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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    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Good Time
    Jackson's songs don't seem uninflected so much as just plain skimpy, but their word-shy inertia suggests a sly detumescence that only the very successful can imagine, let alone turn to the service of their art.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quaristice
    Quaristice demands to be heard, but stubbornly refuses to be the soundtrack of your life. That's art, and perhaps it's only pegged as "difficult" because it won't sing along with you; neither will the Chrysler Building, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Transnormal Skiperoo
    Earthy rhythms provide both a welcome backbeat and a sense of history.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Picture Of The Three Of Us At The Gate To The Garden Of Eden
    The short songs too often find him serving up tasty, melodic morsels, only to snatch them away before you're fully satisfied.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Seventh Tree
    This whole thing sounds great, though: rue, clenched fists, and closed eyes mixed at an arena pitch.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Discipline
    Discipline is the most cohesive deep-groove album from La Jackson since "Control."
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War)
    New Amerykah seems adherent to the old "cohesive studio album" mold of the soul/neo-soul eras.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Devotion
    Rather than fading into you, they're content to simply fade away.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    NY's Finest
    Finest is at its finest when the beats ride out wordlessly, and bloodlessly.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lust Lust Lust
    The Jesus and Mary Chain comparisons are still apt, though they're creeping out from under the shadow of 'Happy When It Rains' and heading toward something far scarier, as traces of Throbbing Gristle seem ready to disrupt their noise-pop vigil at any moment.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Golden Age
    Wisely, The Golden Age is less mediated, its variety achieved through smartly arranged curveballs like the Calexican waltz 'I Know That's Not Really You.'
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heretic Pride
    While he looses some duds ("New Zion," "So Desperate," and "How to Embrace a Swamp Creature" are skippable) and a set of slightly duller lyrics, the conceits of the songs—the central images of good floundering in an evil world, of contented monsters, of the naiveté of the faithful—serve to substantiate the album as a whole more than any one line, verse, or song does.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Working Man's Cafe
    It could have come across as professional formalism enhancing a half-assed satirist's latest free-market nightmare, but Working Man's Café adds lyricism to the reportage and makes itself useful enough.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Made In The Dark
    They're very much of their time--friendly indie kids from the Go! Team to Hot Hot Heat are cheerily dabbling in dance music nowadays--and much better than most of those peers.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Promises Promises
    Shattered, scattered voice and guitar can't help planting some bizarre memory garden of l-u-v.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Falling Off The Lavender Bridge
    Lightspeed Champion sounds like an ambitious fan, eager to stuff his entire record collection into his solo debut, but with the uncluttered grace of a patient melodist, albeit one who can't resist naming a song 'Let the Bitches Die.'
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Field Manual
    His optimism is renewable and satisfying, and for it Field Manual is enjoyable overall.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey Venus!
    There's a newfound depth of feeling in their eighth-album expertise that bitters the sweetness of Beach Boys tributes like 'Show Your Hand.'
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Venus On Earth
    Venus on Earth, their third album, contains more English lyrics than their previous two efforts, but it also represents some of the band's most sentimental work.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In The Future
    Too quick and severe on the brakes, Black Mountain stunt their own grandiosity in the name of dynamics or patience.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jukebox
    Jukebox's few truly memorable moments--such as the shimmering 'Silver Stallion,' which takes the jaunty country-rock tune popularized by the Highwaymen and turns it into a late-night whisper, à la her version of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'--are dwarfed by the merely adequate ones.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Brighter Than Creation's Dark
    The best song on the Drive-By Truckers' new 19-track monolith, Brighter Than Creation's Dark, will remind you why you like them; the album's worst song, which is in fact the worst song they've ever done by a substantial margin, will teach you to love them again.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Portrait Is Finished & I Have Failed To Capture Your Beauty...
    Together, they craft lilting, light-hearted art-folk that recalls something akin to Joni Mitchell sitting in with '80s British popsters Prefab Sprout at best, or some Renaissance Faire troubadour's best attempt at improv at its most mediocre.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Made of Bricks
    Bricks is consequently more bracing and rewarding than most young-love-lost albums.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Growing Pains
    Growing Pains could use more of this insouciance, or another song that harnessed all her gifts as well as Breakthrough's "Be Without You" did. Confusing confessions with wisdom, Blige would be more fun if she'd shut up for a while and luxuriate.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Cool
    A neat trick folded into The Cool is that Lupe proves rap is still creative enough to indulge bugged-out ambitions, and he doesn't just brag about what a smart-ass he is.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carnival II: Memoirs Of An Immigrant
    Just when Carnival II begins to feel comfortable in hip hop, Paul Simon hops onto the mournful 'Fast Car' and a massive Bollywood ensemble powers the roiling 'Immigrant.' [Dec 2007, p.108]
    • Village Voice
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Big Doe Rehab
    The album might actually play to Ghost's strengths too much; virtually every track is a straight-ahead adrenal banger with a screaming soul sample and a death-obsessed narrative.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Shelter From The Ash
    Shelter doesn't settle into one sound--which is fine--but it's never able to harness its manic energy into anything coherent.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Black And White Album
    It's nice to have a record with a plan.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As I Am
    As I Am--very much an album about the condition her condition is in, very much an album in the old-fashioned sense, a complete work: one you shouldn't subject to shuffle before you've given Keys's sequencing a chance to work its magic, its rising and falling arcs, its gut-punch-and-goose-bumps denouement.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
    Hitsville's unrelenting smoothness verges on kitsch and quickly becomes grating.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intoxication
    The slick Shaggy sex formula is intact, plus he steps off the well-worn with booming first single 'Church Heathen,' already scorching JA parties with its keen indictment of religious hypocrisy, and 'All About Love,' featuring his raw, ragged, utterly compelling singing voice. 'Body a Shake' comes harder than before.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Untrue
    While the percussion-free 'Endorphin' and 'Dog Shelter' paint haunting pictures of isolation and heartache, a warm and generous humanity runs just beneath the surface. It's this quality that lends the propulsive woodblock throb of the closing 'Raver' its muted euphoria.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chrome Dreams II
    Chrome Dreams II, on which various Neils commingle to an extent not heard on record since perhaps 1989's "Freedom," immediately comes off as the 61-year-old artist's freshest effort in years.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Load Blown
    It's the kind of detailed withdrawal that makes for excellent headphone music.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World For Tomorrow
    Overall, the songs are weaker than before--too many feel cheesy, bland, half-baked.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chase This Light
    Thanks to singer Jim Adkins's bottomless well of high-flying choruses (not to mention the general shittiness of current affairs), the formula still delivers.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Make Sure They See My Face
    The greatest thrill, however, is that Kenna's square-peg edges still never quite line up with the mainstream hole.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Alchemy Index Vols. I and II: Fire and Water
    Some of the sound makes for gorgeous fury.... But a little concision--and a bit of Pete Wentz's tune sense--would've gone a long way.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Random Spirit Lover
    Lover's defects stem less from long length than from how densely Krug packs each nervous tic.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Cease To Begin
    With 10 tracks adding up to a mere 34 minutes, this follow-up is much more wan and insubstantial than its predecessor.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mantaray
    Mantaray, Siouxsie's blazing solo debut, earns accolades with no trace of fatigue, padding, or confusion, as on-it and of-the-moment as Justin Timberlake.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Magic
    Magic, a maddeningly uneven record that often sounds like legends coasting, most apparently on 'Living in the Future' and 'Last to Die.'
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    White Chalk
    As usual, the excellent mix--opaque but sunlit--helps; as usual, we eagerly await her next album.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Our Bedroom After The War
    Only a great fool would be satisfied with just a track or two.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Just Like You
    You can't deny the pleasure of finding a ride-or-die chick who's vulnerable, but can still kick your trifling ass.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shine
    Coupled with other woodwinds, these horns sound elegant, almost classical. But too often the lead tenor veers dangerously deep into Grover Washington territory--such meandering (God forgive me if it's Wayne Shorter) damns otherwise lovely arrangements to elevator-music oblivion.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Scene Of The Crime
    LaVette sings Scene as if she's been backed into a corner and relishes the sensation.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Asleep At Heaven's Gate
    Asleep at Heaven's Gate now continues that same kind of expert carnival of noise, even as its songs are longer (six of the 12 creep over five minutes) and flirt with jam-band explorations. Oddly, though, it feels like a step back.
    • 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.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Curtis
    Curtis is stuffed with tightly wound 21st-century pop songwriting, full of that invisible craft and flow that renders a thing eminently listenable even if it's gratuitously raunchy, politically reprehensible, and sexually retrograde.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strawberry Jam
    Just because there's an onslaught of verbiage and weird noises (like most pop these days) does not a pop album make. It is their most oxymoronic, though.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Graduation
    Grating bouts of narcissism aside, Graduation contains killer pieces of production: 'Stronger' uses Daft Punk's 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' to practically revive Eurodisco, while 'Champion' snarkily snatches its hook from Steely Dan's 'Kid Charlemagne.'
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Happiness Ltd.
    So while '5 Times Out of 100' and 'My Best Friend' revive old times, you miss Steve Bay's unhinged vocals and jagged keyboards elsewhere when HHH instead try to compensate with a funky chant- rocker ('Give Up') or a big-drama Raspberries tribute (the title track).
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Autumn of the Seraphs
    Opener 'From Nothing to Nowhere' also makes the case that Pinback's ready for some new fans: It's fast and furious, nicely setting a tempo that suggests they're not fucking around while conveying a (much-needed) immediacy through Rob Crow's voice.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Liars
    A masterpiece? No. Disturbingly solid noise? Sure.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    None Shall Pass
    You can't decipher most of what he's saying, and sometimes you're better off. And the beats, provided variously by Blockhead, El-P, and Aesop himself, are rarely more than serviceable. Still, when things come together, as on the title track, we're reminded why many consider this guy the reigning champ of indie rap.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Places Like This
    Places Like This ultimately shares qualities with its IM-chat womb: It's entertaining as hell, but eventually you'd rather just minimize the window and get on with your day.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Challengers
    The Pornographers work better when they move quicker and don't overthink.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Under the Blacklight
    Under the Blacklight is a brief and often bizarre record, jiggling with artificial rhythm and awash in backup singers imported from 1981.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Hair, The TV, The Baby & The Band
    They've become lapidary masters. The trouble is, who's listening and learning?
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    30 Year Low
    They've said their piece and torn each other into pieces–we're left to rubberneck at the crack-up.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ditherer
    Ditherer is a collection of noisy pop songs, but the emphasis is mainly on the noise, muddying up the tunes in a way that's both frustrating and titillating.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Finding Forever
    With Forever, Common delivers the expected--political, lover-man, and battle rhymes told with wit and complexity over street-commercial beats--in spades.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Untitled
    Much of the music bears little resemblance to the down-tuned chug-and-glug found on the band's early records.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Planet Earth
    Anti-war, pro-environment, religious ('Chelsea Rodgers' only gives up trim if you're baptized), and funky, Planet Earth is still merely an excuse to tour.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rise To Your Knees
    In playing it straight, however, the Pups emphasize their abilities as skilled synthesists rather than merely falling back on their rep as inspired eccentrics, suggesting a band that, though grounded, has yet to plateau.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Our Love To Admire
    Somehow the band manages to sound insincere and gorgeous at the same time.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
    Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the group's sixth album, boasts an instrument roll call that might look swollen - trumpet, Chamberlin, cello, koto, flamenco guitar - but Spoon wear it well.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cross
    It's all very outsized and uppity, falling right in line with the current dictum in dance music that every song must be able to be mashed up with both Kanye West and this week's indie-rock star.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Else
    The Else, is as tuneful and rockin' as all the rest.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Goodbye
    With Goodbye, he's finally got the levels just right. By moving even closer to the shoegazer sound, the result sounds less like pilfering and more like reinvention.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sirens of the Ditch
    The record smoothly lures and detours familiar, '70s-based rock-blues-country sounds and expectations while highlighting Isbell's character-actor flair.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Mix-Up
    Tossed-off, underdone, monotonous, unfinished, and redundant maybe, but not bad.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Desire
    What Desire offers instead is at times cerebral and at times depraved, but invariably provocative.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Fragile Army
    The Fragile Army actually has substance—thematically, musically, and lyrically.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Icky Thump
    The affecting style that made them the most imaginative revivalists of their generation has been replaced by half-assed and half-hearted prog rock.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    It's A Bit Complicated
    Here and there, Complicated sets up some promising scenarios—worrying about a platonic friend's reaction to a mix tape, or trying to initiate sex for the sake of outdoing a girlfriend's exes—but they never pan out.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Era Vulgaris
    With the band sounding listless and drained of ideas, it starts trying anything.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Good Girl Gone Bad
    Good Girl never settles on a sound, and Rihanna vacillates between aping Gretchen Wilson, Ashanti, Gwen Stefani, and Pink. Nonetheless, she often sounds every bit like the superstar she clearly intends to be.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Asa Breed
    Throughout much of Asa Breed, Dear achieves a serendipitous balance between the uplifting and the eerie, the hummable and the hypnotic, the tuneful and the texturally adventurous.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    It Won't Be Soon Before Long
    There's nothing wrong with making music for tweens, or lighter-lofting boomers. It's simply a matter of execution, and here these chums are scattered and grasping.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Lies For The Liars
    An album of the same-old, same-old.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fort Nightly
    Nearly embarrassing levels of enthusiasm, sincerity, and energy inform Fort Nightly, the band's surprisingly meaty debut.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Release The Stars
    Beneath the haughty schmaltz of his fifth LP—embodying Herb Albert one moment and a particularly peach-scented Little River Band the next—there are only momentary flashes of the high-quality torch songs we fell for so long ago.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Reminder
    Listening to this thing is like watching a pitcher throw a no-hitter.
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