For 3,117 reviews, this publication has graded:
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35% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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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
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,687 out of 3117
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Mixed: 1,319 out of 3117
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Negative: 111 out of 3117
3117
music
reviews
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- Critic Score
Sincerely, Future Pollution's contrast of bright synths with dark lyrics shows the band approaching their sound with refreshing irony. By filtering the seedier byproducts of our modern world through their gaudy yet gloomy lens, Timber Timbre reflects the hyperbole of an increasingly toxic culture.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 3, 2017
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- Slant Magazine
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The album’s early singles “High in the Grass” and “Worry with You” both play off of Sleater-Kinney’s strengths, the former showing off the ever-expanding reach of Tucker’s voice and the latter sporting one of the band’s sneakily catchy hooks. On the other hand, songs like the dour “Tomorrow’s Grave” sound a little too familiar and fail to push the group beyond their previously established template.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jun 16, 2021
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Lyrically, Goldfrapp occasionally leans too far into pop simplicity. ... Later in the album, though, when Goldfrapp gets more experimental—or at least dispenses with conventional pop structures—things begin to feel more immersive.- Slant Magazine
- Posted May 9, 2023
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The irreverent, snide wit and easy self-deprecation prove to be an effective, if surprising, fit for Tegan and Sara's brand of genial indie-pop, elevating Sainthood beyond mere snappy diversion.- Slant Magazine
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Hot Chip boldly expand and louden up their sound significantly here, while admirably retaining full command of the forms they've already mastered.- Slant Magazine
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Burton was a classical music aficionado, and was said to have introduced elements like harmony and sophistication into Metallica’s early no-frills thrash. S&M2 puts that influence on full display.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Sep 3, 2020
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It’s a perfectly-balanced 36 minutes, and hopefully a foreshadow of more collaborations to come.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 13, 2018
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Rather than wallow morosely, he uses death as the focal point for an expressive song cycle that takes in the whole realm of life, with darkness frequently felt but not always the dominant emotion.- Slant Magazine
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Tangk underpins its more personal and emotional lyrics with rich, layered arrangements. It’s in this delicate balance of sound and sentiment that the album finds its groove—not always in the heights it occasionally struggles to reach, but in its earnest exploration of love.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Feb 12, 2024
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Musgraves’s follow-up, Star-Crossed, is just as effortlessly melodic and accessible. But it’s also more eclectic, far afield of modern radio tropes, either of the pop or country varieties.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Sep 3, 2021
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Even though the album's production aims for and achieves a vintage AM radio sound, Collett's willingness to subvert the conventions of songwriters like Dylan or Kristofferson makes Here a definitively modern record and perhaps the first of Collett's solo albums to sound like a real classic.- Slant Magazine
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Humor Risk isn't a perfect album by any stretch, but it does provide another striking glimpse into the picaresque, tongue-in-cheek tragedies that mark McCombs's unique songwriting.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 4, 2011
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A left-of-center delight that will tide over the Rilo Kiley faithful until their next album.- Slant Magazine
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It's a straight line from Pet Sounds to Pulp's Different Class, and while Stand Ins and its predecessor share R&B riffs affected with a country twang, connecting this latest dip in the Okkervil to a '90s Pulp-y-ness is a refreshing move.- Slant Magazine
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The album’s greatest asset is its immediacy, with its best songs seemingly allowing De Souza to get things off of her chest after years of holding it all in. It’s a shame, then, that All of This Will End often also indulges indie-twee clichés.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 25, 2023
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Common's latest, Nobody's Smiling, centers on the war-torn streets of South Side, Chicago that Common left nearly two decades ago, a setting the 42-year-old rapper navigates like a hardened local. The album's best moments explore this tension, proving that despite Common's age and commercial success, he can figuratively inhabit Chiraq better than most of the city's rising stars.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 8, 2014
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The melodic hooks are huge, but what makes The Life Pursuit a legitimately great album is that Murdoch's lyrics are at turns witty, insightful, assertive, and sardonic.- Slant Magazine
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Despite the many highs, Relax is still a debut, and at times finds the group struggling with the specifics of their sound.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Sep 15, 2011
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Though there are moments of frayed musical charm throughout Alvvays, including the irresistible crack in Rankin's voice during the final chorus of "Party Police" and the so-jangly-it-hurts arpeggios of "Atop a Cake," it exhibits an unexpected level of versatility for a debut.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 21, 2014
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This is one of the things that makes I'm New Here such a masterfully stark album. The music is darker, more mechanical than the jazz-inflected backing he used in the '70s, he exhibits few of the tendencies of the genres he helped influence.- Slant Magazine
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The Duhks should only continue to build upon their reputation as one of the most compelling acts on the roots scene with World, which puts to rest any doubts as to how they would carry on with their new incarnation.- Slant Magazine
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Loveless has offered another unqualified masterpiece with Sleepless Nights and reasserted her place as one of the premier artists not just of the country genre but of contemporary popular music.- Slant Magazine
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- Posted Oct 17, 2017
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Estelle’s fifth studio album, Lovers Rock, both bottles the ardor of the eponymous reggae style and testifies to the force of a deep and resilient love.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Oct 16, 2018
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Surrender Your Poppy Field proves he’s deepening rather than merely proliferating his music, continuing to grow up instead of growing old.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Feb 19, 2020
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At times, the album’s songs are so breezy that they’re barely indistinguishable from one another. There are moments here, as is Toro y Moi’s wont, where the pursuit of mood takes precedent above all else.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 28, 2022
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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.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jun 8, 2023
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The band’s ability to get to the heart of this change and create compelling songs from familiar scenes helps make Open Door Policy the best Hold Steady album in over a decade.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Feb 12, 2021
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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.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 4, 2013
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The songs are often still a little too cute, too twee and self-satisfied, but they're just as catchy without the burden of self-reflexive exoticism.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 29, 2011
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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.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 11, 2013
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Frightened Rabbit has always relied quite heavily on its members' charm, and for the most part, Mixed Drinks preserves that beautifully.- Slant Magazine
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One hopes that the next LP will pack a little less filler, and Bright Eyes will drop a 40-minute work as tight as their best four-minute works.- Slant Magazine
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Tucker and Brownstein deserve credit for continuing to take risks and experiment with Sleater-Kinney’s established sound, resulting in another solid effort in an unexpectedly fruitful late period.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jan 16, 2024
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It is no small feat to write melodies as memorable as Berman's exceedingly quotable lyrics, but on each song here, he does. Lookout Mountain is an outstanding work of art.- Slant Magazine
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Fame Monster does provide some small, if fleeting, glimpses behind the pretense.- Slant Magazine
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Diamond’s critique of online culture and its effects on our self-perception aren’t new. The crucial difference here is that she locates herself inside the machine, without claiming she can escape the traps she sings about. Diamond constructs a world of exaggerated femininity without drowning in irony.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Oct 4, 2023
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Literate, perceptive, sometimes a tad mawkish, they're also resolutely sturdy, insightful diversions that would please even without the Biblical trappings.- Slant Magazine
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While The Golden Casket doesn’t match the heights attained by some of Modest Mouse’s earlier work, it’s their first album since 2000’s triumphant The Moon & Antarctica that doesn’t feel like it could benefit from some editing.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jun 22, 2021
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Orton's assured hand throughout marks Comfort Of Strangers as a sturdy piece of songwriting that will stand among the more memorable albums of 2006 come year's end.- Slant Magazine
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A Bit of Previous manages to strike a balance between celebrating the group’s familiar sound and proving that they still have something to say.- Slant Magazine
- Posted May 2, 2022
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Powerful and smart above all else, Enlightenment may just be Hubbard's finest record, and it's certainly the new decade's first essential album.- Slant Magazine
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The feverish approach lends Odd Blood a slithering lo-fi ecstasy, elevating it beyond the similarly buzzing, synth-infused efforts of Yeasayer's peers.- Slant Magazine
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The New Pornographers may be sounding more and more like robots these days, but they remain uncommonly attuned to the preferences of the human ear.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 3, 2017
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Trouble in Dreams is full of complex and sophisticated songs, so it's probably unfair to focus on one to the exclusion of others, but 'Shooting Rockets' deserves a little more attention, since it's the best evidence of the fact that, when it comes to proggy indie rock, Bejar's really in a league of his own right now.- Slant Magazine
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What’s left is Young’s preternatural gift for melody (most of this album’s songs started as hummable tunes that popped into his head on his daily walks), Crazy Horse’s enduring chemistry, Rubin’s less-is-more studio hand, and, of course, the most important subject there is: this old planet.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Dec 5, 2022
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Omnion is polished, precise, and familiar-sounding, but it's also indelibly soulful. It recalls the discotheque's formative role as sweaty, secular alternative church.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 31, 2017
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Ring is more a cohesive, narrative song cycle than a simple collection of disparate pop songs.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Oct 25, 2010
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Blood Under the Bridge may not garner much critical attention, but it's both a roundly rewarding album and a quietly thrilling throwback.- Slant Magazine
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We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank is a really good, if not necessarily phenomenal, rock record.- Slant Magazine
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While occasionally the duo seems to fall back on cranking up the merciless 4/4 kick until their audience begs for mercy, Alive 2007 actually does more to reveal their musicianship than almost any other Daft Punk release to date- Slant Magazine
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Bathed in cloaking shadows, Night Music captures the macabre power of darkness, where ordinary shadows are stretched into ominous significance.- Slant Magazine
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Even as the album moves between sleepy, whispered gentility and brief outbreaks of shaking guitar noise, the sullen mood and expansive echoing textures make Dead in the Boot feel of a single piece.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 27, 2012
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Lately reveals itself to be Hiatt’s most daring and experimental work to date. The songs’ relative lack of polish knocks down what few layers of pretense may have previously existed between the listener and the characteristically unvarnished inner thoughts that compose most of her lyrics.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Oct 15, 2021
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She doesn't lash out at external forces. Instead, she internalizes that dialogue, resulting in her most contemplative album to date.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jan 19, 2018
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Run Rabbit Run's ample highlights not only illustrate Osso's mastery of their string instruments but emphasize Stevens's incredible talent as a songwriter and arranger.- Slant Magazine
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That The Bride works best as a song cycle rather than a collection of pop hooks is a testament to its cohesion and intrinsic intertexuality, but what's missing here is Khan's knack for grafting avant-art-rock concepts onto mainstream forms.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jun 27, 2016
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The album succeeds by being both engaging on a intuitive level and deceptively thoughtful, putting aside overt ambition to pursue a condensed, often melancholy sound that retains TV on the Radio's characteristic inquisitive nature.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 17, 2014
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The lyrics are endearing in their quirky honesty (he quips of Sean Parker, an ex’s ex: “I think he started Spotify”). But backed by yet another sumptuous sonic tapestry—including finger-picked guitar and spacey sound effects—they sound like nothing less than Tasjan finally figuring out exactly who he is.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Feb 4, 2021
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The arrangements are organic and lived in, and the distinct influences of each member of the band figure prominently in the album's overall style, making it far more than just a showcase for Tucker.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Sep 20, 2012
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Bish Bosch may sound a little strained at times, but it's still a big, ballsy achievement, the work of a committed artist delving further into a land of vaguely sketched nightmares.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Dec 3, 2012
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In terms of personality and originality, Amerie's latest is on par with Solange's "Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams." As with that slept-on record, War is deserving of greater commercial impact than it is likely to earn.- Slant Magazine
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As a whole, A Blessing And A Curse is the album that Drive-By Truckers have always threatened to make, a hard-rocking testament to the intelligence, sensitivity, and soul of a people often discredited for lacking all three.- Slant Magazine
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With individual tracks that ebb and flow between emotional extremes, Everything is an album that has a definite sense of momentum for much of its running time, which it unfortunately loses in its home stretch.- Slant Magazine
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Paired with Nagano's warm, engrossing voice, Ritual Union's songs become much more than just capable synth-pop fare.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jul 21, 2011
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Northern Lights captures the live show as circus, the aura where group participation and the raggedness of improvisation supersedes a faithful rendering of songs, an interpretation that, if not always satisfying to listen to, is at least fascinating to behold.- Slant Magazine
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[It may not be] the most ambitious or thematically cohesive album, but Guitar Slinger makes up for its lack of focus with some truly inspired songwriting and performances.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Oct 24, 2011
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Like most sugary confections, Dom is a band best digested in quick, indiscriminate bursts.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 11, 2011
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Braids perform with a self-assured subtlety, lending their sophomore album a quiet, unassuming depth that far outstrips the flash of its predecessor.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 14, 2013
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In something of a seismic shift for the usually downcast artist, the constant of the songwriting here is a buoying faith in the power of love, and all the many forms it can take: romantic (“Love”), carnal (“Cherry”), platonic (“Coachella”), effusively adulatory (“Groupie Love”), fetishistic (“White Mustang”), and, yes, self-loving (“In My Feelings”).- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jul 24, 2017
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Recently, Beck too often sounds like he's playing with his toys and not intent on making actual music, but the new album's brief 10 tracks prove that he's almost always more interesting when he's not having fun.- Slant Magazine
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The superior but occasionally milquetoast Crystal Castles: Book Two inadvertently underscores the pitfalls of maturity and liberation.- Slant Magazine
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The album serves as a continued refinement of the talents that he displayed on 2006’s immense Harmony in Ultraviolet and 2016’s confrontational Love Streams, even if it’s ultimately not as consistent. Its atmosphere is so suffocating that “Anxiety” may accurately sum up most listeners’ emotional states after listening to the album in full—and considering No Highs’s ambitions, that’s perhaps the highest possible praise one could bestow upon it.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 7, 2023
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Though it's only to be considered "pop" in the most obscure sense, and it goes to show Albarn has a pretty warped concept of the term, Plastic Beach provides the almighty shakeup that pop music has needed for some time.- Slant Magazine
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The album is an assemblage of smart, new wave-tinged garage-rock tunes, less a labor of love than a near-effortless studio session between two post-punk revival veterans that might have been recorded in the space of a few afternoons.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 28, 2012
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Judged as an expansion on Kozelek's craft, Admiral Fell Promises is a slight effort; it offers intimate perspective, sure, but the object of observation remains the same.- Slant Magazine
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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.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 15, 2013
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What makes Hello Young Lovers a more interesting album than many pop purists might give it credit for is how Sparks' anti-pop approach to song structure and instrumentation give their compositions both a weight and a replay value that they wouldn't otherwise have.- Slant Magazine
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Will's coup is how it keeps one guessing, and how Barwick keeps from relying on the beautiful yet impersonal sonic washes of her past work. It's the sound an artist, whose mysterious and celebrated process has ironically created theatrical and curated work to this point, finally achieving subtlety.- Slant Magazine
- Posted May 2, 2016
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Nada Surf have matured into a strong enough band to make an album like Lucky, which is full of such existential hand-wringing and one of the year's first great pop records.- Slant Magazine
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The pleasure isn't in the gimmick or the dress-up, but in the disciplined play of emotion behind them.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Sep 9, 2013
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There's definitely a smart-dumbness to what Shining does here: International Blackjazz Society sounds like Nine Inch Nails circa “The Hand That Feeds,” with an earnest deployment of such dinosaur vulgarities as cowbells, hard-boogie keyboards, and shout-along choruses.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Oct 22, 2015
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While the grooves are solid, there are few truly memorable riffs or solos to speak of on 72 Seasons. Even when the band does manage to recall the trappings of their early days, as on the thrillingly breakneck “Lux Æterna” or the Iron Maiden-style “Room of Mirrors,” the arrangements generally lack the intricacy and dynamics of their classic albums. ... This is more than made up for, though, by James Hetfield’s vocal performances.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 20, 2023
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At his most direct, he fully holds his own against the likes of [Ryan] Adams or Ron Sexsmith, and for his compositional skill, Idols Of Exile is perhaps a more consistent album than either of those two has released.- Slant Magazine
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The band's songs are formally simple but always smart, loud but neat. Nothing on Root for Ruin stretches much past four minutes in length; the album fits in with its predecessors in this respect, and if it feels slighter than Les Savy Fav's best work, it's only by dint of its faithful similarity to that earlier material- Slant Magazine
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- Slant Magazine
- Posted Sep 18, 2020
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In its ambitious attempts to revive conscious rap and push the envelope sonically, Attention Deficit may be one of the best rap releases of the year even while it lacks the focus of a central persona.- Slant Magazine
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W.A.R. is Monch's blockbuster, a marathon sci-fi tale set in some grisly faraway cacotopia.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 14, 2011
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Fortunately DOOM is unable to completely shake off his own best and worst habits, and so Born Like This contains its fair share of the rapper's classic screwball set pieces.- Slant Magazine
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It's one of those rare albums that manages to borrow just enough from its well-treaded sources to avoid charges of outright theft. That isn't to say that the band delivers anything truly new here, but they manage to present a paved-over musical tradition in a way we're not quite used to hearing.- Slant Magazine
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Despite its no-frills approach, Trying Hartz works solidly, presenting a satisfying microcosm of one of the world's most inventive and ridiculous bands.- Slant Magazine
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In what has been a truly dreadful year for country music, Chief is a surprise standout.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jul 25, 2011
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It's never quite a tour de force, but as a union of the Orb's heady roots with their spiritual ascendants' minimalist ethos, the album is a consistently satisfying groove machine, and a worthy entry to the upper ranks of the Orb canon.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jun 18, 2015
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While 2016's Not the Actual Events explores dissociative identities and 2017's Add Violence brims with paranoia about our increasingly simulated reality, Bad Witch moves past such insular anxieties and more directly acknowledges that society's chaos is the result of our collective hubris. ... Reznor conveys a bleaker and more visceral sense of desperation on the album's two instrumental tracks.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jun 22, 2018
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Most of Jesus Piece’s experimental tendencies are confined to intros and outros on …So Unknown. The album feels more defined by genre than the band’s past work. But there’s no denying that the anger running through it is contagious, and creates a stark contrast to the majority of recent pop-rock, which carries a mood of depressed resignation.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 14, 2023
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Every song on Volta sounds like it was birthed in no fewer than 10 months, if not five years. "Fun" hardly has an opportunity to enter the picture when Björk's now seemingly permanent fastidiousness remains her métier.- Slant Magazine
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Unsurprisingly, the album sounds best when it goes for broke; the more looped, harmonizing Krausses and miniature guitar solos, the better.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Feb 21, 2012
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Ultimately, Grossi's ability to marry elements of electro-pop, soul, classical, gospel, and other divergent influences into a cohesive, lo-fi brew allows You Are All I See to succeed as an evolutionary step beyond Active Child's synth-drenched origins.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 18, 2011
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