Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,113 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: 1,683 out of 3113
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3113
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3113
3113 music reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Stranger Here
    illustrates how slight the distinctions between country, blues, and folk genre labels are, and it adds to Elliott's legacy as one of popular music's finest storytellers.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Repo
    The only negative here is a lack of structure between songs, which makes Repo feel like something dropped in a pile at your feet.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Atlantic Ocean
    Despite sometimes dissolving into monotony, the mood remains light, and Swift's playfulness, evidenced by moments like the falsetto opening of 'Lady Luck,' keeps things in check.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's Blitz
    Sure, it's easy to lament how fangless they sound here, with just hints of the skuzzy basement ferocity that has made Fever to Tell one of the decade's most enduring records. But the finesse they display here, on their most mature and stylistically coherent record, may ultimately serve them even better.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Woman, A Man, Walked By
    While not all of the songs work, the project is effective in crafting a series of distinct, compelling vignettes. Moreover, A Woman illustrates how deeply these two long-time collaborators understand each other's creative restlessness and their flair for the dramatic.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Living Thing
    In addition to a deficiency of hooks, Living Thing is further crippled by an all too obvious absence of charm.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A New Tide
    New Tide continues Gomez's struggle to accurately identify its sound after the initial boon of 1998's Mercury Prize, further wedging them into a narrow void between two unbecoming styles.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Defying Gravity
    So much of the album feels so deliberately tasteful and conservative. Defying Gravity barely gets off the ground.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Free
    The album may not have any standout hooks to give him another inescapable radio hit, but it does suggest that DeGraw has finally found a style that suits him well.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Thunderheist
    It's erotic and in your face without being campy.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Live In London
    London is by far Cohen's most generous live release, and if it tilts too heavily to the last two decades of his career, it compensates by including virtually all of the classics from the first three.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    LotusFlow3r
    LOtUSFLOW3R only occasionally transcends the same anesthetized gloss that gummed up "3121" and "Planet Earth," both of which feature stronger songs, not that you'd know it beyond all that polish.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    MPLSound
    On an individual song-for-song basis, the lyrical hooks are even shallower than they are on LOtUSFLOW3R.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fever Ray
    Each of these stylistic decisions work equally well, and what impresses most about Fever Ray is that none of the choices are obvious.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grace/Wastelands
    Grace/Wastelands is a pleasant, downright breezy collection of songs and Doherty, excepting the dreamily ragged quality of his voice, sounds something like a new man.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Hazards Of Love
    Hazards of Love personifies potentially workable songs eaten away by overwhelmingly ill-conceived ambition.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Junior
    While irrepressibly buoyant, this instills a lacking, spectator quality to the album, which for the casual listener often plays like the soundtrack to a movie you haven't seen.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crack The Skye
    Crack the Skye presents a stunningly original fusion of sounds.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kicks
    Kicks is forgettable fare.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In A Perfect World...
    Perfect World is merely passable, and Hilson needs to do much more than pick fights with Beyoncé to justify her transition from hook girl to solo star.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shine
    The restraint that she shows in both her vocal performances and her song selection are a refreshing change of pace. Unfortunately, she still lacks the instincts of some of the genre's superior interpretive singers, especially with regard to choosing quality material.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Enemy Mine
    This incessant sense of creative movement makes Enemy Mine one of the best albums of the year, the sound of three great musicians forged into a product bigger than themselves.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Born Like This
    Fortunately DOOM is unable to completely shake off his own best and worst habits, and so Born Like This contains its fair share of the rapper's classic screwball set pieces.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pray IV Reign
    His work is still glaringly standard, all puffed-up machismo and stock sexual banter.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Carolina
    Unfortunately, the bulk of the record takes the opposite approach, with bombastic arrangements and dumbed-down, pandering lyrics that are too easy and too desperate for mainstream approval.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wavvves
    The music itself is relentlessly blanched in fuzz, an intentionally scuzzy sound that, despite the borderline annoying atmosphere, does less to limit these songs than grant them a claustrophobically dense beauty.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Slipway Fires
    The rest of the band, a soulless cooperative between Sweden and the U.K., does their best to back him up, issuing rote, lifeless rock tracks that build appropriately to fist-pumping peaks, but it's Borrell's vocals that press this album past mediocrity into embarrassing territory.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All I Ever Wanted
    Taken in isolation and out of the context of the album as a whole--say, on the radio--nearly all of these songs work well enough, despite the production choices that don't always play to Clarkson's strengths and which draw too much attention to themselves.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Face Control
    Fans of off-kilter pop will enjoy at least a few of the stronger cuts, but too much of Face Control sounds like the unfinished blueprint of a much better album.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bare Bones
    It is, in other words, a rejection of progression and passage for mood and form. Peyroux mastered such silken aura long ago, and while that may make the album somewhat of a retread, it's a playful one nonetheless.
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