Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,119 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 35% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 62% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Who Kill
Lowest review score: 0 Fireflies
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,689 out of 3119
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3119
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3119
3119 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sun
    A collection of songs that represent a dynamic snapshot of the singer-songwriter in steady command of her craft while still occasionally giving way to passages of thin-skinned, deeply revealing storytelling.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Entanglements
    Conceptually, Entanglements has been done before, but lyrics are reprised and musical sentences are repeated in such a way that it creates a singularly cohesive, linear narrative piece.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let's Make Love
    Let’s Make Love reaffirms Brazilian Girls’s penchant for imagery of bustling streets, crowded cafés, and the buzz of cities in perpetual motion.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Competition
    The Competition uses the aesthetics of the ‘80s dance floor to try to understand the rising tide of global nationalism. That makes it an easy listen despite its divisive subject matter.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    El Pintor
    The band has delivered something even better here: an elegantly simple, aggressive album that understands and acknowledges its own past without nostalgia or bloat.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Miss Anthropocene
    The result is a challenging exploration of the conflicting boundaries and boundlessness of personhood, technology, and society.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love vs Money
    Instead of begging to be repeated, the rest of the album's songs are best savored as a whole--a weird assessment of an R&B album, which usually sink or swim on their ability to capture you right away.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Glitter And Doom Live
    The usual thrill of a live album comes from slightly tweaked familiarity, but Waits treats his songs like old cars in need of new engines. It's a decision that's ultimately more rewarding, turning Glitter and Doom into an album that basically amounts to 80 minutes of new material.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prisoner of Conscious
    More than any of his previous albums, Prisoner of Conscious is the sound of Kweli performing art for art's sake, hip-hop for the sake of hip-hop, with hardly a homily to be found.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Downtown Church
    Fortunately for Griffin, the album boasts perhaps her finest performances to date, making Church an essential addition to her rich catalogue and a rewarding step in her ongoing emergence as more than just a go-to writer.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Easy Tiger
    What Easy Tiger lacks in craft or measure, it makes up for in raw inspiration, which makes it all the more addictive.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Down There
    Down There may not be inherently more complex than the standard Animal Collective album, but its deliberate languidness, its songs measured and exposed as opposed to the usual frenzy, lends itself more fully to an exploration of how carefully the songs are shaped.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nothing Was the Same
    The album isn't perfect, but it draws energy from that imperfection, further establishing a persona driven by Drake's still-developing conflict between assurance and hesitation.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    100 Days, 100 Nights
    100 Days, 100 Nights still speaks to the soul and the depth of the genre's past.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Reality Show
    Part of what makes her new album, Reality Show, so remarkable is how often it dares to foreground her pen over her pipes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dig Out Your Soul
    Those follow-up albums were disappointments because, aside from a catchy song or two, they were tedious. Dig Out Your Soul defies this trend and is their most compelling offering in years.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Ghost
    No Ghost may initially present itself as one of the prettiest indie-pop albums in recent memory, but its structural depth truly demands and rewards active attention.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Solution
    Solution's unobtrusive yet menacing production--gothic keyboards, drum noises mimicking gunshots--nicely complement Sigel's musings on death, crime, and the urban landscape
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All of Us Flames
    While All of Us Flames peaks in energy early with the tremendous “Forever in Sunset,” one of Furman’s most climactic rock songs since 2018’s “Driving Down to L.A.,” the impact of the album’s latter half comes from its focus on autobiographical minutiae.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    BlackenedWhite
    The duo strikes a fine working relationship throughout BlackenedWhite too, with Left ensuring his colleague's standout bars are accentuated with a quirky sample or a sudden key change. In all, this is a far more accessible affair than Goblin; it never comes close to being as downright offensive, and Hodgy's breezy flow helps make this a far easier album to digest.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    El Camino
    The album hurtles forward with all the momentum and subtlety of a cannonball, and it's best either to get on board or just to get the hell out of the way.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Best Day
    As is typical with Moore, the vocal melodies on The Best Day are mostly afterthoughts that usually just blithely follow the guitar parts. Fortunately, this weakness is minimized by the fact that most of the riffs, rendered via a pristinely engineered dual-guitar attack, are excellent.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014
    Even if Wilco is in danger of running out of interesting new places to take their sound, it's only because, as Alpha Mike Foxtrot is a convincing testament to, they've spent the last 20 years taking it to so many places already.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Horses and the Hounds
    The Horses and the Hounds proves that McMurtry’s nearly peerless ability to tear our hearts out with a good yarn hasn’t waned a bit.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    James Blake
    What I do know is that at the center of the deafening hype is a fascinating debut, and having spent the last week immersed in it, I suppose I too am willing to invest a bit of hyperbole in James Blake, particularly if it helps convince you to invest a few hours with this uncommonly powerful album.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    To The Races
    Finally Bachmann's songs sound familiar and not derivative.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ole! Tarantula
    Olé! Tarantula delivers the goods: jangly, addictive psychedelic pop of the type Hitchcock mastered with the Soft Boys and the Egyptians.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wall of Eyes
    Whether Wall of Eyes is a last stop for the Smile or merely a layover to some yet-undefined place, it’s an undeniably mesmerizing trip.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hive Mind
    The result is the Internet’s most musically diverse and synergetic album to date.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lately
    Lately reveals itself to be Hiatt’s most daring and experimental work to date. The songs’ relative lack of polish knocks down what few layers of pretense may have previously existed between the listener and the characteristically unvarnished inner thoughts that compose most of her lyrics.
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