Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,124 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: 1,694 out of 3124
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3124
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3124
3124 music reviews
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Got Issues
    Whenever he’s feeling especially vicious toward his adversaries, YG can seem like a schoolyard bully. ... Even when YG is effectively able to place his misogyny within a more acceptable context, like cussing out the supposedly negligent mother of his child on “Baby Mama,” his venom lacks creativity.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Profound Mysteries III
    Despite several standout moments that are worthy additions to Röyksopp’s illustrious catalog, Profound Mysteries III can, like its two predecessors, sometimes feel too indulgent for its own good.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Strays
    Strays continues in the classic rock-inspired direction of 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started, breaking from the neo-traditional country music that put Price on the map. The arrangements employ slide guitar and keyboards—even xylophone on “Time Machine”—with a punchy yet spacious mix, but the album flaunts its influences a bit too transparently.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shook
    TThe group consistently proves their mettle as musicians throughout Shook. But the sequencing of both the songs’ individual elements and the tracklist as a whole is less than the sum of the parts.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Radical Romantics
    Fever Ray circa 2023 feels admittedly a little quainter than they used to.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Endless Summer Vacation
    The lyrical clichés that occupy much of Endless Summer Vacation do little to scratch away at the album’s blithe veneer, though at the very least they deliver on its promise of fun.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
    Ocean Blvd traffics in some nimble, effervescent melodies, a few memorable vocal passages, and the occasional tuneful duet (Father John Misty proves to be an exceptional bedfellow on “Let the Light In”). But the album feels more like a placeholder in Del Rey’s discography than a truly audacious chapter in the singer’s blossoming late-period reawakening.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fuse
    Even when Fuse is firing on all cylinders, it feels risk-averse, leaving one longing for an album that mines its gloomy outlook and ambiance for greater impact. As far as proverbial “comebacks” go, though, an exercise in pared-down style, where the music is a little darker, slower, and a bit more mature than what’s come before, is far from the end of the world.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Almost Healed
    Considering that he does seem willing to experiment—primarily on the cerebral “B12,” whose beat is composed of shuttering snares, rapid bass distortions, and what sounds like a squeaky bed spring—it only amplifies the overall humdrum nature of Almost Healed.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Weathervanes
    Ultimately, then, Weathervanes showcases both the Isbell who can bring the entire world into focus with just a few lines and an acoustic guitar, and the Gibson-toting Isbell with the hot-shit backing band. But he continues to come so close yet so far from reconciling the two.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In Times New Roman...
    The best moments on In Times New Roman… prove that Queens of the Stone Age can still reliably deliver left-of-center alt-rock thrills, and Homme’s take-it-or-leave-it charisma is as tangible as it ever was. But after almost three decades of taking on every strand of rock music and embracing both the analog and the digital, it’s disheartening, if perhaps understandable, that the band seems unsure of where to go next.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Gift & a Curse
    Considering that many of Gunna’s past projects have been largely defined by their star power, their total absence here results in a back-to-basics album with a healthy amount of breathing room, one that’s able to showcase Gunna’s own talents with an unusual amount of clarity.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Feed the Beast
    While it’s admirable that Petras is willing to show her vulnerable side on the midtempo 808 ballad “Thousand Pieces” and the bubbly “Minute,” Feed the Beast plays it safe compared to Petras’s audacious Slut Pop EP.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
    Anohni’s charting of various cycles of decay and change have the weight and import of a Greek tragedy. It’s a pity, then, that so much of the music on My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross underserves her anguished storytelling.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Euphoric
    The album’s second half leans too heavily on slow, subdued songs, and Georgia’s ostensibly personal lyrics rarely speak in anything but the most general terms. So while singles like “Give It Up for Love” and the title track make for rousing enough dance-pop, It’s Euphoric never quite rises to the promise of its title.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Perfect Saviors
    The 12 tracks here—which veer from pretty hooks and acoustic guitar to blast beats—linger in an in-between space that doesn’t fully embrace either noise or pop.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cottonwood 2
    “Thug It Out” and “Pretty Brown Eyes” find the wunderkind tempering his energy, modulating his tone without flattening it. Would that he applied that approach to the album’s sprawl and structure too.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Isn't It Now?
    The breathtakingly gorgeous “Stride Rite” is about as pensive as Animal Collective has ever been. Composed of a myriad of cascading piano chords, the song amounts to an eerie, ethereal experience about the many heartbreaks that come with maturation, one expressed with a level of clarity that’s sorely lacking from the rest of Isn’t It Now?
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One More Time...
    It doesn’t exactly reinvent the pop-punk wheel—it also could’ve stood to lose about half a dozen songs—but its brightest, most exhilarating spots are a welcome reminder of what made the trio so iconic in the first place.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Higher
    Stapleton knows that his vocals don’t need to be forceful to make an impact, a point driven home on the beautiful closer “Mountains of My Mind,” on which his intimate voice is paired with just an acoustic guitar. But while tracks like that are evidence of Stapleton’s singing and storytelling abilities, more often than not, the songs on Higher struggle to take off.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rockstar
    To her credit, Parton still manages to make Rockstar sound and feel like a Dolly Parton album, thanks in large part to her distinctive twang. She and producer Kent Wells make some subtle changes to these songs, like a richer and deeper piano tone on Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” and denser lead guitar on “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” though more inventive arrangements would have distinguished these versions from the originals.
    • 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.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    i/o
    While the “Bright Side” mixes bring out the album’s more dynamic range, the lyrics lack the edge of Gabriel’s early music. The earnest perspectives of songs like “Love Can Heal” and “Live and Let Live” are apparent right from their titles, with the latter in particular succumbing to cliché. And the more subdued “Dark Side” mixes only highlight those flaws. i/o is heartfelt and meticulously crafted, but its impact is muted by its splintered presentation.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Saviors
    These songs may diverge from the ones that made Green Day a household name, but three decades later, they continue to strike a balance between teen spirit and maturity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Coming Home
    For every few colorless duds defined by their embrace of contemporary R&B, such as the overly smooth “Kissing Strangers” or the brassy “Big,” there’s a creative cut or two, like the suave “Margiela.”
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This is Me…Now
    To imbue that previous album with a timeless R&B quality, Lopez sought out veteran knob-twirler Bruce Swedien, who engineered and mixed classics like Michael Jackson’s Thriller. This Is Me…Now attempts to replicate that sound—and “Mad In Love” and “Not. Going. Anywhere.” both come close—but most of the album falls short of that lofty bar.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A La Sala
    Apart from a few key songs that continue down the lyrical path charted on Mordechai, A La Sala is largely a retread of Khruangbin’s idiosyncratic brand of dubby psychedelia.
    • 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.
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