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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    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Many Colored Kite
    Olson's ability to center a song around the shivery hum from a cello's bow is one of those quietly expressive abilities that can so easily be overlooked. Filled with and shaped around these kind of moments, Many Colored Kite is resolutely marked with sure signs of experience and skill.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Runaway
    The Runaway may just be a stumble on the band's road to maturity, but it could also signal something more troubling: the beginning of an endless, effortless loop.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Teflon Don
    Ross's greatest tool is still his presence, which vouches for the strength of his persona when his lyrics can't.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    100 Miles from Memphis
    While it's admirable to hear an artist with such a well-established aesthetic branch out, 100 Miles from Memphis doesn't stretch far enough to work as either a contemporary soul record or as a purely retro-minded tribute.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Archive 2003-2006
    If Archive 2003 - 2006 is at times a runaway mess, it's consistently a beautiful one, and a triumphant example of Rossen and Nicolaus's penchant for chilling, intricate soundscapes.
    • Slant Magazine
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    It'll Be Better
    It's short, boring, and occasionally aggravating, recalling the flatness of acts like Maroon 5 and John Mayer while never coming close to their likeability, and when you're being rocked off the stage by Adam Levine, it's not a good sign.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Long Shadow of the Paper Tiger
    Long Shadow of the Paper Tiger is likely the most unabashedly fun album since Caribou's Swim, which played with the connection between organic and electronic elements the same way that Mahjongg here toys with everything, viewing familiar sounds as plastic trinkets: things to be picked up, shaken around, and then tossed away.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dark Night Of The Soul
    Albums like this are a reminder that we've perhaps lost something in the digital age. If it's true that we're the ones fumbling in the dark with rain falling over our heads, Dark Night is, at the very least, one bright ray of hope.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Disconnect from Desire
    It's not that the band sounds exactly like Stereolab, or like anyone else, but listening to Disconnect from Desire feels like shuffling through a '90s alt-rock playlist.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Korn III: Remember Who You Are
    The band's ninth album, Korn III: Remember Who You Are, is boring, melodramatic, self-righteous, dim-witted, and chock full of cliches-just like most everything else Korn has released over the past two decades.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    MAYA
    It may be an above-average album, but its aesthetic matches her persona only at its shallowest levels, in the thinness of its ideas and the often-forceful ugliness of its message.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Admiral Fell Promises
    Judged as an expansion on Kozelek's craft, Admiral Fell Promises is a slight effort; it offers intimate perspective, sure, but the object of observation remains the same.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Masts of Manhatta
    For a record that, thematically, trades in adaptation to new environments, Masts of Manhatta boasts real structural depth, as Bonham finds an effective balance of contemporary folk and modern rock.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pilot Talk
    Yet despite all this potential, Ross's work too often comes off as a conspicuous mishandling of both assets and signifiers: too much drug posturing, too much repetition, too little real effort.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wildwood
    There's also no faulting the band's performances. Banjoist Chandler Holt and mandolinist John Teer remain two of country music's most unheralded musicians, and bassist Greg Readling and guest percussionist Zeke Hutchins give the songs strong rhythm sections. There simply isn't anything innovative.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Butterfly House
    This is without doubt the band's most mature work to date, and perhaps they're most polished too, thanks to some excellent production work, but Butterfly House still has no respect for convention and shows little interest in becoming a straightforward pop record.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Flesh Tone
    Her new album, Flesh Tone, sounds dated in the worst kind of way-that is, not enough to sound retro-cool, but enough to sound totally uncool
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Aphrodite
    The entire album has the sonic consistency of cotton candy: It won't exactly give you a headache, but it could leave you with a stomachache.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
    Freed from the aesthetic demands of an odd-couple partnership, Big Boi (Antwan Patton) improves on the standard set with 2003's Speakerboxxx, an ostensibly solo work crystallized inside a double-album set, delivering a record that's rigidly focused and almost uniformly strong.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Night Work
    By matching their sound so adriotly to the content of their songs, Scissor Sisters makes Night Work an album of real structural sophistication.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Expo 86
    What remains is an above-average rock record of solid, if nonetheless half-developed, guitar-and-keyboard hooks. At its core, Expo 86 is the work of a great band seemingly disinterested in its own existence, its collaborators too absorbed in their side passions to churn out anything more than merely acceptable music.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    How I Got Over
    They're driven, even though their latest venture is stylistically the most inert, contemplative, offputtingly soft music they've possibly ever released.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Sellout
    Unfortunately, The Sellout doesn't just embrace the fluffier side of the Gray persona, it smothers it in an awkward, goofy hug.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Further
    Further is by definition not the most embarrassing music of their career--merely the most boring.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We Are Born
    While We Are Born may not be as immediate or distinctive a statement as its predecessor, there's ultimately very little about it that doesn't work.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Recovery
    Much of Recovery centers around such themes as romantic devotion and anxiety, but the resulting material rings unsurprisingly hollow.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Five Ghosts
    The formula works better elsewhere (see the perky, airy single "Fixed"), but like the adolescent musings that serve as its inspiration, The Five Ghosts is, at best, awkwardly sweet and, at worst, fumbling and tone-deaf.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Total Life Forever
    Like its perfectly integrated packaging, Total Life Forever is successful because of attention paid to the things around it, a combination of direct influence and creative rigor that makes for a stirring experience.
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