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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    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dear Science,
    TV on the Radio have finally made an album that someone other than hyper-analytical music critics might actually enjoy.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    RTJ2
    RTJ2 is the rare sequel that bests the beloved original in almost every facet.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    St. Elsewhere
    As we approach the halfway point of 2006, it's unlikely that a more vivid or arresting debut will drop this year, marking St. Elsewhere as not only an audacious accomplishment, but one of the year's best.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ys
    The album is a precious--in every sense of the word--masterpiece.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fetch the Bolt Cutters
    On a purely musical level, it’s a bold experiment in pop craft, a collection of songs on which Apple stretches her talents in adventurous new directions. ... Fetch the Bolt Cutters is Apple’s most timely—and timeless—effort yet.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Things Take Time, Take Time
    A fully realized crystallization of her melodic instincts and the themes that she’s previously explored. She wrote most of the album in 2020, holed up alone in a Melbourne apartment while riding out the Covid-19 pandemic, and as such a sense of solitariness permeates its 10 songs.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Merriweather Post Pavilion
    Soulful and almost structurally flawless (it's the most minor of complaints that the middle run of songs are all about a half-minute too long), Merriweather finds one of the most talented, most creative pop bands finally and gloriously figuring it all out.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
    The effort to canonize My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as one of hip-hop's all-time high points is already underway, and I'm confident that Kanye's new album can weather the backlash that all potential classics must confront.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Illinois
    From its framing gimmick and its anti-folk folk songwriting to its he-has-to-be-kidding song titles and its show-offy instrumentation, Illinois should reduce to a simple stunt performance. That it's pop-art of the highest caliber, instead, cements Stevens as one of the most vital voices in music today.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Love
    It's a dazzling, expansive experience that ranks among the year's best.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
    Brash, insightful, wry, and, above all else, smart, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend confirms that Miranda Lambert is far more than just the latest in a long line of bad girls: She's a country music legend in the making, and the most vital artist Music Row has produced in a generation.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Treats
    Even though it's as ambitious an exercise in freeform genre-splicing and pure, amp-blowing volume as has been attempted in the past few years, it's always at least as fun as it is smart, taking the three great pillars of guilty-pleasure music (deafening arena-rock swagger, sugary pop hooks, and delirious dance beats) and rolling them together into a singularly appealing cacophony.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Plastic Beach
    Though it's only to be considered "pop" in the most obscure sense, and it goes to show Albarn has a pretty warped concept of the term, Plastic Beach provides the almighty shakeup that pop music has needed for some time.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness [Deluxe Edition]
    The songs from the Mellon Collie sessions speak not only to the quality of that abundance, but also to the Smashing Pumpkins' status as some of the most creative and successful purveyors of sensitive but cerebral art rock.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards
    Each orphan stands proudly on its own as the vestige of an old idea or a forgotten path—proving that even Waits's missteps still manage to point in the right direction.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    None Shall Pass
    There's actual substance to unpack in the album, but Aesop's indomitable presence on record and his knotty co-production with Blockhead and El-P make what he says incidental to how he says it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    There Is Love In You
    Less ambient and more grounded than the preceding tracks, it's the one song on the album you wouldn't want to hear at the party; rather, it's a subtle, evocative slow-burner best saved for the cool air and the long walk home.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Music from Big Pink [50th Anniversary]
    It's this funhouse-mirror approach to the past—backward-looking but never self-consciously “retro”—that makes Music from Big Pink feel truly timeless. This goes double for this anniversary edition, which features a revelatory new mix supervised by veteran engineer Bob Clearmountain. His work brings a feeling of presence to the album.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Pixel Revolt
    It fully merits high praise as both the best work of Vanderslice's career and easily one of the best albums of what has been a refreshingly strong year for music.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    White Chalk
    White Chalk, wholly self-contained and uncompromised, is a work of literary depth and complexity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Premonition
    Once again, they infuse their brand of punk with a hefty dose of pop songcraft and meticulous production, courtesy of producer Jesse Gander, Premonition conjures a dark, enticing dynamism unparalleled even by their own extraordinary output.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Who Kill
    A tremendous leap forward from Tune-Yards' previous efforts, w h o k i l l proves that Garbus isn't just a brainy artiste with a killer voice, but an event, someone to take notice of, a new center of gravity in the musical underground.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Stay Positive
    It is not only the Hold Steady's best record, but acts as a culmination of all of the ideas, stories, musical paths and character journeys that they've so pointedly led us down before.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Emerald City
    Both on a song-for-song basis and as singular cohesive work, Emerald City demonstrates Vanderslice's masterful control of craft at every structural level and his unrivaled ability to make the political personal.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Black Messiah
    D'Angelo's assuredly delivered a great album, one that, even in these nascent days of our receiving it, already feels like something that's always been, that's necessary, and that was probably worth any wait.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bitte Orca
    They've done it here, and Bitte Orca is close to a masterpiece.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
    It is no small feat to write melodies as memorable as Berman's exceedingly quotable lyrics, but on each song here, he does. Lookout Mountain is an outstanding work of art.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    One Day
    Although it has some thematic overlap with Glass Boys, One Day amalgamates its disparate lyrical and musical ideas, as well as the confidence of its performances and compositions, into a novel, thrilling 40 minutes.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Boxer
    Boxer works best as a mood piece; it's also the first National release to work as a whole, and it's the best album I've heard so far this year.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    xx
    It's a perfectly executed ending for an album whose understated pleasures will surely amount to one of the year's most treasured releases.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sleepless Nights
    Loveless has offered another unqualified masterpiece with Sleepless Nights and reasserted her place as one of the premier artists not just of the country genre but of contemporary popular music.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jim
    This is saying something, because every single song on Jim will battle for space in the part of your brain that gets hooked.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Present Tense
    Present Tense possesses a complexity that's not so calculated, focusing on the passage of music rather than layer upon layer of sound. Its 11 synth-drenched tracks are more bare than those on Smother, but they move much more fluidly, their liquiform seduction establishing a contrast with the band's ominous lyrics.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Once I Was an Eagle
    For its cohesive tone and the ease with which it plumbs the darkest recesses of Marling's consciousness, Once I Was an Eagle is close to a masterpiece, a heavenly composition with just enough hell to keep things from feeling too familiar.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ta-Dah
    Ta-Dah isn't an unimpeachable triumph from front to back, but it's a hell of a good showing.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is No C)
    Powerful and smart above all else, Enlightenment may just be Hubbard's finest record, and it's certainly the new decade's first essential album.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wildheart
    D'Angelo may have struck a new gold standard for intellectual R&B, and even recorded a more traditionally cohesive and satisfying album, but Miguel's cocktail of furious angst, pained perplexity, and damaged tenderness is just as relevant, acknowledging the complicated realities of modern sexuality while pushing to expand its horizons.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Will
    Will's coup is how it keeps one guessing, and how Barwick keeps from relying on the beautiful yet impersonal sonic washes of her past work. It's the sound an artist, whose mysterious and celebrated process has ironically created theatrical and curated work to this point, finally achieving subtlety.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Reflektor
    The band certainly hasn't left rock behind, but they've found a way to push beyond a sense of exhaustion with the resources that the genre has to offer, while at the same time reflecting on the tenuousness of interpersonal connection in an age of hyper-evolving technology.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Suburbs
    Three years later, they've given us The Suburbs, a stunningly accomplished album about embattled, often embittered, adulthood by a band that continues to mythologize childhood even as it moves decisively into artistic maturity.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All Mirrors
    All Mirrors is challenging and confrontational, and rewards close, present listening.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Civilians
    Even in its rare maudlin and melodramatic moments, the album is saved its many precise, stainless sounds: Henry's compassionate, reverb-shaken voice, Bill Frisell's excellent fretwork, a bewitched pump organ, a snare hit that always echoes a bit too long.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son
    The singer's delivery is more pliant than it's ever been, moving from the hushed echo-chamber whispers of "Silver Malcolm" to the fuzzed-out shouts of "Jericho Road." But the real magic is in the melancholy appeal of his daydream, what he calls his "temporary Earth" in "Magic Number," and the persistent possibility of revelation that Jurado catalogues with grim bravado and wry hope.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mykki
    A pop debut of disciplined eccentricity and disarming force.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Waterloo To Anywhere
    Punchy, ragged, and frenetic, Waterloo To Anywhere surges forward, not-so-subtly aping The Strokes, The Clash, and The Ramones as well as delivering that precise buzz that can only be felt by the young, drunk, and excited.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jim Noir
    Jim Noir works brilliantly on an escapist level, even though it rewards more active listening.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Magnificent City
    Refined attention to detail gives Magnificent City the kind of structural awareness that distinguishes exceptional records from merely great ones.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Order of Time
    A triumph of form, The Order of Time is through and through a completely idiosyncratic take on American roots music, steeped in its tradition but not beholden to it.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lupercalia
    The fact that Wolf stands little chance of displacing Rihanna or Adele shouldn't preempt our appreciation of what he's accomplished with this album, which is to shake off his unseemly solipsism and turn out his most catchy and engaging batch of songs in one concise effort.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Suddenly
    It’s a treat to listen to the way such a masterful musician mines his own record collection for inspiration. What makes the album so spectacular, though, is Snaith’s voice. ... Throughout, his mesmerizing vocals elevate songs that might otherwise scan as banal.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Oczy Mlody
    What makes Oczy Mlody so enthralling is that the Flaming Lips are ambitious in their exploration of the aftermath of their typical spectacle.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Pure Comedy
    It's something of a miracle, too, that he's managed to wring such beauty and profundity out of the mess of a society he sings about.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    American Band
    The band displays a new level of clear-eyed purpose and here-and-now urgency on American Band. Eloquently plainspoken as ever about the pressing issues we face as a nation, they’ve made an album multiple decades into their career that establishes them as more directly relevant than ever.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Channel Orange
    Channel Orange is so textured, complex, and mature that Ocean's recent coming out feels like a footnote, rather than the entire story. It's a revelation that only further colors the tales of longing and disappointment found on this impressive album.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Slave Vows
    It is hardcore, a visceral distillation of fury that aims to wound.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Molina And Johnson
    This empty feeling contributes to the quiet mood of Molina & Johnson, which feels dark and battered yet still gleaming, a compilation that's as evocative as the best work of either of its namesakes.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    M B V
    A few twists and turns shy of perfection, m b v is the innovation and sonic warmth of My Bloody Valentine rekindled and made anew.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All Born Screaming
    The album finds Clark at her most fragile and ferocious, seeking beauty among the waste and wreckage of 21st-century life. Itself a beautifully ugly thing, All Born Screaming is a visceral examination of art and nature when both are pushed to the brink.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rather Ripped
    Rather Ripped is probably one of the best records in Sonic Youth's catalog, and definitely one of the best albums of 2006.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Goblin
    Goblin is just as disturbed and twisted as Tyler's debut. And, moreover, it's every bit as outrageously brilliant.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Made In The Dark
    Hot Chip boldly expand and louden up their sound significantly here, while admirably retaining full command of the forms they've already mastered.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    St. Vincent
    Her guitar may be her primary tool for shaking up and complicating otherwise strictly defined songwriting, but Clark's voice remains the thing that defines her material, the glittering lynchpin of the glorious, ever-expanding world she's created.
    • 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.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rat Saw God
    All of the wobbling between tempos and styles might sound haphazard, but it’s executed with precision. And Hartzman’s snatches of Americana imagery—rain-rotted houses, parking lots, “piss-colored bright yellow Fanta”—ultimately cohere into an evocative portrait of the fringes of American life.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Kind Revolution
    A Kind Revolution never feels fragmentary, even though it’s certainly wide-ranging and eclectic. The difference is that Weller really gives his best ideas time to develop here, and his usual frenzied pacing is relaxed a bit, letting the songs fully unfold.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Life's Rich Pageant
    Life's Rich Pageant serves as both a guidepost for how R.E.M. moved in an arena-sized direction and as another extraordinary album in the band's uninterrupted run of true greatness that spanned between Murmur and Automatic for the People.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Immolate Yourself
    Immolate Yourself does a lot and does it all well, creating an album that adds explicit punctuation to an already shocking loss.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    folklore
    What makes Folklore such a compelling album, then, are the countless ways in which Swift, the savviest and most acutely self-conscious artist of her generation, anticipates questions surrounding her genre bona fides and leans into each apparent contradiction.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lese Majesty
    They work fully as standalone tracks, but feel even more substantial when taken within the overall structure of this beguiling, addictive album, which finally turns this strange duo's intellectual eccentricity into their greatest asset.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
    Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is ultimately a rock record more than it is an ideas record, but on both counts the Seeds bring it like a band half their age.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crack The Skye
    Crack the Skye presents a stunningly original fusion of sounds.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sebenza
    The expertly produced Sebenza creates a flowing, carnival atmosphere packed with ideas and stripped of the pomposity often associated with world music.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    To Pimp A Butterfly
    Tidy this album isn't, but like There's a Riot Goin' On or the distended jams of One Nation Under a Groove, the uncompromising messiness is the point. The focused and fervent anger, politics, cosmic knowledge, and above all unshakable self-doubt is the point too.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Golden Archipelago
    Overflowing with talent and ambition, Golden Archipelago is that rare kind of great album: tackling big ideas and attempting chancy things while delivering a product that feels flawlessly and decisively whole.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    RTJ4
    Structurally inventive, lyrically deft, passionate and heartbroken, RTJ4 positions Run the Jewels as the laureates of our collapsing era.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fundamental
    It would be unthinkable to imagine a more pleasurable listen coming along in 2006.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crows
    With her songwriting on point (she's always had a weakness for obvious, forced rhymes, but her discovery of slant and blank rhyme leave just a couple such offenders intact) and with her distinctive contralto in exquisite form, Moorer's performance here is arguably a career best.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    God Save the Animals
    God Save the Animals feels like a culmination of Alex G’s work to date, encompassing the murkiness of his early songs, the rootsiness of 2017’s Rocket, and the eclecticism of 2019’s House of Sugar. It’s an emotionally and spiritually rewarding effort.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Revolution
    A dense, challenging record, Revolution once again finds Lambert setting the benchmark for the country genre even as she begins to consider the possibilities beyond its borders.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lust Lust Lust
    These songs don't sound like love songs because they aren't love songs. That the Raveonettes understand why that's an important distinction makes Lust Lust Lust a sleazy pop masterpiece.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990
    By showcasing an artistic fusion of the tranquil with the bustling, the primal with the technologically advanced, the compilation shows how much work has already been done to find ways of summarizing and celebrating the potential of this new reality.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sing the Delta
    Sing the Delta... conveys a one-of-a-kind perspective that, somehow, manages to be as unassuming and humble as it is powerful and authoritative.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Thunder, Lightning, Strike
    It's so overwhelmingly happy and thrilling a musical statement that it would justify even a few more exclamation points.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Carry Fire
    The album's roots go back to Zeppelin's immersion in English folk and American blues, but here Plant displays everything he’s learned along the way; Carry Fire's sophistication and mystique place it among the most ambitious and evocative albums of his legendary career.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Live At Reading
    Reading is a far cry from pop-chart fodder. And while the jarring howl of Cobain's Fender and his gravelly delivery may alienate the more nonchalant corners of their fanbase, these ferocious renditions will be a godsend to the dyed-in-the-wool Nirvana following.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Eye Contact
    That's not to say Gang Gang Dance has watered down its style; rather than some strategic reach toward mass appeal, Eye Contact represents a pruning of the superfluous.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Walking Proof
    On Walking Proof, she’s emerged wiser and more confident, ready even to dispense advice of her own. She also finds herself in full command of her broad stylistic palette, melding influences as disparate as backwoods country and garage punk into a cohesive signature sound.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War)
    Badu's spare, pointillist lyrics are almost constantly folded deep within dense, heavy arrangements
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Return To Cookie Mountain
    TV On The Radio do more than keep pace with their Shortlist Prize-winning Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes; they enhance nearly every aspect of their debut, creating an album that is uniquely theirs in the modern scene.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Weather
    She's always been an insightful and empathetic observer of the human condition, but Weather is such a heady album because of how unflinchingly Ndegeocello has turned her keen observational eyes toward herself.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Two Suns
    Dark, but never needlessly so, Two Suns offers a rich, distinct world of subterranean lullabies, spacey timbres, and ghostly beauty.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ugly Season
    The album serves as a beautiful dissection of dance as action and concept. Beyond that, it’s the most experimental Perfume Genius effort to date, and a bold addition to an already impeccable discography.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Ghosts of Highway 20
    The Ghosts of Highway 20 is otherwise characterized by its consistency, but what really sets it apart from Williams's previous album is its sense of emotional balance.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Complicated Game
    He's a storyteller with a literary knack for using detail and narrative to draw complex, relatable characters, and his storytelling finesse has never been more evident than it is here.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I Love You, Honeybear
    It's a rare fulfillment of outsized ambition and a crystallization of Tillman's inimitable narrative verve, however unreliable his narrator may be.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Age of Adz
    What makes The Age of Adz an exception rather than some blatant hat-tip to those artists is Stevens's quirky trademarks.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    WOW
    There’s also a strong sense of unity in how each song eventually comes together, and the album as a whole cohesively flows from one impressive moment to the next, ebbing and flowing between states of serenity and chaos.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Third
    There's enough on Third (spaghetti-western guitars, organs, barking effects) to sate those who pine for the late '90s, but gone is the turntable scratching, ostensibly deemed too much of a relic from that decade; in its place are more electronic flourishes, like the cyclic synth-bass loop that softens the second half of "The Rip," a song which is proof positive that Goldfrapp would never exist without Portishead.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
    The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We’s numerous emotional peaks, from “Star” to “My Love Mine All Mine,” are so moving that the listener may also be convinced that love is a light in a dark world, a pillar of fire in the wilderness. Indeed, Mitski’s ability to pack so many gut-punches and inspired ideas into half an hour remains uncannily impactful.
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