Slant Magazine's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Home Video
    Ultimately, it’s less the nuances of Dacus’s writing than her willingness to expose herself and her past so freely—even the most difficult parts—that make the strongest impression on Home Video.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers
    The rest of The Moon and Stars is a similarly ambitious, dizzying jumble of genres and tones, and June manages to hold everything together on the power of her beguiling voice and charisma.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Revolution
    A dense, challenging record, Revolution once again finds Lambert setting the benchmark for the country genre even as she begins to consider the possibilities beyond its borders.
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strange Mercy
    Yet, far from a liability, Clark's bare, sedate St. Vincent persona is the highlight of Strange Mercy, reflecting all the terror, beauty, and allure of her music more effectively than any cantakerous narrator could muster.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
    Brash, insightful, wry, and, above all else, smart, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend confirms that Miranda Lambert is far more than just the latest in a long line of bad girls: She's a country music legend in the making, and the most vital artist Music Row has produced in a generation.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Montero
    Lil Nas’s expressions of anxiety and self-doubt are served with honesty and tenderness, as well as some awkwardness.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Don't Live Here Anymore
    Though the War on Drugs may take a slightly more straightforward approach on I Don’t Live Here Anymore than they have in the past, they still find new ways to engage with complex arrangements. The result is a nimble balancing act of accessible pop-rock anthems and experimental soundscapes.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Critterland
    Challenging, startling, and deeply powerful, this rallying closer confirms what the previous nine songs already suggested: that Carlisle is a singular artist and that Critterland is a worthy addition to the canon of country-folk classics.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    High Violet
    High Violet is an expertly handled balancing of the airy and the dense, and nowhere is that better exemplified than on the triumphant "England."
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bloom
    The songs that leave the most lasting impression are the most downbeat.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Singles
    As a whole feels like a more complete and satisfying journey than either of Goldfrapp's last two albums, progressing confidently from crushing guitar-driven boogie to weightless space pop.
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    evermore
    The stories she tells are about how her narrators’ choices impact others, often in ways that cause irreparable harm. That makes the songwriting a bit riskier than on Folklore, and not all of those risks pay off. If that means Evermore isn’t quite as strong as that album, she nonetheless managed to release two of the finest albums of her career in the span of just a few months.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Before Today
    There are times when the garish rehash feels a tad too on the nose.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kaputt
    Not all of Kaputt is so dynamic, and many of the songs require a few listens before they begin to assert their individual identities. But Kaputt does contain riches to rival the previous highpoints in the Destroyer canon.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mental Illness
    Mann's best work has always lingered on such private reverie, and Mental Illness is one of her most ravishing and affecting hymns to solitude.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Oblivions
    She successfully translates her confessional tone and subject matter into melodically and atmospherically engaging songs, resulting in an album that represents a significant step for one of contemporary music’s most eloquent artists.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Chicago Sessions
    Even if it isn’t necessarily a pivotal effort, [The Chicago Sessions] is marked by an endearing lack of affectation that only one of the greatest country songwriters can achieve.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    And Nothing Hurt
    Motivated more by financial necessity than the hubris it must take to even believe such an undertaking would be feasible, Pierce nonetheless constructs a thickly layered album. And while its inherent limitations are evident at times, it's a work of characteristic ambition and poignancy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Warm
    None of Tweedy’s studio work has ever quite captured how funny he can be in this format, and for the most part, Warm is no exception. But the album comes close, in both timbre and tone, to reflecting the unvarnished Tweedy that shows up at his solo shows.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Electric Dirt
    The songs are new but have the worn familiarity of something pulled from storage, all the trilling organs and honky-tonk shuffles, made thinner and more poignant by the passage of time.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Flower Boy
    If “maturity” isn't quite the word for Flower Boy, however, the album is nevertheless a significant milestone. This is easily Tyler's most emotionally risky, and rewarding, work to date--and, in its own way, more transgressive than anything from Odd Future's punk-rap peak.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Echo
    At just under 30 minutes long, the Portland-based singer-songwriter’s 11th album is more concise than it is confessional, but Veirs imbues her lyrics with vivid imagery and gentle humor that trade misery for escapism.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Apollo Kids
    Much like Raekwon on his 2009 landmark, Ghostface manages to steal the show despite the esteemed roll of guest spots. His rapid-fire delivery and blitz of sassy metaphors set a high-octane pace.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Something to Give Each Other
    What Something to Give Each Other lacks in poignancy, though, is made up for by the joy with which it embraces queer pleasure.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Is Happening
    As good as this record is (and it is often very good), LCD Soundsystem can do, and has done, much better.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Once Twice Melody
    Beach House’s hymn to the grandeur of relationships is, perhaps, the most musically diverse and thematically mature project the duo has released to date—an emphatic affirmation of life’s joys and sorrows.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Treats
    Even though it's as ambitious an exercise in freeform genre-splicing and pure, amp-blowing volume as has been attempted in the past few years, it's always at least as fun as it is smart, taking the three great pillars of guilty-pleasure music (deafening arena-rock swagger, sugary pop hooks, and delirious dance beats) and rolling them together into a singularly appealing cacophony.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hell On Heels
    None of this would work if the songs weren't actually good, but they're frequently brilliant.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sugar Mountain: Live At Canterbury House 1968
    Sugar Mountain is less impressive than Massey Hall but it offers more insight, catching Young at a peak of undiscovered exuberance, sharing loose stories between songs, strumming aimlessly and joking with the crowd.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blood Bitch
    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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Down to Believing
    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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014
    Even if Wilco is in danger of running out of interesting new places to take their sound, it's only because, as Alpha Mike Foxtrot is a convincing testament to, they've spent the last 20 years taking it to so many places already.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wildheart
    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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What's Your Pleasure?
    What’s Your Pleasure? is an album that, just a few months ago, might have felt like a nostalgia trip or a guilty pleasure, but now feels like manna for the soul.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Takk...
    As music that's beautiful simply for the sake of being beautiful, Takk… is an unqualified success.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Serpent & the Sphere
    The album's preference for atmosphere over hooks, plus the paucity and snarling incomprehensibility of its vocals, makes it ideal for pondering whatever mystery that captures one's fancy. But it also has a clear point of view.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness is noisier, brasher, and more confident than its languid predecessor.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Invasion of Privacy
    Cardi climbed her way up from the bottom, and Invasion of Privacy is a soundtrack for anyone who dreams of doing the same.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran
    Johnson and the small army of country stars he's enlisted to collaborate on the project all wisely keep the focus on Cochran's extraordinary songwriting, making for an album that highlights the depth and range of Cochran's catalogue and the monumental influence his writing has had on country music.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    ANIMA
    Anima still achieves a sonic and thematic through line. The album’s juxtaposition of lyrical techno-dread with austere, ghostly electronic music is satisfyingly unsettling. The lyrics are evocative in their economy, and rather than feel like guide tracks, the arrangements feel more fully realized than on Yorke’s past albums.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sparkle Hard
    Malkmus has been prone to juxtaposing tasteful pop songs with classic-rock elements and offbeat lyrics since Slanted and Enchanted, and the audible delight he still takes in such musical mischief is apparent throughout Sparkle Hard.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Crane Wife
    Certain listeners will declare The Crane Wife the best record yet from the Decemberists, but it’s still too inconsistent to be declared the masterpiece of which Meloy and company are capable.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Extraordinary Machine
    For every song that's been improved there's one that's been unnecessarily tooled with.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    WORLD WIDE WHACK
    WWW may be a candid and sophisticated analysis of the dark side of fame, but it’s also eminently entertaining and occasionally funny, and it (re)establishes Whack as one of the most creative rappers in the game.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey What
    The album seamlessly blends the nightmarish and the romantic, interweaving our perennial hopes and the terrors we can’t shake off.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Carry Fire
    The album's roots go back to Zeppelin's immersion in English folk and American blues, but here Plant displays everything he’s learned along the way; Carry Fire's sophistication and mystique place it among the most ambitious and evocative albums of his legendary career.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Don't Forget Me
    The album’s 10 brisk, lightly rocking songs evoke the radio-friendly pop-rock of early-2000s Sheryl Crow or Jewel while sometimes, as on the title track, looking further back to ’70s soft rock a la Carole King.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Negro Swan
    It's this ability to capture both sides with equal commitment--the struggle and the resistance through self-love--that makes Negro Swan Hynes's most assured, accomplished, and significant album to date.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cuz I Love You
    Expertly sequenced in a concise, 33-minute package, Cuz I Love You moves from strength to strength. Even its more minor tracks feature standout moments.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sweet Warrior
    The tightness of Thompson's compositions grounds the explosive, whimsical meandering of his improvs; Sweet Warrior, and "Guns Are The Tongues" in particular, captures that glory as well as anything else from this century.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tarot Sport
    Tarot Sport makes its mark: easy and challenging at the same time, a mix of harsh and smooth sounds that mirrors the prickly juxtaposition of classic jazz.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vince Staples
    Vince Staples is another microcosmic release from the rapper, his leisurely approach suggesting a newfound confidence.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Currents
    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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PRE PLEASURE
    Jacklin spends most of Pre Pleasure offering captivatingly penetrating personal commentary, whether backed by distorted guitars or mere whispers of arrangements.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Shadow in Time
    By comparison, “A Shadow in Time” is atmospheric, cohesive, and less discernably a loop. Its fogginess and amorphous instrumentation brings to mind a long, somber walk through thick and uneven woods, or a slow submergence into the sea; the strings seem like wisps of wind, the synths like sluggish sands, and the sound effects imitate light pinging off glass.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Off On The Pain
    The material explores a broader range of complex and wrenching emotions, and it marks the most consistent set of songs Allan has yet recorded.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Multiply
    An album that, in its best moments, draws comparisons to at-peak Prince and, at its worst, lands in the respectable company of Nikka Costa’s Everybody Got Their Something.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Suddenly
    It’s a treat to listen to the way such a masterful musician mines his own record collection for inspiration. What makes the album so spectacular, though, is Snaith’s voice. ... Throughout, his mesmerizing vocals elevate songs that might otherwise scan as banal.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eternal Sunshine
    If there’s a primary critique to be leveled at Eternal Sunshine, it’s that the midtempo R&B that defined Grande’s last two albums, Positions and Thank U, Next, is once again so prominent. The house-pop “Yes, And?” is a bit of a bait and switch, as only two other tracks on the album, the disco-infused “Bye” and the Robyn-esque “We Can’t Be Friends,” stray from Grande’s preferred musical mode. That’s not to say that the album’s R&B fare isn’t satisfying in its own right.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    El Camino
    The album hurtles forward with all the momentum and subtlety of a cannonball, and it's best either to get on board or just to get the hell out of the way.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Celebration
    Okay, so the legitimacy of the song selection can, in this Cuisinart iteration, only be appraised on a case-by-case basis. How do the songs sound? And are the mixes definitive? Great and mostly, respectively.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hunter
    By revealing the full spectrum of her sexual expression and identity, she makes a bold and defiant statement on postgenderism through uncompromising music that's alternately elegant and raw.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hold the Girl
    Her experiments aren’t as bold or memorable as those of her debut, and the hooks throughout Hold the Girl aren’t as immediately catchy. Nonetheless, Sawayama’s undeniably fierce willingness to gaze further inward and confront thornier topics makes the album compelling in its own right.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tha Carter III
    One could easily pick and choose from the songs here to make a more coherent 12-track album; such a record would likely have more immediate impact. But it'd also be kind of painful to cut anything.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    One Day
    Although it has some thematic overlap with Glass Boys, One Day amalgamates its disparate lyrical and musical ideas, as well as the confidence of its performances and compositions, into a novel, thrilling 40 minutes.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wake Up The Nation
    Wake Up certainly stands as a collection of top-notch material, representing the second part of a late-term renaissance for an artist who already had a reputation as an innovator.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wondervisions
    Delicate Steve uses their African-inspired rhythms as a foundation for more forward-thinking experimentation. That their experiments manage to be successful without sacrificing basic tunefulness makes Wondervisions a winning debut record.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What Heaven Is Like
    What Heaven Is Like's wizardry lies in the band's uncanny ability to make their finely tuned chemistry sound like off-the-cuff jamming between amateurs in a basement.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alpha Zulu
    Both the title track, with its exclamation of “Woo-ha! Singing hallelujah!,” and “All Eyes on Me,” with its whip cracks and anxious synths, attempt to strike a more dastardly and vaguely dangerous vibe that they don’t really pull off. But for the most part, Alpha Zulu delivers the kind of deceptively simple, fleet pop for which Phoenix is best known.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Legacy, Vol. 2
    Boo turns footwork’s roots—hip-hop, house, IDM, and drum ‘n’ bass—and spins them into something that sounds like a totally new language.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Integrated Tech Solutions
    So while the album may play it a little safe, it also smartly plays to its creator’s strengths.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Two Dancers
    Two Dancers is a striking, dynamic album, and will deservedly land on many year-end lists.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Petals for Armor
    Petals for Armor is a confident solo debut that suggests Williams has valences she’s just beginning to explore.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Celebration Rock
    Celebration Rock is a tipsy toast to the very best moments in life.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Furling
    While country and roots music inform many of the arrangements here, slide and steel guitars are employed mostly as texture, creating a blur of sound. This is very much “vibes” music, emanating from a wide swath of influences, blending English folk, American roots music, and dubby trip-hop in ways that are both heady and nebulous.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
    The freeform Return of the Ankh is what it would sound like if 4th World War drank three whole jars of holy water. It doesn't sound one bit like her debut (as early reports indicated), but it does bear the mark of its creator having rolled through the full cipher.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Need to Feel Your Love
    It’s just as intense in terms of either volume or passion as their self-released EPs, but the album’s somewhat surprising emotional and stylistic eclecticism prevent the band’s library of overcharged ’70s-style riffs or its maximalist energy, epitomized by singer Tina Halladay’s wailing typhoon of a voice, from becoming too fatiguing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sinner Get Ready
    Ignota has demonstrated throughout her career that she can pen an evocative confession and seductively deliver a melodic line. But her more essential talent is an ability to simultaneously embody and channel a range of psychological and spiritual states. Sinner Get Ready is driven by a penetrative imagination, a preternatural sense of empathy, and an innate awareness of the paradoxical nature of human existence.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Us
    The smart tracks build up the complexity of Ali's persona, while the dumb ones diminish it. The juxtaposition of these two different modes creates a fuller exposition than what you'll find on most hip-hop albums.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky
    My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky submits to no such relaxed idleness. It earns the right to avoid the term reunion, picking up right where the band left off.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bright Mississippi
    Toussaint gives each of the instruments room to explore, breaking free of the structure of the song and marking it with his own distinctive stamp. It's this loose, spirited mood that makes the album's interpretations so smooth and effective.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Food & Liquor
    Food & Liquor is one of the year's fresher efforts and future classics.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Look Now
    With its mix of rock and balladry, Look Now strikes a fine balance between the lively and the pensive, nodding to previous eras of Costello’s career.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Navigator
    The Navigator evocatively captures the essence of the streets of New York's increasingly gentrified outer boroughs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Real Animal
    The production choices are well-matched to the individual songs on both structural and thematic levels--Real Animal works as a testament to the diversity of Escovedo's career and the breadth of his talents--but those individual choices don't necessarily make for a cohesive album.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prima Donna [EP]
    Prima Donna's standout title track encapsulates Staples's appeal as a lyricist—and the appeal of the EP as a whole.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dose Your Dreams
    Without Abraham’s consistent presence, Fucked Up’s music sounds almost conventional. Fortunately, Dose Your Dreams proves they’ve got a deep enough bag of tricks--including a towering throng of endless overdubs and genre detours that sound as massive as the band’s ambitions--to make even conventionality sound compelling.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Color of the Sky
    A Color of the Sky is an enchanting cache of guitar pop with echoes of Talk Talk, Cocteau Twins, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, and Emmylou Harris.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tempest
    This crustily hammy, crowd-pleasing side of Dylan is one of his most satisfying.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Playing Favorites
    Playing Favorites proves that Sheer Mag can show off their softer underbelly just as skillfully as they do their fangs.
Page: