Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,119 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: 1,689 out of 3119
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3119
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3119
3119 music reviews
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Be
    Each neo-soul nod to the R&B sound of Detroit, immediately post-Holland-Dozier-Holland, sounds more claustrophobic and limited than the last.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jagged Little Pill Acoustic
    For the most part, what was once electrifying is now stripped of almost all of its energy and novelty.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Naked Truth
    The preemptively defensive album's biggest problem is that it's surely nowhere near as interesting as its yet-to-be-recorded post-slammer follow-up will be.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am Me
    I Am Me isn't half bad--but it's only half good.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Time To Love
    It sounds better than any album that begins with background vocalists crooning "Moooo…moo-moo-moooo" probably has any right to, and contains at least a couple lo-fi AC ballad keepers.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Little More Personal (Raw)
    RAW is considerably more consistent than its predecessor, and it's not a bad listen by any means, but for all the so-called weighty subject matter, there's not much meat on these bones.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    First Impressions Of Earth
    First Impressions introduces some subtle new colors to the band's musical palette... but the pervasive sense of inert boredom, which has been noted as a strength in the past, is difficult to shake.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Destroy Rock & Roll
    Simple beats and waves of synthesized strings don't, in themselves, make for neo-disco euphoria.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Secret Life Of The Veronicas
    The Secret Life Of The Veronicas won't ever be considered anything more than what it is: utterly disposable, shamefully enjoyable, and transparently unoriginal music that, in a just world, will spend its brief moment in the sun entertaining the 11 year olds who wouldn't dare miss an episode of That's So Raven.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    If Only You Were Lonely
    Guitarist Casey Calvert reprises his role as the group's designated screamer, but his vocal thrashings are featured less prominently here, relegated mainly to solos near the end of songs. Surprisingly, this ends up being a bad thing, because while the screaming is grating at times, it provides one of the principal elements of the band's sound.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In My Own Words
    In My Own Words might pale next to Legend's stellar debut, but, even at its Robert Kelly worst, it's not hateable.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fear Is On Our Side
    Fear Is On Our Side is slickly produced... and resplendent in its studied somber nature, which makes mining the by-now exhausted vein of viscerally dark '80s rock an all the more unfortunate choice.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Under A Billion Suns
    Under A Billion Suns is, by a wide margin, the tightest Mudhoney has ever sounded on record. It's all the more unfortunate, then, that the album's lyrics bait the comparison to... Green Day.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pay The Devil
    Competent but unremarkable.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stars Of CCTV
    Cribbing from Franz Ferdinand's sonic playbook (with a healthy dose of fellow revivalists Dead 60s, Kasabian, and--why not?--Kaiser Chiefs thrown in), Hard-Fi builds roiling, angsty anthems built upon Richard Archer's stark evocations of life in suburban London.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Born Again In The USA
    What ultimately makes the album something of a chore is its one-joke premise, a preaching-to-the-choir broadside against the Evangelical right's ongoing assault on individual liberties and rational thought.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dying To Say This To You
    Slick and propulsive, the quintet needs a little meat on their songs to help elevate their slavish '80s enthusiasm into something a little more memorable.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ringleader Of The Tormentors
    Whereas You Are The Quarry was a welcome return to form, Ringleader Of The Tormentors makes you wonder if seven-year gaps between albums are necessary.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of A Beast
    Ultimately, the problem with Beast is that both its concept and its performance are so defined by their academic removes that it's impenetrable.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Impeach My Bush
    Peaches goes easy on the syrup and heavy on the flavor and hands listeners a delectable, if slight, cherry bomb of an album.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Eraser
    If anything, The Eraser more than proves that Yorke, no matter how intriguing or forward-thinking his ideas, needs the democracy of Radiohead to ground his more angular artistic impulses.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Feedback
    Feedback, for the most part, disintegrates into a cloud of unremarkable noise.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Idlewild
    It's an interesting failure, as OutKast are probably incapable of making boring music, but a failure nonetheless.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Paris
    What's most surprising about Paris's album is that it's really not all that bad; released by any other, ahem, artist, it would likely earn better notices than recent albums by the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, or Ashlee Simpson--not that that's really saying much.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Continuum
    With no edge to the songwriting and with such spit-polished, tasteful production, Continuum just doesn't convince as a heady, soulful rock album or as Mayer's creative quantum leap forward.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kelis Was Here
    Kelis Was Here sounds like a talented, left-field hip-hop diva in a holding pattern, concerned about her legacy but uncertain as to how to go about cementing it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    20 Y.O.
    The saddest thing about 20 Y.O. is that Janet's decision to hedge her bets on an album whose backbone is made up of terrible R&B instead of great dance music.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go
    The whole album is relentlessly gloomy, comparable to the general glumness of a Xiu Xiu record but without the fun of a WTF factor.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Dutchess
    The album too often seems to be striving to display diversity at the expense of artistry.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Tragic Treasury: Songs From A Series Of Unfortunate Events
    The Tragic Treasury is rarely charming: instead of being faux funereal, dirges like "Dreary, Dreary" and "Things Are Not What They Appear" are just funereal.
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