Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,117 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: 1,687 out of 3117
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3117
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3117
3117 music reviews
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    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Strange Weather, Isn't It?
    Simply put, Strange Weather, Isn't It? is beat for the sake of beat. !!! has certainly mastered the means of dance-rock, but they haven't mastered the ends.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Back to Me
    She makes a genuine effort here, but not even the legendary R&B singers to whom she has been compared could elevate this material.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Teenage Dream
    The remainder of Teenage Dream is a raunchy pop nightmare, with A-list producers lining up to churn out some of the worst work of their careers.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hawk
    They may be, for all intents and purposes, covers of songs that never actually existed, but they repeatedly prove just how ecstatic such influence can be.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tomorrow Morning
    In stark contrast to its title, Tomorrow Morning is dull, dark, and hopeless.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Versus
    Of course, the only people I could imagine getting any pleasure whatsoever from Versus's wretched collection of failed club-sex jams are those with enough bad taste to buy Raymond v. Raymond three or four times over.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Orchard
    The Orchard is no less sweet or sentimental than its predecessor, but it's a stronger, more complete record.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sugar
    The band shows range, but there's never a moment where all the elements cohere into something completely unique. Even with more professional-sounding production and songwriting, they still can't escape their influences.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All We Grow
    Carey almost certainly has a better album in him, but as a 40-minute introduction to the man behind the drumkit, this one is an assured and undemanding success.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Reason Why
    The performances have always been there for Little Big Town; The Reason Why provides just more evidence that there isn't another act in any genre of popular music with greater skill in arranging vocal harmonies. At this point, there's no logical reason that this shouldn't be Little Big Town's long overdue star turn.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Surfing the Void
    Yet whereas Myths of the Near Future was often psychotically fun, Surfing the Void finds Klaxons taking their genre rock shtick way too seriously.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Foundling
    Gray tries to bring some color to the album with his terrific, weathered tenor, but there's only so much he can do in performing material this staid.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin
    It's the rare, grin-inducing Wilson indulgence that doesn't involve some drug-inspired nonsense about enchanted transistor radios. The entirety of Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin reeks of a newfound arrogance that lifts this Beach Boys aficionado's spirits.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Better Than This
    No Better Than This works as well as it does because it plays to Mellencamp's strengths. His genuine empathy for rural living and his occasional hell-raising both come through in equal measure.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise
    Since the album finds LaMontagne working without producer and multi-instrumentalist Ethan Johns for the first time, it isn't terribly surprising that the singer is a bit unsteady in taking the reins. Still, it's the things that LaMontagne gets right on God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise that make it his strongest, most cohesive album to date and a deeply soulful take on contemporary blues and folk.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Come And Get It!
    Since Come and Get It is Reed's first major release, his style is still refreshing. Whether or not he's just a one-trick pony remains to be seen.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    31 Minutes To Takeoff
    Posner's B-boy sound may be derivative as hell, but the album stands to turn him into the latest DIY sensation.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blood Under the Bridge
    Blood Under the Bridge may not garner much critical attention, but it's both a roundly rewarding album and a quietly thrilling throwback.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Suburbs
    Three years later, they've given us The Suburbs, a stunningly accomplished album about embattled, often embittered, adulthood by a band that continues to mythologize childhood even as it moves decisively into artistic maturity.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    King of the Beach
    A performer like Williams has a lot to lose by releasing what is, by and large, an accessible pop-rock album.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tin Can Trust
    With its combination of acoustic rock, Spanish music, and mystical balladry, the album traverses all the styles Los Lobos has explored over the last 30 years-with a blues instrumental and a Grateful Dead cover perplexingly thrown in for good measure.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Spot the Difference
    The game at the core of Spot the Difference may be mostly meaningless, but it tricks us into a different kind of comprehension, granting a new face to songs that now no longer seem as stale.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The House
    Orbit's production doesn't find as forceful a match as it did with Madonna on Ray of Light, and Melua's style still seems too thin to support true greatness, but The House is a promising start, a sporadically grand album that finds another talented artist rescued from mediocre pop oblivion.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mines
    Mines is thoroughly what one has come to expect from Menomena: an album that is titanic in scope, filled with offbeat wordplay, and entangled instruments.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Indrupendence Day
    While InDRUpendence Day may play at toughness, adhering to today's fashions as completely as the group did to the simpler whims of the '90s, it never postures.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lazers Never Die
    The remixed versions of the songs from Guns Don't Kill People all demonstrate an intuitive understanding of what worked about those songs in their original forms, while the new songs continue in Major Lazer's exploration of the sounds found on nearly every dance floor in the world's tropical climates.
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