Slant Magazine's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 1,691 out of 3121
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3121
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3121
3121 music reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghettoville
    Ghettoville is a 70-minute high-wire act, equal parts musique concrète and concrete jungle, its enveloping darkness in tension with a few precious rays of light.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Post Tropical
    Post Tropical succeeds in proving that music is often at its most compelling when it can't be compared or reduced to much of anything at all.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Give the People What They Want
    Give the People What They Want is a collection of songs that not only sees the Dap-Kings reveling in a variety of musical tones, from confident, strutting anthems of independence to slow-burning, intimate ballads, but also displays Jones at her most vocally ferocious, lending a self-assured voice to the down and out.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rival Dealer [EP]
    Wintry sonic atmospheres, a motley chorus of voices, and a life-affirming message of salvation--intentionally or not, Burial might have just released the best Christmas album of the year.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alternate/Endings
    Alternate/Endings succeeds in leaving you both exhausted and anxious for more.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beyoncé
    What makes the album significant is the fact that its creator is a bona fide superstar who, apparently, seems to care more about following her creative bliss than scoring easy hits. And it takes her (and us) to some mighty weird and exhilarating places.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nina
    The album's energy grows out of a band taking chances, and while not every reimagining works, there's something satisfying about listening to a group of artists crash head-on into an experiment and find clarity among the fragments.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fellow Travelers
    The album still has an intimate feel to it, like a missive to those other bands trudging the tour circuit, and it's an ambitious one that invites listeners to travel along.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stitches
    If every Califone album is little more than the continued assurance that they're incapable of releasing music that's not exceptional, then Stitches is just as good, just as wonderfully mature and finely crafted and lyrically sophisticated, as the band's very best.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cupid Deluxe
    Cupid Deluxe picks up where that track ["Everything Is Embarrassing"] left off: Blood Orange's sophomore effort chronicles alienation and broken romance with slow, melancholic, '90s-gazing jams.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chance of Rain
    There's a sketchbook quality to the album, a formlessness that it never quite escapes, nor seems to want to. But there are worse things to do, Halo knows, than to get lost in the clouds for a while.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Julia with Blue Jeans On
    The album puts Krug front and center, armed with nothing but piano and voice. It's a ballsy move, but it pays off in spades.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    ARTPOP
    It's Artpop's most naked, straightforward pop moments that are the album's most redemptive.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Matangi
    Matangi again establishes M.I.A. as one of the most fascinating figures in modern music, but the personal voice underlying her material remains aggravatingly half-baked.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wrapped in Red
    Any of these, as well as the retro title track, would make welcome additions to shopping-mall playlists, but it's the album's lead single, "Underneath the Tree," which recalls Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" in theme, tone, and structure, that's likely to become Clarkson's very own contemporary standard.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Night Time, My Time
    Night Time, My Time might just be the sort of gaunt, darkly painted neurosis needed to combat popular music's deluge of silly and crude self-affirmations.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rapor [EP]
    Grossi's ability to deftly assimilate these more pop-oriented artists into his oeuvre is a testament to his growth since You Are All I See, resulting in his most confident release to date.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shulamith
    Shulamith is a much more cohesive and self-assured effort [than its debut].
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Static
    Whereas Cults' debut was more carefree in its breezy melodies, Static has a heavier heart, presenting a band with not only a better understanding of their music, but of each other as human beings.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beautiful Rewind
    Even though Beautiful Rewind is a call to dance music's past, it's the contemporary, more experimental sounds that establish the album as a standout in both the Four Tet oeuvre and a growing collection of dance albums that pay homage to the past.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Uncanney Valley
    It's an album that, smartly, neither embraces the past as empty nostalgia nor ignores the events of the past 12 years.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Interiors
    It takes only one listen to realize the album's title refers not to any physical place, but instead, those intimate mental spaces that contain the ideas that become art and music and other acts of human creativity, spaces that Mesirow taps into with uncommon regularity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bangerz
    Bangerz is a personal, idiosyncratic effort that finds equal rewards in twentysomething indulgence and inspiring "be yourself" mantras.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Days Are Gone
    Because the surface is so smooth, it takes a listen or two to discover how little depth lies beneath it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Move in Spectrums
    Not until "Hand Over Hand" does the band let lazier atmospherics trump their talent for catchy songcraft, with the song never quite building to anything resembling the memorable melodies of the album's highlights.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pure Heroine
    The nihilist pop of Pure Heroine makes a strong case for the less-is-more maxim. What's left is a remarkably unpretentious and almost raw set of vignettes mostly powered by Lorde's modest, affectation-free performances.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Weird Sister
    The playful and passionate Weird Sister is the natural, exhilarating sound of influences--shoegaze, hardcore, riot grrrl--being assembled in new ways.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nothing Was the Same
    The album isn't perfect, but it draws energy from that imperfection, further establishing a persona driven by Drake's still-developing conflict between assurance and hesitation.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mechanical Bull
    The band is just about out of transgressive fury, but they manage to muster enough rigor and discipline to keep Mechanical Bull kicking.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Is...
    While most of the concerns expressed in This Is... seem wafer-thin, the innovative production and diamond-hard songcraft suggest something else entirely. Icona Pop has few equals in the current landscape when it comes to immaculately crafted radio-dance music.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs
    The result is an album that pops with attitude, relaxed but never lazy, a groove-driven album structured around Quest's minimalist drum attack, Kirk's old-school rhythm n' blues licks and wahs, some Curtis Mayfield-style string arrangements, and a lead singer whose voice sounds oddly youthful, as though channeled from his Imposters days.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Electric Lady
    These two discs capture, in far more disciplined fashion than her debut, the motley delights of this singer and self-styled savant, whose delivery is as impressive and singular as her dance moves.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    AM
    Almost a decade into their career, the Arctic Monkeys have aged gracefully into their precociously world-weary image with a mature album about immaturity, a carefully written and produced effort about the desultory careen of youth.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Privateering
    The pleasure isn't in the gimmick or the dress-up, but in the disciplined play of emotion behind them.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tales of Us
    If Tales of Us has a weakness, it's its tonal consistency.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Smilewound
    The album is easily Múm's most commercial to date.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You
    It's a tribute to Case's ever-growing strength as a songwriter that she refuses to take the sharp edges off the vicissitudes her songs depict while still acknowledging the humor and occasional beauty of those edges.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hesitation Marks
    In almost every way, this is the least outré effort NIN has proffered since Pretty Hate Machine. It's focused but inquisitive, as opposed to declarative.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Silver Gymnasium
    Ostensibly about a specific time and place, The Silver Gymnasium confirms Okkervil River as a band that's still too crafty to settle for anything so simple as a straightforward paean to childhood, using this boilerplate structure to examine the deeper meaning behind the natural impulse to fixate on the past.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Repave
    It's an abstract and occasionally disjointed album that ultimately finds a rewarding balance, both sonically and lyrically, between the obscure and the deeply personal.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Slow Focus
    Beyond constructing music marked by a consummate sense of craftsmanship, Fuck Buttons continue to toy with notions of what an album should be, a natural progression for a band whose only defining quality is their refusal to settle on a definitive sound.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Hate Music
    What amazes most, and there's much to marvel at here, is the childlike wonder and sprightly sense of play that still remains after all these years.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crimes of Passion
    While the album is the closest Crocodiles have come to achieving their own unique brand of tuneful clamor, there's still a sense that they can't quite move away from the blueprint of the new-wave artists that inspired them.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action
    Franz Ferdinand's Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action is an unapologetically swaggering disco-rock album that refuses to overstay its welcome.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carrier
    Carrier is a disarming reminder of the therapeutic power music can hold.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Doris
    Earl may be one of the quieter voices on Doris, but his dense, evocative sensibility dominates the album both lyrically and musically, making for exciting confirmation that one of rap's most technically accomplished voices has also got his conceptual vision firmly in place.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Slave Vows
    It is hardcore, a visceral distillation of fury that aims to wound.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Small Murmuration
    Snow Ghosts might take what they're doing a little too seriously, and the album's gothic, macabre undertones can seem silly at times, but it's hard to resist sinking down into the duo's melodramatic doom and gloom.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Paracosm
    Paracosm is essentially a travelogue, albeit wrinkled, scuffed, and faded so as to match the love-worn tastes of its creator.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Flourish // Perish
    Braids perform with a self-assured subtlety, lending their sophomore album a quiet, unassuming depth that far outstrips the flash of its predecessor.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Warp & Weft
    Warp & Weft is Veirs's most expansive effort yet, with obvious musical and thematic ties to experimental Americana.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pura Vida Conspiracy
    Gogol Bordello's energy and optimism can grow exhausting, and even if their product has begun to feel familiar, they still sound unlike any other band on the planet, and it's hard not to be charmed by the fervor with which they keep seeking out new borders to cross and uninitiated listeners to welcome into their always hospitable tribe.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Civil Wars
    The Civil Wars have gone from blithely conjuring a co-ed version of the Everly Brothers to making a tense, assertive Southern gothic album, complete with religious undertones, images of decaying locales, and tales of troubled relationships.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blurred Lines
    If slower numbers like the Princely "4 the Rest of My Life" and the Billy Joel-reminiscent piano ballad "The Good Life" are forgettable by comparison, it's because they prosaically articulate the joie de vivre that's already been made abundantly clear in the uptempos. On an album that gets off to such an effervescent start, such blunt pronouncements only serve to kill the vibe.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
    The album's adventurous musical scope serves to further expand the mythos behind Ebert's ego-fueled, drug-addled, socio-religious musical experiment.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lenses
    Combining a driving beat with melancholy vocals may not exactly be anything new in pop music, but the juxtaposition of the two here elicits an entrancing state more conducive to impassioned swaying than outright dancing.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Electric
    The Pet Shop Boys have once again given themselves a lease on another era, and Price was obviously the right choice to help them do so.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fantasy
    If the songs on the first half of Fantasy trigger the chemicals in your brain, the captivating tracks that comprise the second half implore you to submit to them completely.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Unreal
    When it succeeds, the album achieves a kind of weightless beauty above and beyond anything else in the Londoner's repertoire, and even the relative failures display the kind of ambition to suggest that his decision to leave Yuck was justifiable.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Weight of Your Love
    Although The Weight of Your Love doesn't succeed to the same extent as other, older European rock albums drenched in American influences, it makes for a nicely retooled, if occasionally misguided, formula.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kveikur
    If the intuitive, star-gazing Valtari served as the rediscovery of Sigur Rós's signature sound, then the instinctual, sober Kveikur is its compulsive reinvention.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Born Sinner
    Born Sinner doesn't match the cohesive satisfactions of Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, though it boasts better writing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's Harvest
    Their aural magic is as evocative as ever, and with their alchemical skills, they could well invent a fifth element, or more.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wack Album
    Despite its occasional lapses into overly familiar territory, The Wack Album proves there simply isn't anyone out there who executes this strain of musical comedy with as much satirical precision as the Lonely Island.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dagger Beach
    It's his ability to adapt first-person details into unexpected and unconventional songs that's made Vanderslice such a captivating songwriter, and Dagger Beach manages to be a personal album that doesn't rely strictly on autobiography for its emotional or thematic heft.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Half of Where You Live
    It's a remarkable exploration of self--an undoubtedly personal album, packed with a sense of history, circumstance, opportunity, love, and fleeting memories.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Obsidian
    For Obsidian, Wiesenfeld has simply stripped off the top layer of fluff to expose the raw pathos beneath his work. It is, as a result, a much more thematic and personal effort.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ultraviolet
    With Ultraviolet, Kylesa has once again established themselves in the great tradition of hard-rockers who've realized it's possible to make a "dark" album without sacrificing accessibility, further proving that heavy riffs and great hooks aren't mutually exclusive.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    IV Play
    IV Play may not always hit that high bar, but the artist's persistence and perfectionism are clear, and the results bear as pure of a pedigree as ever.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Weighing of the Heart
    For all of the new developments (major-key melodies and upbeat tempos and rhythms), Schott's skill at fashioning held-breath drama remains undimmed.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Random Access Memories
    RAM is an album that ultimately comes off having more respect for its spiritual predecessors than its listeners.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twelve Reasons to Die
    The most arresting of Twelve Reasons to Die's many pleasures is how out of time the album feels: Its pointed narrative distance from straight-faced gangster rap is very 2013, but the simple virtuosity of the small moments smacks of eras in both rap and soul that passed long before Ghost ever stepped to a mic.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Limits of Desire
    Small Black successfully avoids a sophomore slump by harnessing their various sonic inclinations.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Secondhand Rapture
    MS MR's knack for durable hooks, in fact, is what keeps the album's gloomy goth-pop anchored.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dungeonesse
    The group's music is far more pointed and focused when she's standing at its center, proving that it's not just the parts (polished and hummable though they may be), but Wasner's transformative presence that ultimately sets Dungeonesse apart from the rest of the '90s-mining pack.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Modern Vampires of the City
    The songs may be dense and literary, but they're also immediately potent on a purely visceral level, striking a perfect balance that makes for what's perhaps the best album in a year already thick with great material.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Annie Up
    If Annie Up doesn't quite break the country genre's familiar format, it's a hell of a lot of fun, and one could do worse than spend 40 minutes with these sassy almost-outlaws.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nocturnes
    Hesketh's shrewd choice of collaborators is often squandered on rather rudimentary song structures and lyrical ideas. That doesn't make Nocturnes any less enjoyable of a dance-pop album, but it's ultimately what will keep Little Boots from becoming the next Madonna, or the next Robyn for that matter.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prisoner of Conscious
    More than any of his previous albums, Prisoner of Conscious is the sound of Kweli performing art for art's sake, hip-hop for the sake of hip-hop, with hardly a homily to be found.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    MCII
    This is an album that exudes playfulness, treating genre as something that's malleable and isn't afraid to poke open wounds if it means creating a piece of art that connects emotionally.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little French Songs
    Her sense of humor, her impetuous moments at the mic, and her sheer likeability as a vocalist carry Little French Songs, a modestly scaled disc from an otherwise larger-than-life celebrity.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Desperate Ground
    What stops Desperate Ground from eclipsing the Thermals' best work is its periodical monotony.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ghost on Ghost
    Given how routine and mechanical this genre [coffeehouse-style soft rock] has become the past few years, it's remarkable to hear Beam, a songwriter of more rustic, folksy origins, make it wholly his own.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Free the Universe
    Free the Universe is, after all, a party album, and by using an energetic mix of faces both famous and obscure, Diplo keeps his grungy dancehall rave running on all cylinders.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Terror
    There's always been a relentless optimism hidden behind the Flaming Lips' unique brand of pop experimentalism.... Which makes their understated 13th album, The Terror, an evocation of a bleak, post-apocalyptic future, such a striking contrast.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wakin on a Pretty Daze
    He certainly has our attention.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Overgrown
    Blessed with a strange, ethereal voice, he could easily excel at music that matches its dulcet tones, but the pungent mixtures of high and low he concocts end up being far more thrilling.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shaking the Habitual
    Of the album's 90-odd minutes (emphasis on odd), Shaking the Habitual features maybe 16 or 17 that fall into place within a canon that also includes the rubbery robo-funk of "Heartbeats" and the atmospheric devastation of "Silent Shout," though in most cases those minutes are buried inside much longer songs, consigning anything remotely hooky into the realm of affectation.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ride Your Heart
    Ride Your Heart is an above-average debut that proves the Calvin sisters are willing to shed a good deal of their rough exteriors while still maintaining the alluring audacity that elevated them from relative unknowns to L.A. indie-rock keystones.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Delta Machine
    Another reasonably strong effort for a band that's managed to get wise without growing too old.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All My Relations
    It's all quite a bit to take in, and All My Relations is an admittedly exhausting listen from start to finish.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Woman
    If a woman were singing the songs on Woman, it would make for a great neo-soul album. The fact that a man is performing them elevates the album, making it one of the most confident debuts in recent memory.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Chronicles of Marnia
    The Chronicles of Marnia is her most accessible effort to date.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics
    Adrian Younge Presents is intermittently thrilling, taking familiar genre signifiers and scrambling them within a less rigid context, but also eventually formulaic in a different way, setting a fixed eccentric template and largely sticking to it.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Blue Room
    Loyal to her own dual heritage and willing to value her own divided animal instincts, Peyroux remains such a beguiling singer that it's hard to care if her albums often sound the same.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mala
    Mala attests to a discipline that was absent in Banhart's recent, loopier ventures, proving that his eccentric songwriting works best when harnessed in service of good storytelling.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Next Day
    Vital, confident, and defiantly alive, Bowie has, with an imperfect but exhilarating album, announced his return to rock's top table. Anything from this point on is a bonus.
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