Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,118 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: 1,688 out of 3118
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3118
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3118
3118 music reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Travels With Myself And Another
    Travels with Myself and Another expands the complexity, adding guitar solos and a more careful sense of composition to the pounding fray.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lines, Vines and Trying Times
    Lines suggests that the Jonas Brothers simply don't have--or, more charitably, haven't yet developed--the chops to make it once the current teen-pop bubble bursts.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Guns Don't Kill People...Lazers Do
    Guns comes with a plot that has absolutely no bearing on the album's songs or list of guest collaborators. That its ostensible backstory makes for little more than some colorful, comic-inspired cover art keeps the album's focus where it should be: on some of the year's most compelling beats.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bitte Orca
    They've done it here, and Bitte Orca is close to a masterpiece.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Eternal
    Married since 1984, the couple has reached a level of easy rapport that makes their collaborations feel warmly alive. Hopefully the band's sound won't continue to settle into the same kind of comfortable informality.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Ecstatic
    With leftfield collaborations with Slick Rick on one side and the reedy-feely Georgia Anne Muldrow on the other, The Ecstatic isn't the concentrated wonder that is "Black on Both Sides," but it's a refreshing bounce back from the precipice of the Land of Sellout.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The E.N.D.
    Tere is only so much will.i.am can do to buoy a group that, lyrically, does an end-zone dance for successfully counting back from 10 and operates musically on an even playing field with this guy.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rhett Miller
    He sounds like a pro here too, turning in uniformly high quality performances, but without much thrill or excitement.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Man Of Aran OST
    As a soundtrack, it works (mostly) well, but as a standalone album, it feels drearily wan and insignificant.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Preliminaires
    As always, Pop's lyrics are not something you want to spend too much time focusing on, but separated from the dumb strut of rehashed cock rock, they settle nicely into an eerie landscape of dread and malaise.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
    Unlike Costello's other excursions, Secret waters down his pretensions without losing his welcome pop sophistication.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Big Whiskey And The GrooGrux King
    Produced by Rob Cavallo, Big Whiskey is a step back toward the more polished sound DMB explored on 2001's divisive "Everyday"--that is to say, a step away from the 2005's return-to-form "Stand Up."
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs Of Desire
    Though doubtful it was crafted for such a purpose, Eels's latest is simply not much beyond a forgettable earful for a lazy Sunday listen.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Veckatimest
    The album dips and tips and ultimately soars as a result, Rossen and company having turned near-disaster into sonic triumph.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
    That Wolfgang positions Phoenix as a slightly hipper alternative to the Killers may finally break the band to a wide international audience, but it ultimately draws attention to how quickly trends shift in contemporary rock and how difficult it can be for even the most progressive bands to sustain their relevance.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Amanda Leigh
    Moore's sincerity and her pleasant vocals bring a great deal of charm to the project as well, and that goes a long way toward overcoming production that is perhaps a bit too slick to recall the homespun appeal of her favorite records.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Polly Scattergood
    Beyond threatening suicide and playing coy with whispered vocals, Scattergood fidgets with the bad girl/innocent child dynamic, the juxtaposition of which is just tired enough to bear obvious, but still creepy, dividends.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Relapse
    The further Relapse strays from narrative veracity, the more one suspects his fanbase feels he's tapping into his bottomless well for horror-show grandstanding.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's Frightening
    More often than not, It's Frightening is caught on middling ground, at once striving to be unpretentious while still hoping to challenge listeners' expectations. The album accomplishes neither, however, as the band's aversion to let sound fall where it may produces little beyond impressions of gloppy heavy-handedness and obtuse haze.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Manners
    just so happens that Passion Pit has released a gorgeous pop album in time for the warm weather, and while Manners would make a perfect soundtrack to any summer, you'll want to keep the best cuts around for far longer.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Abnormally Attracted To Sin
    But even with its bloated running time, Sin is more thematically satisfying and sonically adventurous than anything Amos has recorded in years.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Around The Well
    In the end, the collection's bevy of elegance, purity, and passion is simply 10 tracks too long.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Yours Truly, The Commuter
    Commuter may be a welcome return of an idiosyncratic talent, but it also finds Lytle a bit too stuck in his own head to stand alongside Grandaddy's most challenging, accomplished albums.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Further Complications
    The result is an album thick with a humid sense of decaying sexuality, a desperate voraciousness made even grimier by the gritty production.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Romanian Names
    Something of a letdown by his own lofty standards, but still awfully good by anyone else's, John Vanderslice's Romanian Names is perhaps the singer-songwriter's most obtuse album.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Still Night, Still Light
    The fact that many of the songs have lengthy instrumental passages confirms that Au Revoir Simone is more concerned with conveying emotions than just singing about them. On this count, the album's a clear success.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Back On My B.S.
    Busta is content to recycle well-worn material, hoping that enough polish and guest-star participation will wick away the album's dusty content. They don't, leaving B.S. as nothing more than filler.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Two
    The words are flatter, the music is more generically attractive, and maybe we're all getting a little too old for this club.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    21st Century Breakdown
    Maybe if you've heard one Green Day rock opera, you've heard them all. Anyone who owns American Idiot probably won't need its lesser twin, and those who steered clear won't come groveling for forgiveness.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crime Pays
    This material is so intermittently successful because the rapper is as much of a clown as he is an MC, a duality which assures that his albums will always be tinged with the bittersweet fruits of this twisted sensibility.
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