps and Angels is further proof.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wind
    Despite its rock-star cast, The Wind doesn't match the energy or the wit of Zevon's previous Artemis releases.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    David Comes To Life
    It's a true testament to the band that its windswept glory-rock stays exhilarating for nearly 80 minutes.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rook
    Rook is great, with an emotional clarity and narrative acuity that makes it one of the year's most rewarding listens.
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