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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    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Renaissance
    After myriad delays and label woes, it's clear the interminable wait for new material was worth it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Great Destroyer
    Destroyer simmers with life in all of its noisy, tuneful excess.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Just Us Kids
    He's always here to try to twist reality's wires some more, just so, and leave a little room to move.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rooty
    Yes, it's as good as the last one, maybe better.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Seldom Seen Kid
    The singer's Mancunian bleariness is such that the bittersweet barfly sing-along 'Grounds for Divorce' rings effortlessly real, while the quasi-spiritual questing of 'Weather to Fly' gets reined in by the sobering image of "pounding the streets where my father's feet/Still ring from the walls."
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    OK Cowboy
    Listening to it from start to finish is so bracing it's overwhelming; it sounds like what it would feel like to drink six cups of black coffee chased down with a bucket of ice water.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Stage Names
    The Stage Names shares the frenzy of pre–"Black Sheep" songs like 'The War Criminal Rises and Speaks,' and if it isn't as monolithic as the album that spurred the band's rise to "Believer"-subscriber prominence, it does contain several fine examples of hyper-articulate hysteria.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Past Life Martyred Saints
    She has a huge talent for drama--when to build, when to break, when to whisper or coo or yell, when to camp a while in a looping melody and when to move on--and the album's 37 minutes feel majestic and unhurried.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    II Trill
    II Trill, is psychologically up-market, with genuinely well-appointed guest spots (that Webbie and Lupe Fiasco both sound comfortable on the same album speaks volumes) and hungry young producers offering their best tricks.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love Is Overtaking Me
    Everything Russell recorded is worth a listen, but while 'Close My Eyes' will likely soon stand alongside 'This Is How We Walk on the Moon' and 'That's Us/Wild Combination' as one of the most instantly pleasing songs in his discography, this collection only occasionally captures him at the height of his powers.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Moon & Antarctica
    The studio scrubbing leaves no noticeable film; even the effects--like the spacey guitar that launches "Gravity Rides Everything"--ring true.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wonderful Rainbow
    Too mischievous for Led Zeppelin's Valhalla and too self-aware for Bal-Sagoth's Magic Kingdom, Wonderful Rainbow conjures retarded unicorns, copulating robots, and head-banging ogres in one technicolor beat.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lay It Down
    Now 62, the mighty reverend may not be able to make you spontaneously combust like yesteryear, but damn if he can't still get you in the mood with his third batch of love songs for Blue Note.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Private Press
    The record sounds like it came a year or so after Endtroducing--which is to say, it goes a little deeper in summoning Gothic textures and awesome drum samples, and arrives as a delayed, well-fitting follow-up to a landmark.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Turn On The Bright Lights
    If I like them because they remind me of eating bad bathtub mescaline in the woods and listening to Cure singles, well, that'll do. You might like them for completely different reasons.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Armchair Apocrypha
    Armchair is a bit more accessible and less subtle [than Eggs], less of a single statement, but with more individual standouts.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    James Blake
    James Blake's most compelling moments come when you can't tell where he stops and the machines begin.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    These Are The Vistas
    Merges jazz, pop, and the conservatory in a heady and original way, accessible and seriously playful.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Can Our Love...
    Tindersticks' trajectory, in fact, does have its affinities with R.E.M.'s: an unfairly maligned Difficult Third Album clears the decks and the lead singer's nasal passages, and what's gone from the later work, however accomplished it may be, is that startling strangeness, the rare, eerie thrill of hearing something that sounds only like itself.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Anniemal
    If much of Anniemal isn't vibrant enough to move physically or resonant enough to move emotionally, its peaks suggest a worthy midway state.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hold On Now, Youngster
    For a band about whom most of the talk (pro and con) has focused on their unrelenting giddiness, Los Campesinos! have produced a debut that's surprisingly muddled emotionally.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    a ghost is born
    Wilco's ideas are unremarkable, but are worked out with intelligence and striking conception. And as it happens, the new organic emphasis tables some of Wilco's lamer stylistic obsessions.
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