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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Jessie James
    While she's able to pull off that bad-girl vamp far more convincingly than Underwood, that isn't saying much, and James certainly doesn't hold a candle to Aguilera at her skankiest.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stupid Love
    Smith's latest, Stupid Love, goes a long way toward correcting those earlier mistakes, and it easily stands as her most accomplished, most substantial record.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Running For The Drum
    Even if Drum is a bit too frontloaded, the album hits more often than it misses, and it marks a welcome return for Sainte-Murray.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Post-Nothing
    Maybe its sunstroke, but I feel compelled to suggest that two young Canucks trading in sludgy punk-pop tunes may have crafted a rock album that gets closer to perfection than any other album this year so far.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    See Mystery Lights
    The failure of its intellectual structure to fully intersect with the music represents something of a conceptual misstep, but also allows See Mystery Lights to be enjoyed without engaging with any of its ideas, as catchy summer music that leans toward the bizarre.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No One's First, And You're Next
    Boring when they're not acting out, but too jarring when hitting their groove, Brock and company are forced to toe a finicky line between normalcy and absurdity.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tribute To [EP]
    The covers attain a ghostly somnolence but also blend together, most of the color drained from the originals in favor of a uniform austerity.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nothing Gold Can Stay
    When Felice and Burke show a bit more restraint and keep the focus on the storytelling, Gold works as a compelling, soulful folk record.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anjulie
    Levine's production style isn't quite as edgy or intricate as his former colleagues', but it provides a lush, retro-soul bed upon which Anjulie lays her confessional lyrics.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kleerup
    This one is as strong and consistent as it is makes it all the more special.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Battlefield
    As nice as it is to hear Sparks continuing to dabble in dance-pop, though, one wonders if it would have been a smarter move in terms of career longevity to try to build on the urban audience she started to cultivate with 'No Air.'
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'm Going Away
    The use of repetition as a substitute for size is intriguing, but in the end it has the same deadening effect as the band's earlier use of overcomplicated compositions, creating music defined by a few overpowering elements rather than its intelligence or melodic dexterity.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Under The Covers Vol. 2
    If Vol. 2 feels oddly rote, it'll still be interesting to hear how the pair might tackle the music of their actual contemporaries should they move into the '80s and '90s on subsequent outings.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Josephine
    Rather than wallow morosely, he uses death as the focal point for an expressive song cycle that takes in the whole realm of life, with darkness frequently felt but not always the dominant emotion.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gather, Form & Fly
    With their masterful use of texture and loose regard for conventional structure, Megafaun is among the few modern folk acts capable of pulling off real surprises. That they also pull off genuine pathos and sincerity makes Gather all the more rare an achievement.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Horehound
    Her voice simply doesn't have the heft to project the necessary menace. Despite these occasional missteps, though, Horehound establishes the Dead Weather as a fully-realized band with a sufficiently distinctive point of view that deserves serious consideration as more than just a one-off side project.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Leave This Town
    Chris Daughtry has a real band that plays really serious songs, which are, almost without exception, really, really bad.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    American Central Dust
    While frontman Jay Farrar was instrumental in defining the alt-country scene, the problem with Dust is that, in the intervening years since Son Volt first rose to prominence, that scene has been bogged down by countless dreary, soundalike albums and an exhausting self-seriousness.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    BLACKsummers'night
    Upon first blush, there isn't much to chew on in BLACKsummers'night. Upon second pass, the absences become haunting.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rated O
    Spread out over three discs for maximum inefficiency, Oneida's Rated O seems to thrive on its own difficulty, both in sprawling presentation and a strident, noisy sense of sonic resistance.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Civilized
    Civilized is nothing if not a glossy, grand act, its welcoming veneer far more interesting than whatever truth lies behind the curtain.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wilco (The Album)
    It doesn't help that Wilco is such a complacent album, so easily redolent of sounds and textures the band has called up in the past.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Electric Dirt
    The songs are new but have the worn familiarity of something pulled from storage, all the trilling organs and honky-tonk shuffles, made thinner and more poignant by the passage of time.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wait For Me
    Wait for Me is persistent in humility and dismissive of grandeur, often preferring sedate exposition to the usual club-conquering anthems. It's not the most daring choice of experimentation, but for an artist as commercially minded as Moby, it remains refreshing nonetheless.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    American Saturday Night
    American stands as perhaps the most consistent set of material Paisley has committed to record.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Octahedron
    Octahedron is something of a new beginning for the band. It's uneven, sometimes clumsy, and a bit incomplete-sounding. But in spite of itself, the Mars Volta sounds exciting again.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Back & Fourth
    It seems Yorn has found his sincerity again....Yet Fourth has its fair share of missteps, most of them coming when Yorn abandons coarseness for a milky, lukewarm production.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Far
    Here she leaves behind the flaky-as-adorable posturing long enough to salvage Far from its role as capricious sideshow, and so, too, long enough for listeners to get a glimpse of the songwriting talent that lurks beneath the peculiarity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)
    Devoid of the brawn that makes the Truckers so powerful and without a complementary voice off which to bounce, Hood's songs fall into a folksy rut.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beacons Of Ancestorship
    Beacons demonstrates that Tortoise is still more than capable of releasing an exciting album.
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