Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,124 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: 1,694 out of 3124
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3124
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3124
3124 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Waterfall
    Their forays into synth-heavy late-'70s/early-'80s prog and arena rock are alternately inventive and bafflingly blockheaded.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    You & Me
    You & Me is a thoroughly Walkmen-esque album, however tautological it may be to say so.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Sea
    It's easy to be fatigued by this album. The moment the rhythm breaks, as with "Closer," it's a struggle to reengage with music that is so intensely personal, so overwhelmingly desolate and yet somehow unmemorable.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Inni [Live]
    Inni is beautiful and alluring, yes, but ultimately a recycled bit of nostalgia likely to please very few.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Silence Is Loud
    Silence Is Loud tells a fairly coherent story, of a person trying to salvage a relationship but weighing skepticism about how worthy it is of being saved. Archives, though, is ultimately unable to wring enough pathos from the narrative she presents. She’s a skilled designer of breathless jungle soundscapes, stocked with immersive details like aquatic synths, endless breakbeats, and jagged basslines, but she hasn’t fully mastered the autobiographical soul-pop mode.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too
    I Know You're Married would be a solid effort, but based on her own output alone, it's a considerable disappointment.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Flesh Tone
    Her new album, Flesh Tone, sounds dated in the worst kind of way-that is, not enough to sound retro-cool, but enough to sound totally uncool
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    6 Feet Beneath the Moon
    6 Feet Beneath the Moon feels incomplete and rushed, with Marshall cramming as many of his ideas as he can into a single album.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fantasies
    While it continues Metric's new-wave/loud-rock amalgam, the songs themselves fail to leave much of an impact.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ryan Adams
    He may have matured in the last 14 years, but there's no indication that's been good for his music, which on Ryan Adams feels lazier and more watered down than ever before.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Voyager
    Too many songs here feel slackly constructed, and the overall musical mood only rarely connects with its lyrical content, leaving The Voyager as a moderately successful testimonial effort.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Can't Imagine
    Had she toned down some idiosyncrasies and worried a handful of these songs past what sounds like their draft stages, I Can't Imagine could've been a real coup for Lynne.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Broke With Expensive Taste
    "212" along with an upgraded version of Fantasea's "Luxury" are among the best songs here, but their inclusion is distracting, representing more unpursued directions for an artist who needs to be looking toward the future, not cramming in old material on an already overstuffed album, one which feels more like a drastically updated portfolio than a proper debut.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Californian Soil
    Their third album, Californian Soil, is so “current,” filled with so many of-the-moment trends, that it winds up feeling anonymous.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    "Awaken, My Love!"
    A maddening ride with an authenticity problem, Awaken, My Love! finds Glover confusing his idols for muses.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fossils
    The polished sound, when combined with O'Donovan's occasionally wispy vocals and recessed guitar, fails to propel the album. It lacks both weight and momentum, or at least enough mood to set Fossils apart.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Once Again
    Like its predecessor, Once Again's midsection bulges with excess MOR fat, but unlike Legend's debut, the album doesn't resurrect itself by the end.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Love Letter
    Kelly's default mode throughout Love Letter is needy like a Salvation Army bell-ringer.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
    In the end, the Texas band can't help but eventually indulge their desire to produce epic, guitar-driven film-score material, and after some initial feints into other territory, Take Care is business as usual.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Election Special
    Though Cooder's clearly singing and playing from his bleeding heart on Election Special, the results make one wish that he'd pass both his mic and his guitar back to his brain.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love This Giant
    A May-November partnership that results in a spate of interesting moments, but largely dies on the vine.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hymn and Her
    Unfortunately, there is nothing here that they haven't done before with more attractive results.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Humanz
    Humanz falters not when its concept runs thin, but when Albarn and his cavalcade of co-conspirators begin to run out of the meaty hooks that have defined Gorillaz's best work.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love And Its Opposite
    Still, for as remote and guarded as Thorn comes off in these 10 vaguely embittered tunes (two of which are covers: "Come on Home to Me" and "You Are a Lover"), and for as sparse and reserved as their arrangements are, there remains one connective thread between this and Thorn's lullabies of clubland: She still summons drama with just the force of her voice.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Far Field
    Songs about unrequited love will never go out of style, but The Far Field would be better served by occasionally taking the road less traveled.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    New
    While the brave-faced, sunny music that defines the album's back half may be as contrived as his jolly public persona, it's the touches of humanizing anxiety that make New significant, revealing active signs of creative life.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Speak Now
    Speak Now is no pop masterpiece, though it's sure to be hailed as such in some circles.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bride Screamed Murder
    It's hard to be impressed by The Bride Screamed Murder, if only because it sticks so closely to the Melvins's routine, but jadedness aside, it's song-for-song as good as anything they've done in the last decade.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    God Save The Clientele
    There's nothing to object to and much to admire on God Save The Clientele, but there's also little to celebrate.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ode To Sunshine
    Catchy and pleasant but ultimately flawed, Sunshine is a solid effort from this up-and-coming band, and if they're able to harness their Southern revival hymns with the bravado of '70s guitar rock, Delta Spirit will be a force to be reckoned with.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Red
    If Red is ultimately too uneven to be a truly great pop album, its highlights are career-best work for Swift, who now sounds like the pop star she was destined to be all along.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Unrepentant Geraldines
    If Unrepentant Geraldines is indeed visual art, it's more of a polite Norman Rockwell than a vomit-stained Sherman. The former goes great with dinner, but I await the gastric upset of the latter.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Like, Love, Lust & The Open Halls Of The Soul
    After the 12 tracks that make up this album, I "got used to" Sykes's peculiar voice. It's the sentimentality that I could do without.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A La Sala
    Apart from a few key songs that continue down the lyrical path charted on Mordechai, A La Sala is largely a retread of Khruangbin’s idiosyncratic brand of dubby psychedelia.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pilot Talk
    Yet despite all this potential, Ross's work too often comes off as a conspicuous mishandling of both assets and signifiers: too much drug posturing, too much repetition, too little real effort.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Growing Pains
    She keeps her most salable characteristic, her emotiveness, under duress, which provides tension but no release.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dirt Femme
    As a collection of slightly melancholic, occasionally catchy dance-floor filler, it would be hard to quibble with Dirt Femme’s simple pleasures. But it’s burdened with a concept that’s under-explored, weighing down an album that promises to be so much more than what it is.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Isn't It Now?
    The breathtakingly gorgeous “Stride Rite” is about as pensive as Animal Collective has ever been. Composed of a myriad of cascading piano chords, the song amounts to an eerie, ethereal experience about the many heartbreaks that come with maturation, one expressed with a level of clarity that’s sorely lacking from the rest of Isn’t It Now?
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wake Up!
    Pedantic spoken-word sections heighten the feeling of this-is-good-for-you laboriousness and make Wake Up! come off as heavier than it needs to.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Food
    This is some of Kelis's subtlest, most organic-sounding work. If only there was more of her in it.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hyperspace
    Beck’s 2006 album The Information is a better example of his unrivaled funhouse approach to style and tone: By blending techno, folk, punk, hip-hop, Krautrock, blues, ambient, and groove-oriented rock, that album is by turns strange, aggressive, hilarious, disturbing, eerie, and fun, all while expressing wry dismay over our current cyber-Armageddon. In comparison, and for all its apparent now-ness, Hyperspace feels inconsequential and incomplete.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Truth About Love
    Pink thankfully hasn't gone soft, and there are no real clunkers here, but the truth about The Truth About Love is that it's competently, often frustratingly more of the same from an artist who still seems capable of much more.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jinx
    Jinx starts out promising, with a few well-crafted and consistently surprising gems, but the lackluster backend seems far too content to tread water.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tomboy
    While Person Pitch rippled with punctuated sound, Tomboy is a cyclic plateau, a triumph of building algorithms that gradually add plushness and sonic density, but very little movement.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Serpentine Prison
    While Serpentine Prison may invoke familiar accusations of dullness, it’s refreshing to hear Berninger’s disaffected songwriting style take on a more grown-up perspective.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Angels Of Destruction
    Overproduction, unfortunately, doesn't fully account for its flaws. Too many of the songs invoke heavy-handed spiritual imagery.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Postcards From a Young Man
    For all the furious posturing, the message is veneered too neatly with streamlined riffs and swamped too deep in nice-as-pie orchestral melodies. Seething rants seem to pack more of a punch when the product is less polished, and tend to get lost when bookended with excessively opulent trappings. This is rock music, after all.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freakout/Release
    The band’s tendencies to go through tonal permutations throughout the not-unaptly titled Freakout/Release often feels more disjointed than it does dynamic. Ultimately, neither their desire to create irresistible dance numbers nor their expressions of disenchantment are ever allowed to fully take shape.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trouble in Paradise
    When Trouble in Paradise loses its way, it's because Jackson has traded in her frigid allure and commanding bellicosity for frailty and soft-heartedness, sentiments she doesn't deliver with any sort of sincerity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ashes & Fire
    Adams's songwriting may be as sharp as ever and better edited than it ever has been, but Ashes & Fire makes some terrific songs sound impossibly bland.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    1,000 Years
    While 1,000 Years isn't a bad album in comparison to other how-the-might-have-fallen spectacles (it's hardly the catastrophe of, say, Liz Phair's Somebody's Miracle), it simply lacks the edge and bite of Tucker's work with Sleater-Kinney.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shrines
    Purity Ring is trying to do too much, and true to the less-is-more adage, the busier Shrines gets, the emptier it feels.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paper Airplane
    Krauss and Union Station are extraordinary musicians, and it's their impeccable skills that are the main selling point of Paper Airplane.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tin Can Trust
    With its combination of acoustic rock, Spanish music, and mystical balladry, the album traverses all the styles Los Lobos has explored over the last 30 years-with a blues instrumental and a Grateful Dead cover perplexingly thrown in for good measure.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Breakthrough
    Whether or not her risks work, it's taking chances that pays dividends, not placing safe bets.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mount Moriah
    When they keep their songs focused and kick up the tempo a bit, Mount Moriah is far more compelling.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Planet Her
    With the liveliest songs bookending the album, though, the middle stretch of Planet Her gets swallowed in a celestial soup of midtempo R&B and trap trends like the pitched-down vocals on the narcotic “Been Like This.”
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Eyelid Movies
    From the hip-hop loops and grungy, Dust Brothers-style synths of "Running from the Cops," to the new wave balladry of "All Dried Up," and the trip-hop cool of "You Are the Ocean," these are kinds of left-of-center pop tunes that, in the mid-'90s, could have sneaked their way onto Top 40 and modern-rock playlists (which were basically the same thing back then).
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Native Invader
    When Amos eschews her band in favor of barer piano-and-vocal arrangements—as on the contemplative “Breakaway,” the surprisingly reverent “Climb,” and the lush “Mary's Eyes,” a mournful plea to the gods to reverse Amos's mother's aphasia--Native Invader fulfills the promise of its stunning opener.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Eye To The Telescope
    If she doesn't quite justify her place in the company of Antony & The Johnsons' I Am A Bird Now or M.I.A.'s Arular on the short-list for the Mercury Prize, Tunstall certainly holds her own against the likes of [Kelly] Clarkson and [Sheryl] Crow.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Begone Dull Care
    Junior Boys will always be too careful to lapse into something as liquidly hedonistic as, well, Nick Straker Band, but with Begone, they sound like reasonable antecedents.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    (III)
    III is an album of earnest, expansive electronica from a duo few are expecting such sincerity from, and it edges them directly into the middle of the road.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
    Ultimately Hurry Up, We're Dreaming sounds much more like an M83 wannabe's poor imitation than the real deal.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Here We Rest
    It's on the songs that bring in the R&B influences that made Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit sing that Here We Rest finally showcases what it is that makes Isbell a distinctive talent.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's A Bit Complicated
    The band's arrangements show a more robust sense of melody than they did on their debut.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Year Zero
    Reznor seems to eschew depth for surface explosions and instant gratification, and the result is a finished product that, while decent on an individual track, doesn't hold up as Year Zero progresses.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Smart Flesh
    Americana and modern folk are often dismissed for their dour self-seriousness, and Smart Flesh, unfortunately, falls into the worst of those trappings.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Higher
    Stapleton knows that his vocals don’t need to be forceful to make an impact, a point driven home on the beautiful closer “Mountains of My Mind,” on which his intimate voice is paired with just an acoustic guitar. But while tracks like that are evidence of Stapleton’s singing and storytelling abilities, more often than not, the songs on Higher struggle to take off.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rare
    Rare continually teases intriguing forays into leftfield pop, but so many of the album’s experiments come off as just that, without ever crystallizing with memorable hooks.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Depression Cherry
    Depression Cherry's flabby midsection finds Beach House similarly situated: treading repeatedly over the same ground, yielding diminishing returns.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Carolina
    Unfortunately, the bulk of the record takes the opposite approach, with bombastic arrangements and dumbed-down, pandering lyrics that are too easy and too desperate for mainstream approval.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Chrome Dreams II
    It's a return to a time when Young albums felt like ingenious mixtapes--where Crazy Horse tracks, Stray Gators tracks, and duets with Linda Rondstadt intermingled without being jarring in the least.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    King of Hearts
    When he's on his game, he poses a less rigorously focus-grouped alternative to Bruno Mars's tween-friendly pop-R&B, but every moment of genius on King of Hearts comes saddled with something less palatable.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fool
    If Fool doesn’t quite measure up to Jackson’s sterling early work, it’s still more concise and punchy than 2015’s Fast Forward and less self-consciously arty than his late-‘80s and ‘90s work.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soberish
    For her part, Phair still has a knack for sharp melodies and bite-sized lyrical gems (“I tried to stay sober, but the bar is so inviting,” she quips on the album’s title track), and the technical simplicity of her voice is often its best feature.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    New Moon
    Whenever the Men establish any semblance of momentum, they quickly squander it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    That Don't Make Me A Bad Guy
    While most of the songs are well written and Keith attacks each vocal performance with his immediately recognizable command and swagger, not all of his production choices work.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Secret Migration
    Where once we got shivers up our spines from this band's music, now we're just left cold.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Boys & Girls
    Boys & Girls is a fine album, full of sturdy Southern-fried blues performed with swagger and verve. As the proper debut for a band that's built its reputation on the fearless pandemonium of its live shows, however, Boys & Girls is curiously and deliberately subdued.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    To Find Me Gone
    It's a compelling, forward-thinking album that's as likely to please fans of melodic indie-pop and roots-rock as it is fans of the current crop of folk troubadours.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Favourite Faded Fantasy
    Bombast, buoyed by self-doubt, gets in the way of the finer sentiments, especially in the album's over-inflated middle. But subtle pleasures can still be found.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wilco (The Album)
    It doesn't help that Wilco is such a complacent album, so easily redolent of sounds and textures the band has called up in the past.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lady from Shanghai
    Lady from Shanghai, a mess of sonic blips and disorienting blotches of misshapen clutter, has no secrets; it's impossible to dig deeper into something that's only surface-deep.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'm Going Away
    The use of repetition as a substitute for size is intriguing, but in the end it has the same deadening effect as the band's earlier use of overcomplicated compositions, creating music defined by a few overpowering elements rather than its intelligence or melodic dexterity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Long Way To the Beginning
    A Long Way to the Beginning thus finds the young upstart at a crossroads, between overt legacy mining and striking out on his own, a tentatively successful effort that at least demonstrates Seun's innate skills as a bandleader and a radical.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Coming Home
    For every few colorless duds defined by their embrace of contemporary R&B, such as the overly smooth “Kissing Strangers” or the brassy “Big,” there’s a creative cut or two, like the suave “Margiela.”
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gossamer
    Gossamer is true to its name: colorless and precariously thin, with precious few bright spots.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    La Roux
    At the end of the day, this is just good pop music.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Odd Couple
    Needless to say, though, Odd Couple doesn't conjure the same immediate wow-factor as "St. Elsewhere."
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Holy Fire
    It's a somewhat disappointing change of pace, but one that can nevertheless be appreciated by adjusting expectations; even if the band isn't pushing new boundaries, this new stance sort of fits them, coming across as a culmination of their previous material rather than a misstep.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Union
    That the album is a failure despite the authentic passion behind it only accentuates its participants' respective ruts. And it's further proof that the most consistent musicians are more pilgrims than they are professionals.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    21
    For most of 21, she's cast as a fortress of old-school soul besieged by lifeless jingles, a force of nature restrained by multiplatinum fetters.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    True Romance
    While a few slivers of genuine spontaneity can be found throughout True Romance, particularly in the watery K-pop-esque opus "Nuclear Seasons," the sum as a whole feels rather forced.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blood Pressures
    Blood Pressures works mostly because of how fully the duo believes in the junk they're spitting out.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Do It Again
    Röyksopp and Robyn share so much sonic DNA that their team-up is almost self-defeating, blurring the distinction between the two to the point where their respective quirks are essentially scratched in favor of a cohesive but far too clinical production.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everyday Robots
    There's nothing inherently wrong with bemoaning cultural change (it's a better thematic analogue for personal detachment than the isolation of being rich and famous, at least), but Everyday Robots employs a scolding tone that doesn't help sugarcoat its cranky message.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Leaving Meaning.
    Leaving Meaning is a piece of blood-spattered Americana, a haunted-house version of the fabled American dream. But while Gira is a clever musician, that doesn’t make the world he’s created here a pleasant one to visit.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Woke Myself Up
    Doiron's sometimes off-kilter vocal arrangements are a perfect match for her lyrics.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Easton Corbin
    The album recalls the series of interchangeable, filler-packed albums Strait recorded in the mid '90s. Corbin sings well enough, but lacks the maturity and depth of experience to elevate some of the record's middling material.
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