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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    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love Hallucination
    At nearly 38 minutes, the album stays around long enough to where its effervescent nature starts to serve as a hindrance rather than a strength, where the age-old idiom of “in one ear and out the other” begins to ring truer than ever before.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Care So Much That I Dont Care at All
    Initially lumped into the hyperpop scene by the likes of Billboard and Vice, Glaive has moved in a more emo direction, but the album struggles to retain the intimacy of his earlier releases as it delivers a more palatable sound.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
    Anohni’s charting of various cycles of decay and change have the weight and import of a Greek tragedy. It’s a pity, then, that so much of the music on My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross underserves her anguished storytelling.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Feed the Beast
    While it’s admirable that Petras is willing to show her vulnerable side on the midtempo 808 ballad “Thousand Pieces” and the bubbly “Minute,” Feed the Beast plays it safe compared to Petras’s audacious Slut Pop EP.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Gift & a Curse
    Considering that many of Gunna’s past projects have been largely defined by their star power, their total absence here results in a back-to-basics album with a healthy amount of breathing room, one that’s able to showcase Gunna’s own talents with an unusual amount of clarity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In Times New Roman...
    The best moments on In Times New Roman… prove that Queens of the Stone Age can still reliably deliver left-of-center alt-rock thrills, and Homme’s take-it-or-leave-it charisma is as tangible as it ever was. But after almost three decades of taking on every strand of rock music and embracing both the analog and the digital, it’s disheartening, if perhaps understandable, that the band seems unsure of where to go next.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Weathervanes
    Ultimately, then, Weathervanes showcases both the Isbell who can bring the entire world into focus with just a few lines and an acoustic guitar, and the Gibson-toting Isbell with the hot-shit backing band. But he continues to come so close yet so far from reconciling the two.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Matters Most
    Unfortunately, the song [“Clouds with Ellipses”], like so much of What Matters Most, lacks the snark and self-aggrandizing pity that made the singer-songwriter’s early albums, like Rockin’ the Suburbs, so relatable.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Almost Healed
    Considering that he does seem willing to experiment—primarily on the cerebral “B12,” whose beat is composed of shuttering snares, rapid bass distortions, and what sounds like a squeaky bed spring—it only amplifies the overall humdrum nature of Almost Healed.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sus Dog
    Chris Clark’s Sus Dog tries on a number of stylistic tics—from stuttering electronics to eerie vocals—that recall those of its executive producer, Thom Yorke, but rarely finds a means of organically incorporating them into the IDM veteran’s bass-heavy sound.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Jackman
    For the most part, Harlow operates in two contradictory modes: pedaling universal surface-level platitudes about relatable matters such as “the grind” or going for easy humble brags about receiving Sunday Service FaceTime calls from Justin Bieber.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fuse
    Even when Fuse is firing on all cylinders, it feels risk-averse, leaving one longing for an album that mines its gloomy outlook and ambiance for greater impact. As far as proverbial “comebacks” go, though, an exercise in pared-down style, where the music is a little darker, slower, and a bit more mature than what’s come before, is far from the end of the world.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Multitudes
    The album eschews the extroversion of the singer’s best work, like her 2007 breakthrough, The Reminder, and ultimately struggles to fully elucidate her multifaceted talents.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    the record
    Throughout The Record, Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker frequently return to the idea of an elusive search for identity. But they don’t seem to have found clarification just yet, failing to land on a collective identity or collaborative creative method that complements their myriad talents.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
    Ocean Blvd traffics in some nimble, effervescent melodies, a few memorable vocal passages, and the occasional tuneful duet (Father John Misty proves to be an exceptional bedfellow on “Let the Light In”). But the album feels more like a placeholder in Del Rey’s discography than a truly audacious chapter in the singer’s blossoming late-period reawakening.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Endless Summer Vacation
    The lyrical clichés that occupy much of Endless Summer Vacation do little to scratch away at the album’s blithe veneer, though at the very least they deliver on its promise of fun.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Radical Romantics
    Fever Ray circa 2023 feels admittedly a little quainter than they used to.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One Thing at a Time
    A wildly uneven follow-up to 2021’s already overburdened Dangerous: The Double Album. Listening to the album in one sitting is akin to binging a seven-course meal: While there are some memorable bits, it all blurs into a comatose-inducing fog.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bless This Mess
    Meghan Remy seems to want it both ways, as she flips between sincerity and irony across her eighth album as U.S. Girls. These conflicting approaches end up negating one another and result in a work that sign-posts its themes and musical choices but lacks a coherent overall vision.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cracker Island
    Much like 2017’s overstuffed Humanz, Cracker Island is, more times than not, overly indebted to its impressive list of guest stars, foregrounding their talents instead of employing them as natural extensions of Albarn’s musicianship.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Food for Worms
    Aside from one or two cuts, though, nothing here is as satisfying as previous Shame highlights like the nervy, ominous “Snow Day” or “Nigel Hitter,” whose splintered dance-rock managed to be both hooky and weird. For the most part, Food for Worms manages to be neither.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shook
    TThe group consistently proves their mettle as musicians throughout Shook. But the sequencing of both the songs’ individual elements and the tracklist as a whole is less than the sum of the parts.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gloria
    For as much as Smith tries to step out of the box, they still sound most comfortable playing to their previously established strengths.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    AudioLust & HigherLove
    An assemblage of enjoyable ingredients that doesn’t coalesce.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Strays
    Strays continues in the classic rock-inspired direction of 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started, breaking from the neo-traditional country music that put Price on the map. The arrangements employ slide guitar and keyboards—even xylophone on “Time Machine”—with a punchy yet spacious mix, but the album flaunts its influences a bit too transparently.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Me vs. Myself
    In the end, A Boogie plays it too safe, and in the process, ultimately proves how accurate the album’s title really is.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is What I Mean
    Far too often, Stormzy sounds crushed under the weight of his own unrelenting seriousness.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Profound Mysteries III
    Despite several standout moments that are worthy additions to Röyksopp’s illustrious catalog, Profound Mysteries III can, like its two predecessors, sometimes feel too indulgent for its own good.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Family
    The album is so fragmented and so determined to forsake easy pleasures, with most of the songs hovering near the 90-second mark, that it comes to suggest a hip-hop version of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention releases from the 1960s. ... For better or worse, The Family may, paradoxically, be Brockhampton’s most honest and adventurous effort since their debut.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Only the Strong Survive
    Only the Strong Survive is an expertly crafted collection, but a rougher hewn approach, with a sound closer in style to Stax Records than Dionne Warwick and Phil Spector, would have better honored the spirit of its source material.
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