Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,113 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: 1,683 out of 3113
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3113
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3113
3113 music reviews
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wreckorder
    Clocking in at a brisk 34 minutes, there isn't enough time for Wreckorder to falter. But on the other hand, Healy can't seem to find the time to amply spread his wings either.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Le Noise
    Le Noise is the sound of a singer-songwriter playing to his strengths.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Record Collection
    Three albums in, it's hard to imagine a Mark Ronson album not brimming over with a crowd-pleasing, inter-genre collection of guest stars.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lonely Avenue
    Lonely Avenue definitively exfoliates its ersatz-'70s, one-off joint-effort stance; more than anything, it's proof that pop can push back against middle-class maturity woes with both rhetorical and diatonic thickness.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pete Yorn
    While that may not necessarily make Yorn any more distinctive on this album than on any of his previous efforts, Black's energy at least gives him more of an edge than the singer-songwriter has been known for in the past.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Halcyon Digest
    At the end of the first album on which he's managed to keep all of his organs inside his body, it's like Cox is finally letting us see his heart.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am the West
    Judging by moments like these, when Cube's performance is allowed to take center stage, I Am the West becomes an engaging hip-hop record.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Invented
    Invented doesn't entirely lose those attributes that make Jimmy Eat World such a doggedly likable band, but it struggles to know what happens when emo kids get over it.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hands All Over
    Hands All Over won't fulfill Levine's ambition to redefine Maroon 5's identity: If anything, it only steers the band further from the potential suggested by their 2002 debut, Songs About Jane.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wake Up!
    Pedantic spoken-word sections heighten the feeling of this-is-good-for-you laboriousness and make Wake Up! come off as heavier than it needs to.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You Get What You Give
    Perhaps what's most encouraging about You Get What You Give, though, is that Zac Brown Band hasn't played it safe. Instead, they've played fast and loose with a set of influences that owe far less to country music than to Southern rock, jam bands, and reggae.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky
    My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky submits to no such relaxed idleness. It earns the right to avoid the term reunion, picking up right where the band left off.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Postcards From a Young Man
    For all the furious posturing, the message is veneered too neatly with streamlined riffs and swamped too deep in nice-as-pie orchestral melodies. Seething rants seem to pack more of a punch when the product is less polished, and tend to get lost when bookended with excessively opulent trappings. This is rock music, after all.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Root For Ruin
    The band's songs are formally simple but always smart, loud but neat. Nothing on Root for Ruin stretches much past four minutes in length; the album fits in with its predecessors in this respect, and if it feels slighter than Les Savy Fav's best work, it's only by dint of its faithful similarity to that earlier material
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hurley
    Hurley, named after the tragicomic Lost character (who also adorns the cover), continues this recent trend with no less than nine co-writers (for 10 songs), and an even longer list of featured musicians, including Michael Cera, who is enlisted to lay down some mandolin and harmonies for no discernible reason beyond his being Michael Cera.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flamingo
    Flamingo makes a pretty strong case that Flowers doesn't have the best grasp of what it is he does well.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Business Casual
    Here they're presented lovingly whole and intact, without irony, as keystones to be cherished and admired.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    False Priest
    Of Montreal may keep getting weirder, but it's the band's garish melodic heart which makes them worth following.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Penny Sparkle
    For all its dreaminess, Penny Sparkle is clinical and almost always predictable, despite the exotic murmurs of lead singer Kazu Makino.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Who We Touch
    Who We Touch works best when the band revels in their sense of adventure, but it suffers dramatically when overtly appealing to days gone by.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Harlem River Blues
    Given Earle's often morose and sardonic bent as a lyricist, the shift toward blues suits him well, making for his strongest album to date.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Heretofore
    Heretofore highlights the technical skill and genre-blurring vision that makes Megafaun one of the most captivating acts in Americana. But when their ideas run too far out of bounds, the album also makes it clear that Megafaun hasn't quite figured themselves out yet.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Light Chasers
    For an album that's set in the coldness of space, Light Chasers impresses for its warmth.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Body Talk, Pt. 2
    Pt. 2 is further evidence that Robyn is still one of the most consistently innovative major-label pop artists working today.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Interpol
    Interpol may not be quite self-parody, but it's also not the sort of thing that's going to make them hip again anytime soon. Not that they would even care.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Reckless
    The incarnation of the SteelDrivers as captured on Reckless has offered one of the year's strongest country records.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mean Old Man
    Mean Old Man may be a fundamentally lazy album, but it works in the right places, making sharp choices and offering a mostly agreeable experience.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Isla
    Isla boldly showcases an unconventional combination of instruments and melodic ideas, a revolutionary musical terrain that Portico Quartet will hopefully continue to explore.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All Birds Say
    All Birds Say is worn down by its sluggishness and suffers overall from a surfeit of ineffectual good humor.
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