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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    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love Hallucination
    At nearly 38 minutes, the album stays around long enough to where its effervescent nature starts to serve as a hindrance rather than a strength, where the age-old idiom of “in one ear and out the other” begins to ring truer than ever before.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love's Holiday
    Love’s Holiday finds Oxbow operating in a slightly different, more restrained register, but that means the album doesn’t quite reach the heights of its towering predecessor.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cut Worms
    Despite music that can come off as overly precious, though, Cut Worms is a tight set of songs that display Clarke’s facility for songcraft.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Ballad of Darren
    While The Ballad of Darren may be an emotional journey, it lacks a proper conclusion—though that’s likely by design.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Songs
    Wall’s band approaches the tropes of western swing with a perfectly light touch, keeping the mood grounded and intimate, never hokey or ironic.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Care So Much That I Dont Care at All
    Initially lumped into the hyperpop scene by the likes of Billboard and Vice, Glaive has moved in a more emo direction, but the album struggles to retain the intimacy of his earlier releases as it delivers a more palatable sound.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pink Tape
    There simply isn’t much in the way of staying power to the bleary “Patience” or any of the three throwaway bonus tracks beyond some absurdist lines and a few neat vocal melodies. But taken as a whole—something that’s frequently overlooked in a singles genre such as rap—this unabashedly creative album showcases its creator’s ever-developing abilities.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Speak Now (Taylor's Version)
    If the original Speak Now highlighted what Swift needed to do to refine her artistry, Taylor’s Version proves that she’s actually done it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Inside the Old Year Dying
    The music throughout I Inside the Old Year Dying rattles and quakes in stark contrast with Harvey’s studiously composed intellectual exercises. Which is to say, this is an album that gives about as much as it asks in return, even if its medieval trappings and intentional obfuscation do risk letting listeners walk away feeling more bewildered than moved.
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In the End It Always Does
    Initially, the musician’s sophomore effort, In the End It Always Does, seems to follow suit, with a summery ambience, songs about emotional distance, and her unmistakable voice. As the album unfolds, though, her approach feels like it’s been flipped, with vocal hooks taking a backseat to highly textured folktronica instrumentation and a more impressionistic rendering of desire.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stories From a Rock 'n' Roll Heart
    Williams’s most lyrically conceptual album to date, centered around resilience, revival, and renewal.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Business Is Business
    Even if one were to dismiss Business Is Business as nothing more than an anthology of loosies, Thug’s ostensible leftovers, like the brassy “Uncle M” and heart-wrenching ballads like “Jonesboro,” are still electric. In this sense, the album’s greatest strength is keeping things strictly business.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chemistry
    The tropical closing track, “That’s Right,” feels even more leftfield, a quirky but apt conclusion to an album that captures the fickle, out-of-body aftermath of heartbreak.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life Under the Gun
    While their emotional palette may feel rooted in anger, unlike Regional Justice Center, the band’s more melodic passages strive to express it without becoming trapped by it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Beggar
    It proceeds in the same white-knuckle way as the group’s last four releases. It is, though, defined by the quality and craftsmanship that’s expected of Swans.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Michael
    Almost every other song on Michael relies on a similar arrangement of choirs, pianos, and organs, which risks becoming tiresome, though its sonic divergence from most mainstream American hip-hop today is refreshing. In that sense, the album is a kindred spirit to the prolific British collective Sault, who incorporate lush R&B and gospel into their eclectic sound.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Joy'All
    Joy’All’s tone is light, even flippant at times. After a scant 10 tracks and barely 30 minutes, you might be left wanting a deeper exploration of some of Lewis’s more complicated feelings about this new phase of her life.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paranoïa, Angels, True Love
    What follows is a collection of wiry, introspective songs that break from pop conventions while asserting the life-affirming power of love.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Age of Pleasure
    While Monáe specializes in sprawling, ambitious concept albums, she’s often strongest in distilled form. And The Age of Pleasure sustains its energy in a way that her other, sometimes wildly variable albums have never quite managed.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Girl With Fish
    Girl with Fish, then, is an economical calling card and the sound of a band coming into their own.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Space Heavy
    Each instrument stands out because the individual parts are so austere. On Space Heavy, King Krule proves that power sometimes comes with restraint.
    • 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
    • 80 Critic Score
    Formal Growth in the Desert
    There’s long been a political edge to Protomartyr’s doom-and-gloom art rock, and it’s heartening that the band continues to avoid sloganeering and boring moralism.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Matters Most
    Unfortunately, the song [“Clouds with Ellipses”], like so much of What Matters Most, lacks the snark and self-aggrandizing pity that made the singer-songwriter’s early albums, like Rockin’ the Suburbs, so relatable.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sus Dog
    Chris Clark’s Sus Dog tries on a number of stylistic tics—from stuttering electronics to eerie vocals—that recall those of its executive producer, Thom Yorke, but rarely finds a means of organically incorporating them into the IDM veteran’s bass-heavy sound.
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