Slant Magazine's Scores

For 3,121 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:
3121 music reviews
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tension may not be the defining characteristic of Foxygen's sound this time around, but it's still there, bubbling up furiously beneath the sparkling surface.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    What makes Oczy Mlody so enthralling is that the Flaming Lips are ambitious in their exploration of the aftermath of their typical spectacle.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The result is one of his most nuanced and meticulous pieces but not one dependent on--nor effectively displaying--its little deviations.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    hough the Stones are firing on all cylinders throughout Blue & Lonesome, and to a greater extent than they have in decades, they’re hamstrung by the inherent limitations of only playing Chicago blues covers; there are only so many 12- and 16-bar blues tunes you can string together in a row.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ultimately, Woman‘s choral and orchestral contributions make the album stand out not only from Justice’s own prior work, but also from the throng of more repetitive electronic music that’s prevalent today.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A contoured album that hits a sweet spot between kinetic and laidback.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    His technical skill and workmanlike approach to grimy, delightfully vulgar subject matter is on full display here.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    At times Here feels like it wants to be What's Going On, the standard-bearer of socially-conscious soul, but it's more akin to Stevie Wonder's Innervisions, mixing the political with the personal.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eternally Even is the sound of a road-worn artist, whose music normally channels the awe and splendor of his country, challenging its structure and finding the deepest valley he's ever seen.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lady Wood is admirably lean and tightly focused, and though it doesn’t boast confessionals on the order of Like a Prayer‘s, it offers a peek inside the psyche of a smart, burgeoning young star.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    You Want It Darker doesn’t just boast a broad sonic palette, but the return of a broad-minded pop sensibility to his work after a sustained period of asceticism, with a precise lyrical platform granted manifold meanings through differing musical approaches, the songs bolstered by Eastern rhythms, full-bodied organ lines, and choral chants.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    BROOKZILL's cultural synthesis wouldn't be possible without the skillfully realized instrumentation: 808-style breakbeats are masterfully mixed with samba percussion on “Raise the Flag,” “Mysterious,” and “S. Bento MC5,” creating unexpected rhythms, but ones which still make sense within a traditional hip-hop framework.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In less capable hands, Ruminations's sad, lonely songs would be mired in abject misery rather than acting as a lugubrious form of catharsis as they do here. Oberst breathes pained, desperate life into his characters.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The music is dementedly, nihilistically danceable. The propulsion of certain tracks seems designed to irrevocably drag the listener into Brown's contemplative, paranoid psyche and deep-welled emotionality and, though stylized, intimates the horrors he's seen and felt.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Three represents only an incremental progression, not the seismic shift of Voices, but it demonstrates the duo's ability to transform darkness into light, taking personal tragedy and shaping it into professional growth.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    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.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The cracks, breaks, and flaws in Vernon's voice allow his humanity to shine through a little more. By saying less and embracing fragility, He sounds more vulnerable than ever.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An intimate existential chronicle of imprisonment and liberation, its visceral, blood-smeared intensity works off a steady heartbeat of acute artistic ferment, the roiling passion underlying Hval's powerful declaration of self.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Against Me! has returned with something truly personal, an album that has the nerve to be small.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    While it may not be Cave's most accessible album, owing both to the experimental nature of much of the music and the fact that its level of emotional rawness makes it a legitimately uncomfortable listen in places, it may very well be his best.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Preoccupations, by design, neither grips nor pays off with the same level of gleeful improvisational intensity [as 2015's Viet Cong].
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A pop debut of disciplined eccentricity and disarming force.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prima Donna's standout title track encapsulates Staples's appeal as a lyricist—and the appeal of the EP as a whole.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Schmilco is a deeply personal work. It’s also an album that so sincerely accepts maturation beyond supposed stasis, or prurient middle-age crises, that it should make us drop the term “dad rock” as a pejorative and accept that it can also be used as a description of high art.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    While My Woman may not be as powerful as Burn Your Fire for No Witness, it draws its strength from its creator’s sheer temerity to so drastically change course.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What results is a subtle study in duality, anchored by a single overt guest appearance--Andre 3000’s prickly, gymnastic verse on “Solo (Reprise)”--that, like an abstract of the album in miniature, manically splits off in a dozen topical directions at once.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    By eschewing the harsh, dubstep-influenced EDM of her past two albums and embracing subtler pop and R&B sounds, Britney's made her most daring, mature album in years.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Loveless manages to strike a similarly compelling balance of grit and pop throughout the rest of Real.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Not given over entirely to the atmospherics of Beyond, the heavy jamminess of Farm, or the poppiness of I Bet on Sky, Give a Glimpse instead combines all those stylistic elements into a package that may not feature as many lastingly memorable songs, but is replete with all the welcome signatures of the band's sound.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love & Hate shows lateral growth in its procession of art-rock odysseys and more standard fare, and proof that Kiwanuka can wield power over a number of arrangements, even dense ones.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For those fascinated by the Avalanches's process, as opposed to merely impressed by its most endearing results, Wildflower is a rewarding and challenging listen.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Freetown Sound certainly has the sprawl, hyperactivity, and potential of a personal masterwork, but its master is more conduit and conductor than confessor.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    That The Bride works best as a song cycle rather than a collection of pop hooks is a testament to its cohesion and intrinsic intertexuality, but what's missing here is Khan's knack for grafting avant-art-rock concepts onto mainstream forms.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's the fascinating work of two artists committed to sounding non-committal.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Make no mistake--musically and lyrically, this is an expansion.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Another bold, beautiful statement of purpose that also stands as a singularly menacing test of listener endurance.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The best songs here to showcase Jonas as an artist come toward the end, when Last Year Was Complicated trends away from its production excesses.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    case/lang/veirs flows like a conversation and negotiation between three women who've done the same thing, but in different ways, now learning the world through each other's eyes.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aside from those gratifying but superfluous detours into the well-trodden, though, Strange Little Birds emerges as the band's most compelling, adventurous album in 15 years.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If the burden on electronic producers is to establish personality beyond a dense network of light displays and computer processing, this album gets Flume halfway there: It shows him as unquestionably human (overeager, alternately flashy and timid, sometimes more in awe than in control), but still a bit faceless.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Though the album immediately shifts gears with the decidedly more contemporary title track, a sultry waltz in which the singer implores her man to “test [her] limits,” assuring him that, underneath, every 21-century woman is a “bad girl,” there are smart, unexpected nods to yesteryear throughout the remainder of Dangerous Woman.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    While A Moon Shaped Pool offers little in the way of new sonic territory, its newly naked and incisive portrayal of emotional vulnerability remains a resoundingly major achievement.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eagulls are also gloomier, swapping the punk-rock call-and-response style of their debut for a more reflective kind of musical angst. But Ullages's best tracks are the most energetic.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pantha remains less interested in constructivist concept pieces than interlinked studies riffing on a consistent theme, in which naturalistic splendor is conveyed by the interplay between thumping dynamism and sedate tranquility.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Left to his own devices, Bates's skittering effects and big, cavernous soundscapes can leave a metallic aftertaste like a mouthful of antibiotics, but the album's female guests--including Norwegian singer-songwriter Susanne Sundfør--provide the blood for Trágame Tierra's big, beating heart.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Drake is still skilled enough to carry off this pose with the effortlessness needed to make it credible, freighted as Views may be with cheeseball lines and repetitive refrains. These soft points have always been part of the charm, however, and while the album is overlong and presents nothing truly explosive or exhilarating, it generally works as a steady low-key collection of modish, contemplative mood music.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The emotional focus sharpens as The Ship progresses.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If Lemonade feels less ambitious than the near-70-minute Beyoncé, it's probably because the penetrating spoken-word interludes, composed of verses by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire, featured in Lemonade's accompanying long-form music video have been excised from the album itself.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Simply enough, Love Streams is a discomforting listen, and the addition of voices to Hecker's repertoire adds an additional tool of disorientation to his web of repurposed crackles and spurts, not the warmth one might expect.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fortunately, throughout the rest of the album, the band writes songs that allow them to excel as they stay well within their limitations. These are tight, economical pop songs actually worthy of Pavement comparisons in terms of not just sound, but melody.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Super's best songs cleverly subvert the expectations set up by the joyous music.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It’s easy to chastise aging pop stars for chasing trends or trying to recapture past glories, but those efforts here are thrown into sharp relief by the maturity of the album’s first half.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A few songs, like “American Valhalla” and “In the Lobby,” are rather dreary, and feel like Homme and Pop just spinning their wheels; they could have used a bit of a Stooges-style kick in the ass. Even on the slower songs, though, Homme and the stripped-down lineup he assembled for the album--fellow Queen of the Stone Age Dean Fertita, and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders--provide a heavy, rhythmic bedrock and stylistic versatility.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What these songs share, the pairing of Healy's witty, bratty lyricism with athletic and adventurous musicianship, prove that this band is comfortable moving in all directions at once.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    West is the rare artist who can turn a cry for attention into something more: a distillation of his artistic output to date that is quintessentially Kanye, whether you like him or not.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is, after all, Animal Collective's attempt at stuffing a decade's worth of changing tastes into 12 disciplined, bite-sized songs. What's most impressive is that they accomplish this feat without ever letting accessibility compromise their individual preferences as artists, and vice versa.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    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
    • 80 Critic Score
    The way the lyrics alternate between ambiguous introspection and dark whimsy can also confuse the sense of the album as a whole, but hunting for patterns or for humanity on Blackstar is less the point than enjoying the majesty of David Bowie, even on the verge of his death, sounding this incredibly alive.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When it all clicks, it's a perfect pop moment. The worst that can be said of Art Angels is that its maximalist ambitions sometimes overshoot the needs of pop.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There's definitely a smart-dumbness to what Shining does here: International Blackjazz Society sounds like Nine Inch Nails circa “The Hand That Feeds,” with an earnest deployment of such dinosaur vulgarities as cowbells, hard-boogie keyboards, and shout-along choruses.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Song for song, Revival rivals Carly Rae Jepsen's Emotion for breakout pop album of the year, but if it similarly falls short of greatness, it's due in large part to a lack of originality.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Janet has calculatedly played the humble-grateful card countless times in her career, but Unbreakable, a ready-made collection of deep cuts, is one of the first times she’s given a fully convincing performance.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If Settle was the thunderstorm, Caracal is the unmistakable scent left in the air afterward.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Every Open Eye is pop music with sharp edges and high stakes.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Even on an album full of obvious nods to music of the past, Lucero manages to surprise.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Perhaps a bit too reticent for its own good, B'lieve I'm Goin Down still rewards close listening, steadily developing into an album that's as multifaceted and profound as its mysterious creator.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The relatively low ratio of octane riffage means many of these songs hinge on Richards's worn, oaky voice. His low, craggly growl suits the rock songs well, and he manages perhaps the tenderest vocal performance of his career on the reggae-infused “Love Overdue.”
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    He's right that the troubadour and his feeble attempt at greatness really are small potatoes in an indifferent universe, but at least his band can still manage to make albums worth a few spins.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What makes Poison Season a great album, though, is that it doesn't completely wallow in Bejar's newfound smoking-jacket-and-fine-brandy sophistication—as opposed to the tattered-plaid-shirt-and-fifth-of-Jack wildness of early Destroyer. Rather, refined balladry like "Solace's Bride" coexists comfortably next to upbeat, funky songs like "Midnight Meet the Rain," which sounds like the badass theme song for an '80s cop show.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With an uncanny melodic gift that enlivens even the most tired sentiments and a chameleonic ability to seamlessly transition between disparate production styles, Jepsen proves she's worthy of those comparisons [to Taylor Swift and Rihanna].
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    More than simply a joint stopgap for these indie heavyweights, Sing Into My Mouth serves, like the DJ-Kicks and LateNightTales series, as a musical bibliography for curious fans, and a superbly entertaining one at that.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love Is Free feels comparatively tossed off, merely a bridge between Robyn 2.0 and an incarnation of the dance-pop icon we--and she--haven't yet imagined.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yo La Tengo manages to further their transparency and place the focus even more on the material, faking their way through another series of delicately adjusted, quietly exquisite reinterpretations.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Call it a low-stakes play, but Another One is a snapshot of an artist who's found his lane and continues to mine it for affecting, melodically spry material.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Although Currents is, in many ways, a showcase of difference (from his previous guitar-driven efforts, from some previous influences, even from other recently successful forays into disco-pop such as Daft Punk's Random Access Memories), Parker also toys with repetition as a unifying theme, sonically and lyrically.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Turns out Wilco are still full of surprises.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Isbell's follow-up, Something More Than Free, retains Southeastern's intimate acoustic-based feel and heavyhearted lyrical matter, but it's even more smooth-edged and lacks the emotional gut-punches of its predecessor.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A more sonically focused effort.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    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
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's never quite a tour de force, but as a union of the Orb's heady roots with their spiritual ascendants' minimalist ethos, the album is a consistently satisfying groove machine, and a worthy entry to the upper ranks of the Orb canon.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    There may not be many surprises musically on Ten Songs, but it's surprising enough that Adams has let the façade down and finally let us hear his music in its purest form.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Occasionally, the more ambitious nature of Everything Is 4 reveals some of Derulo's weaknesses, like his insistence on indulging straight R&B (which feels basic compared to the unique mode of genre-bending he usually works in), but stretching musically also leads to arguably the most exciting moment here, the funk rave-up of album-closer "X2CU."
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kozelek veers between wry, pissed-off, and ruminative expression without ever really settling on any of those. While that means Universal Themes never reaches the same highs as Benji, it does allow the listener to become fully immersed inside Kozelek's head, which is an alternately terrifying and hilarious place to be.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    His winking in-jokes and one-liners might have gotten the Internet's attention, but Ratchet wins you over when it reveals that this smart-aleck's got a beating heart too.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Matsson might be offering another round of familiar sounds on Dark Bird Is Home, however impeccably arranged and played. The darkness and ambivalence that haunt its shadows, however, give the album depth and longevity well beyond its something-for-everyone first impression.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Why Make Sense? is the electronic fivesome's characteristically polished, generously tuneful tribute to wearing your heart on your sleeve.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Magic Whip isn't a triumphant return of a Britpop champion; instead, it's a mature, measured document from a band that's never rested on its laurels.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The focus is therefore narrower, and while Stetson doesn't reach the same heights of grandiose menace as on his previous album, the results are roundly impressive, rooted to the continuing spectacle of two discrete approaches melting into one another, each disrupting and perverting the effect of the other.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    [Brittany Howard's] performance only confirms that she's the kind of pop vocal talent that only comes along a few times in a generation, while Sound & Color as a whole is proof that Alabama Shakes have got the chops to be a lot more than Muscle Shoals revivalists.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Don't Like Shit may be a master class in ominous mood-setting and a cutting excavation of a wounded psyche, but it also reveals that Earl is at his best when he engages the outside world rather than getting mired in his own emotional claustrophobia.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    For an album that deals in low stakes, Sometimes I Sit and Think finds Barnett hitting some incredible highs. Without sounding labored, she creates an impeccably honest world rife with humor, self-deprecation, and heartbreak.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    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.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    If The Age of Adz harnessed Stevens's limpid melodies to crashing electronica, Carrie & Lowell finds that electronic experimentation sublimated, emerging primarily in the album's timing, which, like a click track, is more precise and mechanical than anything on Stevens's purely folk efforts.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The taut and engaging first half of Down to Believing juxtaposes formidable country-rock like "I Lost My Crystal Ball" and the garage-rock-at-heart "Tear Me Apart" against more poised and controlled expressions of emotional unrest.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On Policy, he proves that he's worth more than playing second or third fiddle.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The pair largely eschews such so-called guffaws on their sophomore effort, another eternity, but they display a willingness to more intrepidly embrace the pop underpinnings of Shrines.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rebel Heart is too long, too unnecessarily fussed over, to join the ranks of Like a Prayer, Erotica, and Ray of Light, but tucked inside this lumbering mass of songs are 10 to 12 tracks that would, under any other circumstances, make for Madonna's best album in at least a decade.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    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.