Slant Magazine's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    King Of Jeans
    Pissed Jeans's jokes aren't yet falling flat, and their balls-to-the-wall throttle has hardly been tamed, but King of Jeans sees the band for the first time failing to avoid passages of power-chord monotony and instances of off-target ridicule.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    brand new eyes
    Rough edges, like the curt bathos of the lyrics (which repeatedly mistake brusqueness for wit), may be improved in the future. Either way, the band's music is already as catchy that of Fallout Boy, without nearly as much of the put-on faux-cleverness.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Who We Touch
    Who We Touch works best when the band revels in their sense of adventure, but it suffers dramatically when overtly appealing to days gone by.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Quaranta
    Quaranta makes for an often frustrating experience, where tracks will circle around a topic with some level of pathos but seem incapable of ever reaching their full potential.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Violet Cries
    Named after a grim Danish fairy tale, Esben and the Witch pursues a narrow course on their first album, Violet Cries, a morose, pitch-black update of the '80s dark-wave template.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1: No Past. No Future. No Sun
    As revived as the classic Pumpkins sound is on Shiny and Oh So Bright, though, the album can’t quite shake the sense of superfluity endemic to reunion projects: There isn’t anything here that the band hasn’t already done before--and better.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Food
    This is some of Kelis's subtlest, most organic-sounding work. If only there was more of her in it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Music Is Better Than Words
    Sincerity marks a refreshing change of pace for MacFarlane, but it never transcends the gimmick of hearing the guy who created Family Guy sing like the Rat Pack.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Reintegration Time
    Reintegration Time is a neat, reserved album, if not satisfying as a close approximation of the band's live sound, then as a more low-key exploration on a parallel path.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Trouble Will Find Me
    So while Trouble Will Find Me remains well crafted and satisfying, there's something inherently stultifying about it as well.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    24K Magic
    The album features the strongest set of beats and rhythmic hooks in Mars's canon to date, making it a could-be heir to gratuitous groove records like 1999, Off the Wall, and Remain in Light--if only it were as innovative. Ultimately, the album's magic is a trick everyone already knows.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Free Spirit
    For a burgeoning artist still establishing his signature style, Khalid settles into a surprising complacency here, failing to experiment with the template of his debut.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Am...Sasha Fierce
    I Am...Sasha Fierce is an admirable vie for artistic credibility (and for a last-ditch revival of the long-player format) but one that is muddled by the fact that the album is being offered in two configurations.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sling
    While their jazzy arrangements channel the pleasant air of ‘70s AM folk, Sling’s 12 tracks tend to fuse into an unassuming whole that veers perilously close to easy-listening ennui.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Native Invader
    When Amos eschews her band in favor of barer piano-and-vocal arrangements—as on the contemplative “Breakaway,” the surprisingly reverent “Climb,” and the lush “Mary's Eyes,” a mournful plea to the gods to reverse Amos's mother's aphasia--Native Invader fulfills the promise of its stunning opener.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beautiful Trauma
    Beautiful Trauma's neat construction renders the album less than the sum of its parts, but individual songs work well enough, thanks in no small part to Pink's personality and charisma.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Olympia
    Ferry manages to maintain the balance between strut and elegance without pushing into manic depictions of either form. This doesn't mean everything works so neatly....Guest spots from Eno, David Gilmour, Groove Armada, and Jonny Greenwood disappear entirely into the thick production, which robs them of any distinctive contribution.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tell Me
    Over the course of Tell Me, her second full-length album, Mayfield emerges as a singer-songwriter with a powerful and distinct voice.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dr. Dee
    Dr Dee indicates both Albarn's continuing interest in experimentation and his resolute songwriting skills, but doesn't always make for the easiest listen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pageant Material
    Her music is as rooted in organic country and western traditions as ever, flush with cosmopolitan strings, instrumental banjo breaks, and generous portions of pedal steel, but the songwriting comes less organically, too often stretching itself thin over a genre that's historically benefited from a measure of simplicity.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ski Mask
    Perhaps Ski Mask's greatest virtue is that it demonstrates Islands' competency as a conventional rock act while dropping the occasional winking reminder that the band hasn't lost their ability to get weird.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Prism
    She largely sticks to her tried-and-true pop template, each song tailor-made for mass consumption with mixed results.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sorry I Haven't Called
    Here [on “Can I Talk My Shit”] and on “You Know How,” her vocals feel devoid of any distinctive characteristics and are needlessly Auto-Tuned. .... Fortunately, the album’s second half—its sterling middle section in particular, from “Autobahn” through “Don’t Know How”—is vastly more rewarding. These tracks don’t strain as hard to fit into contemporary Spotify playlist formulas and allow Tamko to get back to the more the intimate, sophisticated sound of 2019’s Vagabon.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hot Thoughts
    Hot Thoughts is often at its most appealing, though, when it sees Spoon sticking to what they've long proven they know how to do best. That's not universally the case: The album's only straight-ahead garage rocker, the thudding “Shotgun,” is so uncharacteristically regressive and lunkheaded that it might as well be a Kings of Leon song.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Eyelid Movies
    From the hip-hop loops and grungy, Dust Brothers-style synths of "Running from the Cops," to the new wave balladry of "All Dried Up," and the trip-hop cool of "You Are the Ocean," these are kinds of left-of-center pop tunes that, in the mid-'90s, could have sneaked their way onto Top 40 and modern-rock playlists (which were basically the same thing back then).
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Para Mi
    Though the better part of Para Mi was ostensibly written with romantic interests in mind, the songs, so anchored to fixed experiences, have come to represent universal lessons learned. They’re still rough around the edges—many lack dynamism, fading in and out of monochrome synth passages—but the impression that Cuco put all of himself into the music remains.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Winter Women / Holy Ghost Language School
    A bracing, willfully odd delight that rewards the patient and frustrates the short-fused.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This (Is What I Wanted to Tell You)
    This album lacks the stitched-together quality of FLOTUS, that certain emphasis on atmosphere, texture, and the unexpected, rather than structure and melody, that makes that album alternately impenetrable and transcendent.
Page: