Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,122 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: 1,692 out of 3122
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3122
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3122
3122 music reviews
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Broken Side Of Time
    A brave but clumsy attempt at expanding and refining the EP's dressed-down folksy rock, Broken Side's sound never coalesces enough to truly electrify, and though the ever-reaching, sprawling coarseness that Alberta Cross mines so well is still present here, it's noticeably less profound.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Plastic Beach
    Though it's only to be considered "pop" in the most obscure sense, and it goes to show Albarn has a pretty warped concept of the term, Plastic Beach provides the almighty shakeup that pop music has needed for some time.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sisterworld
    For Liars, it's another triumph of stylized strangeness--and the third consecutive album on which they've proven themselves to be one of the most creative and compelling acts in the musical underground.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Broken Bells
    At its very best, when the collaboration clicks, Broken Bells boasts some truly marvelous songs, but these peaks are sandwiched between tracks that struggle to exceed colorless tedium.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Winter Of Mixed Drinks
    Frightened Rabbit has always relied quite heavily on its members' charm, and for the most part, Mixed Drinks preserves that beautifully.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tomorrow, In A Year
    A truly revolutionary piece of work, the album is also an awfully hard sell that begs for an "even for the Knife" qualifier.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Monitor
    The Monitor is an album about perpetual rebellion, and whether that strikes you as exciting or wearying will have a great bearing on how much you get out of it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    jj no 3
    As darkly elegant as that pairing might be, no 3 manages better when its somber front is married to blithe surrealism, a feat jj accomplishes with skill and regularity.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beat The Devil's Tattoo
    At its finest, the album serves as the ideal soundtrack for a fleet of lonely, grizzled bikers lost on a desert highway: slow-rolling and hardened, simultaneously seething, brooding, and wistful, and armed with the pride of vagrancy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Brutalist Bricks
    Despite its obvious ingredients and well-worn criterion, Brutalist Bricks comes off peculiarly fresh. There are simply not a lot of people making the same sort of music Leo is these days; his audacious conviction is so easily appreciable (and hard to recreate) that he's almost immune to diminishing returns.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night
    But even weaker songs are still not a wasted trip, flickering with sharp moments and dazzling effects. In this way, the album asserts itself as a refreshingly pointed piece of chamber pop, a starkly serious work that plays as big but never portentous.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Big Echo
    As sources of inspiration go, a band could do far worse. But the album fails to use this already familiar point of view to explore any uncharted paths.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Off On The Pain
    The material explores a broader range of complex and wrenching emotions, and it marks the most consistent set of songs Allan has yet recorded.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hands
    While her first full-length album, Hands, smacks of trying too hard (Hesketh skittishly rotated through several different producers, and the sound is all over the map), most of the songs are imminently playable on their own terms.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Black Swan
    It's an expertly crafted pop record, sure, but Black Swan ultimately reduces to its primary points of reference without any broader context or sense of purpose.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scratch My Back
    Much of this material feels beneath him. What doesn't initially is brought down to that level by an absence of any real idea of how to give these songs a distinctive cast.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Light
    No, it doesn't push the genre forward; in fact, it probably pushes it back, but Black Light impeccably delivers on everything you could possibly want from the 14-year-old band.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Permalight
    Permalight is a startling contrast in subdued grace and awkward severity, alternately rewarding and punishing as the band seeks to craft a new voice without entirely abandoning the old.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fight Softly
    While their third album, Fight Softly, hasn't quite hit on anything new under the shimmering pop sun, it's a capable display of borrowing and synthesizing that should help to differentiate the Suns from complacent trend-followers who draw on similar influences.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Easton Corbin
    The album recalls the series of interchangeable, filler-packed albums Strait recorded in the mid '90s. Corbin sings well enough, but lacks the maturity and depth of experience to elevate some of the record's middling material.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hillbilly Bone [EP]
    To Shelton's credit, he seems to have taken a cue from his girlfriend, Miranda Lambert, on how to consider the overall thematic coherence of an album: Even the weaker songs on the record include some details of rural living and a genuine wittiness that attempt to put some meat on this Bone.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Golden Archipelago
    Overflowing with talent and ambition, Golden Archipelago is that rare kind of great album: tackling big ideas and attempting chancy things while delivering a product that feels flawlessly and decisively whole.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magic Chairs
    It's a little too easy to hear the band in Arcade Fire mode here and Coldplay mode there, which raises the uncomfortable question of what, exactly, Efterklang sounds like in Efterklang mode. That's not a question that Magic Chairs resolves, but it ends up being quite a lot of fun just listening to them play around with some possible answers.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American VI: Ain't No Grave
    If anything, the figure Cash presents here, a ghost of his former self, cobbling together his last artistic statement, only serves as a reminder of how great he once was.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dear God, I Hate Myself
    The album stands out as often exhilarating collision of disparate elements.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Have One On Me
    The end result is a strange, and strangely pretentious mess: an album pitted deep in the psychic world of stories that nonetheless can't figure out when it should begin, when it should end, or which parts are even worth the audience's attention.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Work
    Work's sweetness is uneven and awkward, managing very little ecstasy despite all the heartfelt pining and soft atmospherics.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart
    The whip-smart hooks and spot-on production on Heart mask Walker's vocal deficiencies, which might otherwise be a more serious liability.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pick Of The Litter 1980-2010
    Pick of the Litter really is just a sampling from a catalogue that begs closer examination.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Peace And Love
    If the album would benefit from more variety in its tempo and range, Peace & Love is, at the very least, a successful mood piece that proves how well maturity suits Hatfield.
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