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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    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Keep On Loving You
    It's a good thing that McEntire is in such fine voice, because her performances elevate some awfully pedestrian material and overcome some strident contemporary country production choices.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Family
    The album is so fragmented and so determined to forsake easy pleasures, with most of the songs hovering near the 90-second mark, that it comes to suggest a hip-hop version of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention releases from the 1960s. ... For better or worse, The Family may, paradoxically, be Brockhampton’s most honest and adventurous effort since their debut.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oblivion With Bells
    It clearly meshes with their previous incarnations and eventually emerges as a listenable album in its own right.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Grand Theatre, Vol. 1
    Taken on its own merits, though, Volume One is mostly a success, and it's great to hear the alt-country vets sounding more alternative and more country than they have in years.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Far Field
    Songs about unrequited love will never go out of style, but The Far Field would be better served by occasionally taking the road less traveled.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Positive Force
    When Marion makes more creative use of his varied, globe-spanning influences, however, Positive Force is every bit as compelling as its predecessor.... [yet] far too many of the melodic hooks are merely adequate, and he doesn't pull any surprises.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Twang
    Risky or not, Twang is nonetheless one of the more interesting permutations of the prototypical George Strait record.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel
    Mariah is in fine voice throughout the album, and there are plenty of inspired moments to be found....Which makes it all the more disappointing that the album's final stretch devolves into a mess of old-school Mariah rehashes that should have been left in the past.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pick A Bigger Weapon
    [Riley's] lyrics are simultaneously clever and uninteresting: he rarely transcends an ABAB or AABB rhyme scheme, practically never rhymes within the lines, and his meter and diction lack intricacy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Honeymoon
    It's a full hour of expressively expressive-less music--unmitigated solipsism as an aesthetic choice.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Featuring Ty Dolla $ign
    Featuring Ty Dolla $ign has the air of a haphazard playlist. Griffin is still a formidable center of gravity for a small army of eager collaborators, but the final product wants for some necessary fine-tuning.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Big
    Unfortunately (and not surprisingly), Gray's already weathered voice is more worn than ever; she struggles to reach and sustain notes that should be comfortably within her range.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paper Airplane
    Krauss and Union Station are extraordinary musicians, and it's their impeccable skills that are the main selling point of Paper Airplane.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    On The Outside
    Nothing on On The Outside is truly awful--it's just, well, good, which these days, isn't quite enough to get the attention of a well and truly fickle nation.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Out in the Storm
    After a while, Crutchfield's melodies also blend together, especially during the album's middle stretch, where the similar-sounding “Sparks Fly” and “Brass Beam” are sequenced back to back.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Growing Pains
    She keeps her most salable characteristic, her emotiveness, under duress, which provides tension but no release.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lady Antebellum
    There's nothing revolutionary here, just a solid set of songs performed with definite skill and enthusiasm.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Exotic Birds Of Prey
    At just seven tracks, the album proves to be paradoxically sparse in its loose, leisurely construction but dense in its intense inscrutability. Exotic Birds of Prey’s resistance to form, accessibility, and interpretation will either draw you in or push you away—and that’s probably the point.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Horses and High Heels
    As with most of her material, Horses and High Heels often sounds overblown and showy, but it identifies Faithfull's persistent ability to merge individual personality and musical connoisseurship.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Joanne
    Although Joanne lacks the indelible pop hooks that those two influences [Elton John and Prince]--not to mention Gaga herself--are famous for, the album is more sonically consistent and thematically focused than the singer's last solo effort, the regressive Artpop.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Truth About Love
    Pink thankfully hasn't gone soft, and there are no real clunkers here, but the truth about The Truth About Love is that it's competently, often frustratingly more of the same from an artist who still seems capable of much more.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Heartworms
    On paper, Mercer's lyrics too often engage in heavy-handed wordplay (“I take the drugs, but the drugs won't take”) or drift off into abstraction (“I dine like an aging pirate”), though the vocals aren't always featured prominently enough to easily decipher on a casual listen.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Earthly Delights
    The highlights demonstrate that these guys have yet to exhaust their uncanny vision, but by and large this is Lightning Bolt doing a Lightning Bolt album.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse
    Undisciplined R&B pastiches, however, the album has in spades, especially ones that hearken back to her own career.... With surprising internal logic, the album's two unabashedly uptempo ditties are also the forums for Mariah's most serious-minded performances.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crystal Castles
    Crystal Castles' most rockist moments seem to wish to appear arty by being as annoying as possible. It's a tricky maneuver, and the fact that the group doesn't quite pull it off screws up the coherence of this otherwise strong record, but that doesn’t make them any less promising.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cavalcade
    It’s an atmosphere-focused album that attempts to express the nastier side of being alive. The result is evocative but not necessarily satisfying.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Are You In?
    De La Soul has always worked better in lo-fi, and the cheesy Rock Band-like guitars and drums in the middle section sound suspiciously like Moby's disastrous collaboration with Public Enemy a couple of years ago, but this is still an album that clearly belongs to De La Soul, and they're not shy about it.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Liberation
    “Accelerate” never takes off like one might expect, content to bustle along on a perpetually shifting beat, rumbling electro bassline, and skittering trap effects, fading out while the singer sensually vamps over a minimal backing track. Unfortunately, the rest of Liberation plays it frustratingly safe, with smooth, competent R&B like “Deserve” and “Pipe.”
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