Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,117 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: 1,687 out of 3117
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3117
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3117
3117 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Happy Hollow
    Happy Hollow is far too grouchy to be taken seriously.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Parc Avenue
    It is their failure to do little beyond noodle energetically and evoke the work of others that dooms Parc Avenue to mediocrity.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP
    The collaborative efforts of tracks like "Bitch Please II" and "Under the Influence" make Eminem seem like an ornamental prop in Dr. Dre's ever-growing hip-hop dynasty.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Shall Noise Upon
    Their new album, Shall Noise Upon, is intellectually thinner, more musically pedantic, and not quite as tongue-in-cheek.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    In Stormy Nights
    Maybe pastiche is inevitable, even in the Japanese avant garde scene, but can't it at least be a little more fun?
    • 75 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves
    The album is filled with garage-sale synths flooded with reverb and nary a hook to be found, sounding, at best, like an unfinished video-game score ("Hey Moon") and, at worst, like a Human League track played backward in a Walkman taped to the skull of a drowning man ("Head for the Country").
    • 75 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Preteen Weaponry
    Presumably the climax of the whole stumbling, stoned expedition arrives about halfway through the latter half, when some synthy Gregorian chant-style vocals trudge into the mix for a few seconds, but by the time the album reaches its dingy conclusion and fades back into feedback loops and distant alien static noises, Oneida seems to have inadvertently demonstrated only one thing: that, dude, having, like, rad conceptual ideas and high aspirations does not a good album make.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Versions
    With Versions, Jesus achieves something her previous albums hadn't: She's created art so unobjectionable that it attains a kind of beige obscenity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Brightest Blue
    For the most part, she doesn’t have the chops or soul of contemporaries like Florence Welch, who sings of similar subject matter with a real torch, and who shares a collaborator in Joseph Kearns, who produced almost every song on Brightest Blue. At Kearns’s behest, the album takes a relatively new tack for Goulding, trading the garish for the palatable, but it’s no less grating as a result.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Getting Somewhere
    Getting Somewhere is the first of her albums that not even her vocals can save.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Ventriloquizzing
    Monahan is a fine producer when working within the framework of progressive folk and Americana, but his work on Ventriloquizzing is just a complete misfire.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing
    As a country album, a pop album, or something in between, Love, Pain, & The Whole Thing is simply bad.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Free At Last
    It's what Freeway says that continues to disappoint, and it's not for lack of subject matter.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    You're Always on My Mind
    For an album about "fun under the summer sun," You're Always on My Mind is singularly joyless.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Realism
    Here there are few bright spots and barely any prevailing concept to blame that fact on, leaving Realism as a bad album with nothing but the band behind it to blame.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Working On A Dream
    Yet despite O'Brien's anemic production, much of the blame for Working On a Dream undoubtedly lies with Springsteen himself; drained of his angry energy, he dribbles out material that's for the most part goofy and painfully bloodless.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Born to Sing: No Plan B
    Fans of the old stuff who long ago wrote Morrison off will find their gripes sadly confirmed on Born to Sing: No Plan B, a recession album that's four years too late.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    All of You
    For the most part, All of You is virtually indistinguishable from Caillat's previous work, though the appearance of Common on "Favorite Song" does threaten to disrupt business as usual.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Taking The Long Way
    It's not just Rubin's production choices that fail, though--it's the songwriting.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    It'll Be Better
    It's short, boring, and occasionally aggravating, recalling the flatness of acts like Maroon 5 and John Mayer while never coming close to their likeability, and when you're being rocked off the stage by Adam Levine, it's not a good sign.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Kindred
    Unfortunately, Kindred only loses the plot further, entrenching itself in a sonically limited pop vocabulary (starchy synth lines; bristling, reverb-doused percussion; and huge, multi-tracked choruses) that's even further away from the chaotic chemistry of his debut.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Year Of The Black Rainbow
    There's no trace of Coheed's oddball eclecticism here, or of their dynamic pop sensibilities; instead the emotionally and tonally monochrome Black Rainbow gives the impression of a typically humorless metal act.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Planet Pit
    A little bit of charisma probably wouldn't have saved Planet Pit from disaster, but it might have helped.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    All Jacked Up
    What All Jacked Up ultimately confirms... is that Wilson is a one-trick pony whose trick will only impress those with exceedingly low expectations.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Boy Who Knew Too Much
    Too much of Boy is the bad kind of theatrical, less an album than an aural assault.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Back to Me
    She makes a genuine effort here, but not even the legendary R&B singers to whom she has been compared could elevate this material.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bitter Tea
    Less a rebound from the indulgent for-friends-and-family-only nightmare of Rehearsing My Choir than a lateral side-step, Bitter Tea sounds like a desperate plea to be labeled as "clever."
    • 69 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    True
    No one demonstrates the artist-as-cash-machine ethos better, as the mechanical churn of commerce rings loudly on each and every track.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Quilt
    Even a guest verse from Busta Rhymes can't breathe any life into this copy-and-paste mess.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ukulele Songs
    The slapdash nature of these 16 (!) songs doesn't make them feel visceral or honest (which was clearly the artist's intention), but haphazard and disposable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Songbird
    An enormous disappointment.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    This Is Us
    Most of the songs are just complete misfires.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Album
    While the album’s sheer eclecticism is admirable in theory, each foray stops short of reaching its full potential, leaving listeners stranded in a musical no man’s land of half-baked ideas and missed opportunities.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ready to Die
    While Iggy's feral mischievousness may still be intact, the Stooges no longer feel like a band capable of anything but embarrassing themselves.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Raven in the Grave
    The Raveonettes have always made use of heavy reverb on their albums, but the overall impact is that Raven in the Grave just sounds sloppy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Bedlam In Goliath
    Sadly, this album takes sound and fury, signifying nothing, to new depths.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Twelve
    These songs are rendered so faithfully they may as well be karaoke.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    - (Subtract)
    No matter how much aesthetic cosplay Sheeran is willing to engage in, though, he’s still pumping out the same cheese-filled anthems that have plagued his previous albums.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Versus
    Of course, the only people I could imagine getting any pleasure whatsoever from Versus's wretched collection of failed club-sex jams are those with enough bad taste to buy Raymond v. Raymond three or four times over.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Avril Lavigne
    Avril Lavigne is filled with similar empty life-affirming mantras and boasts of rebelliousness. Lavigne has mined these themes with success in the past, but here the exploration feels forced, as if she's trying to capture an attitude, and craft a persona, that she no longer lives.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Peeping Tom
    A collection of infantile, forgettable stripper anthems and not even guest spots from Rahzel or Kid Koala can keep this shit from sounding like Linkin Park.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Vision Valley
    The Vines ultimately come off as nothing more than a proficient Nirvana cover band, lacking a perspective of their own or a voice that really demands attention.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Graffiti on the Train
    The whole album seems content to be half-awake, so much so that even the comparably adventurous tracks sound like they can't be bothered to get off the couch.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Weezer (Red Album)
    Weezer seems to have driven their old shtick into the ground so perfectly, it almost seems like they've purposely become tired and boring.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Vicissitude
    At every turn, the album serves only to reinforce the fact that Chapman isn't only firmly, almost blindly stuck in the previous decade, but that his music's long-overdue expiration date is the least of its problems.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Battle Studies
    It's clear that he's capable of far more than this. What's most puzzling and disappointing about Battle Studies, then, is that its banality seems like a deliberate choice.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Double Up
    Unsaved by anything resembling an acceptable musical hook, Kelly's lyrics are uniformly dumb.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Recovery
    Much of Recovery centers around such themes as romantic devotion and anxiety, but the resulting material rings unsurprisingly hollow.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Da Realist
    Without a distinguishing voice or idea, Realist feels like the mold from which better rap albums are made, a blank form woefully void of substance or flavor.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Born Free
    It's not so much the shift in style that hampers Born Free, but rather the trite subject matter and gormless storytelling that Rock so keenly adopts.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    The Weight's on the Wheels
    As presented, the overly peppy pop production and the homeroom poetry of a lyricist whose either trying way too hard or not nearly hard enough to be clever become mutually reinforcing aggravations, and The Weight's on the Wheels ends up as one of the most annoying records in recent memory.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Get Hurt
    Get Hurt is a shockingly misguided assemblage of over-processed hair-metal guitars, '80s adult-contemporary keyboard swill, and hilariously overblown skullduggery.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Vices & Virtues
    If you were expecting some kind of creative transformation from the shakeup, this new album may be something of a disappointment, as Urie and drummer Spencer Smith return to the skittish, bombastic pop-rock of their debut.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Walls
    Even by the standards of the arena-pop hit-chasers they've become, and not the down-and-dirty guitar band they once were, WALLS is a grating, overly slick disappointment.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Stranger Things
    While the juxtaposition of upbeat music and melancholic lyrics has succeeded for artists from the Beatles to David Bowie, here such tactics, amid music that betrays so little originality, render these hackneyed emotional confessions nothing more than indulgent.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Shine On
    You can practically hear the energy draining away as the album progresses and one song slides into another, indistinguishable by either melody or lyric.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    In Your Dreams
    In Your Dreams indulges in some of Nicks's worst tendencies as a songwriter and is slathered in chintzy, dated production values.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Destroyed
    The motion is uniform, the form is monotonous, the experience disquieting but benign. Destroyed is more distracted than coolly distanced, a satellite unmoored by Ground Control.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Break the Spell
    That lack of a distinctive style or voice also means that Daughtry isn't pulling focus from the simple and effective construction of their songs, which is pretty much the only thing they do well.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    For Me It's You
    "Get Out" and "Am I Reaching You Now" strive for massive arena-rock grandeur, and, while Train is slick and professional enough a band to pull that off, what prevents the album from working even as marginally as X&Y and certainly not as well as The Constantines' Tournament Of Hearts is the banality of the songs' lyrics.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Waking Up
    Ultimately, OneRepublic takes what all of those bands already do and pushes it to an even lower common denominator of slick, disposable melodrama.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Dynamics
    They're especially fond of bad movie soundtracks from the '80s, and they show it on their sophomore effort, Dynamics, by making every song sound like the non-hits off those albums.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Queen of Me
    Ignoring how incohesive Queen of Me’s track list proves to be—the schmaltzy “Last Day of Summer,” for example, is a pedestrian reflection of young love that feels entirely out of place on an album filled with tracks related to embracing one’s present image—the songs themselves are frivolous and lack both sonic character and catchy hooks.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded
    Tacked on to this mediocre rap album is a ghastly and desperate bid for a hit single that sees Minaj and producer RedOne snatching items from a veritable sale rack of tired Top 40 tricks and tossing them hastily over the most basic synth and drum-machine presets.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Lucky Old Sun
    The album proves how vapid contemporary country can be: Very. Uh-huh.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Own the Night
    In the past, the trio has been able to elevate their unremarkable songwriting with spirited performances, but that isn't the case on Own the Night
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Strangeland
    Strangeland sounds every bit as dated and overblown as the singles from Cher's "rock" phase.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Stars Dance
    It boasts a harsher, edgier sound than that of her previous efforts; on every other front, it's a lazy, bloated, and occasionally offensive album that lacks any remnant of personality or creativity.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    So Amazin'
    The only personality displayed on So Amazin' is that of her contemporaries and predecessors.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Violence Begets Violence
    There's just no reason for intelligent rap fans to inflict this album on themselves.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Leave This Town
    Chris Daughtry has a real band that plays really serious songs, which are, almost without exception, really, really bad.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Endlessly
    Two years ago, Duffy had us begging her for mercy, but after 10 tracks of Endlessly, I was just begging her to stop.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Mansion Musik
    Trippie Redd’s Mansion Musik is repetitive, shoddily produced, and lacks any real structure.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Do You Know
    Curiosity and whatever remains of her pop fanbase will likely give Do You Know a strong start, but it's hard to imagine that it will sustain any momentum or help Simpson build a reputation as a credible artist in Nashville.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Curtis
    50 doesn't fare any better on the softer side: 'Amusement Park' proves he's one of the worst lyricists alive.... It's not just the metaphors, though, it's the execution.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Raymond v. Raymond
    The album is consistently uninspired, with each song showcasing an incredibly gifted performer grown wearyingly complacent.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars
    So off-putting as to alienate the band's fanbase.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    No. 6 Collaborations Project
    Too often here, Sheeran feels like a supporting player, especially when he strays from his wheelhouse. For instance, if the singer wants to lean into rapping more, he’s not likely to benefit from doing so on the same track as Chance. And when Sheeran trots out his bad-boy routine, his music feels ersatz. It’s playacting of the worst kind.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Tinted Windows
    Listeners are subjected to nothing more than a glorified boy band trying desperately to recapture a second wind.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Raditude
    Raditude is a thematically vacant and sonically uninspired collection of ditties tailor-made for mainstream radio; it consistently fringes on unlistenable.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Heart Blanche
    Bloated, brainless, and completely lacking in self-awareness, it's a groaning monstrosity of an album, one that can't even put its overwhelming excess to any suitable use.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Fireflies
    Fireflies is flat-out terrible, the end-all be-all example of how the major labels on music row have diluted the soul out of an entire genre of vital popular music.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Rise Up
    When Rise Up settles into this pro-marijuana groove, the album does begin to serve its purpose, however stunted that purpose may seem. Beyond that, there's very little to savor here, with the two emcees struggling to tender a memorable verse between them during 14 tracks spanning just under an hour.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    the JaneDear girls
    The songs that work on The JaneDear Girls are the ones that emphasize their melodies and hooks above the actual content of the songs or the girls' performances.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    How Do You Sleep at Night?
    The few tolerable moments across How Do You Sleep at Night? come from either outside voices, including a minute-long verse from Fousheé on “Sweet” that outclasses the bulk of Tezzo’s trite observations, or whenever Teezo is shamelessly copying from others, as he does on “Mood Swings” and the Steve Lacey-lite “Familiarity.”
    • 56 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Nothing But the Beat
    Guetta might be one of the only people given partial credit for creating a sea change in pop music who's also unquestionably the least compelling example of that style.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Look What You Made Me
    Look What You Made Me will burn brightly for a few more weeks on the strength of its club readiness, but with Berg's flaccid delivery, misguided confidence, and no desire to shake up well-worn subject matter, the album should fade into oblivion like so many other disposable pop-rap LPs.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Daniel Powter
    A reminder that "adult" pop can be every bit as vapid and formulaic as its teenage counterparts.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Animal
    Just about the only thing Ke$ha makes convincing on Animal is that the current crop of party girls are every bit as soulless as they let on.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Mail On Sunday
    He joylessly repeats all the tired tropes of Southern party rap (brand-name fetishizing, drug-trade mythologizing, stripper-bitch glorifying), and the album's best track has already been let out of the bag.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    I Dreamed A Dream
    Because the songs are so riddled with cliches and are largely too familiar, and because the music is so tepid and tasteful to a fault, the album simply isn't able to overcome that lack of depth.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Baptized
    It sounds like Daughtry's been listening to a lot of Train and EDM, or at least the band's manager has, because the tempos are a bit peppier than the normal plodding 80bpm post-grunge yawning we're used to, and all of it is slathered with super-slick, edge-sanding modern-pop production, including the surprisingly liberal use of Auto-Tune.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose
    The results are disastrous.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Slipway Fires
    The rest of the band, a soulless cooperative between Sweden and the U.K., does their best to back him up, issuing rote, lifeless rock tracks that build appropriately to fist-pumping peaks, but it's Borrell's vocals that press this album past mediocrity into embarrassing territory.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Sounds from Nowheresville
    It all amounts to a great deal of bluster for bluster's sake and becomes tiresome almost instantly.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Incredible Machine
    Though its style alone makes it a sure bet to be hailed as progressive by those who only like country music that doesn't sound a damn thing like country music, and just as sure to be reviled by country music purists, the real problems with the album are with its failures of execution and its inexplicable aesthetic choices.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Teenage Dream
    The remainder of Teenage Dream is a raunchy pop nightmare, with A-list producers lining up to churn out some of the worst work of their careers.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Pick Of Destiny OST
    Whereas [debut album] Tenacious D was a brilliant parody of the blood-and-thunder metal genre, functioning as a cohesive, hilarious whole, The Pick Of Destiny is mere bong resin.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Listen
    Not only is none of this fresh, its fast-food vacuity is presented as proud branding.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Songs From Black Mountain
    It's sad to see a once-promising band reduced to dribbling out a mewling, half-baked effort such as this, an album with no redeeming value beyond soundtracking your next visit to Supercuts.
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