Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,120 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: 1,690 out of 3120
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3120
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3120
3120 music reviews
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goodbye Lullaby
    Since her production team more or less comes through for her, it's ultimately on Lavigne's slight shoulders that Goodbye Lullaby is such a strident, ineffectual attempt at a serious pop record.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    II
    It's their densest and most detailed work to date, but without the cathartic spirit of their live shows (Gamelan was written largely in a live setting), II sounds stripped of the music's previous rapture.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Different Gear, Still Speeding
    Judging this Beady Eye debut without any preconceptions based on their polarizing frontman-be they positive or negative-will be difficult, but the vocal performances and songwriting should go some way to endearing even the staunchest detractors to the all-swaggering, piquant Mancunian.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wounded Rhymes
    Wounded Rhymes is filled with gorgeously spiteful moments such as these, adding an obstinate wrinkle to the album's already-rich, shadowy mystique.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    100 Lovers
    Devotchka has at least found a way to continue making tuneful, relatively entertaining music, as their contemporaries either verge on self-parody or have given up altogether. But nothing about 100 Lovers suggests anything more than another attempt to break even.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blessed
    Blessed isn't a happy record in any conventional sense, but it's informed by deeply felt hope and contentment.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Songs From a Zulu Farm
    Its intentions are clearly wholesome, the music is sweet and cordial, and it's impossible to tell whether its ultimate drabness is the group's fault or our own.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Fall
    Given that Albarn recorded the album solely using iPad applications, and that this seems to be a ubiquitous suffix to any discussion of the album, it's difficult not to dismiss The Fall as a gimmicky concept album or even a shameless 45-minute Apple advertisement, but there are just about enough interesting moments here to dispel that cynical view.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shapeshifting
    The result is Young Galaxy's third album, Shapeshifting, which retains the band's new wave and synth-pop influences while also dabbling in both more electronic and more earthly sounds and textures, frequently inhabiting the same tropical-pop terrain of bands like Vampire Weekend and jj.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Gathering
    The Gathering is a revitalizing roll in the dirt, particularly for listeners put off by hard rock that either forays too far into other genres or is too polished by spit-shined production.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Smart Flesh
    Americana and modern folk are often dismissed for their dour self-seriousness, and Smart Flesh, unfortunately, falls into the worst of those trappings.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lorraine
    While that may be true to McKenna's roots and doesn't pull focus from the songs themselves, it also makes the latter half of Lorraine a drag.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Guider
    Guider may be a little jagged around the edges, but it's that one-take immediacy that gives the record its legs. Observing this brand of ultra-violence is thrilling, but the action can be a bit messy at times.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    21
    For most of 21, she's cast as a fortress of old-school soul besieged by lifeless jingles, a force of nature restrained by multiplatinum fetters.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fluorescence
    The musical bliss is short-lived, and the rest of Fluorescence is pretty much the musical equivalent of throwing darts at a wall full of sticky notes while blindfolded and drunk: Some happy accidents, but mostly a forgettable, sloppy mess.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Magic Place
    In the end, The Magic Place is a beautiful, ambiguous diversion better suited as a companion soundtrack to some experimental film or art installation than as the debut for a promising young singer.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Underneath the Pine
    Despite the oversaturated warmth of Beneath the Pine's production, this is a cold record, an archetype of technical mastery and genre-worship prevailing over the artistry of an individual voice. As a result, Bundick often sounds not like one artist, but the amalgamation of a whole movement's worth of ideas and styles, borrowed and rearranged into a faceless, forgettable whole.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The King of Limbs
    The King of Limbs finds Yorke and company preparing to forge a new path while taking a pensive look at what has gone before.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Late Registration
    Late Registration's salvation (and, undoubtedly, Kanye's own) are when it basks in the sunshine after the rain.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    College Dropout
    Like every hip-hop album (even the great ones), Kanye West's The College Dropout is marred by too many guest artists, too many interludes, and just too many songs period. (I challenge every hip-hop artist working today to record just one album with 12 tracks or less-no skits, no guests, no filler.)
    • 56 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    the JaneDear girls
    The songs that work on The JaneDear Girls are the ones that emphasize their melodies and hooks above the actual content of the songs or the girls' performances.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The People's Key
    This overflowing sense of self has done more to define Oberst than anything else, and it continues on The People's Key, spilling into the contemporary malaise he invokes and the often brilliant poetic associations of which he's sometimes capable.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wondervisions
    Delicate Steve uses their African-inspired rhythms as a foundation for more forward-thinking experimentation. That their experiments manage to be successful without sacrificing basic tunefulness makes Wondervisions a winning debut record.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    White Wilderness
    Although he has always been most highly touted for his expertise as a producer, White Wilderness is the first of Vanderslice's albums to sound like its production, rather than its songs, is the driving force.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Let England Shake
    Let England Shake borrows precepts from all over the singer's canon, specifically extrapolating the piano-based concepts of White Chalk into louder, fuller renderings.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    La Sera
    If the album format is really dying, then Goodman's got a good shot at cornering the market of 21st-century Shangri-La candy pop, but she should do it two minutes at a time.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blue Songs
    what's missing is that nagging vocal that hovers somewhere between sublime and corrosive, as so many of the great performances in dance music have.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Go-Go Boots
    Go-Go Boots aims for a soulful, introspective vibe, but it ends up as the dullest album in the Truckers's catalogue.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Yuck
    Their self-titled debut is a 12-track, 45-minute workout, and it so effectively hits you warm in the gut with distortion and stick-to-your-ribs melodies that you won't just wish you were 20 again; you'll realize there's no subscribed age qualification for that wonderful feeling you get while listening to this record.
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