Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,121 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: 1,691 out of 3121
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3121
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3121
3121 music reviews
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Volta
    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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Reign of Terror
    Unsurprisingly, the album sounds best when it goes for broke; the more looped, harmonizing Krausses and miniature guitar solos, the better.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    You Are All I See
    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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Repave
    It's an abstract and occasionally disjointed album that ultimately finds a rewarding balance, both sonically and lyrically, between the obscure and the deeply personal.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carrier
    Carrier is a disarming reminder of the therapeutic power music can hold.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nabuma Rubberband
    Their music now meticulous and agile, Little Dragon has matched their ambition with execution, and the result is an album that, for all of its exhaustive details and complex rhythms, rarely feels cumbersome.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Gods No Masters
    No Gods No Masters suffers from a few too many ideas and stylistic excursions, but in a business where stasis means certain death, its eclectic approach is a testament to Garbage’s refusal to simply mine the same sonic ground over and over for an easy profit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star
    The music itself provides the surface glitz, unspooling in sumptuous tapestries in which no element ever takes center stage for long, swapping out repetitive beats for a style that makes an ethereal asset of its mutability.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The King Is Dead
    Those tracks, which favorably recall early R.E.M. and the Replacements in both content and style, suggest the album The King Is Dead could have been had the band exercised more precise, more genre-aware editing.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All Eternals Deck
    This self-assessment has never been more accurate: All Eternals Deck is comfort food from an unlikely kitchen.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
    Washed-out electronic textures, vocodered singing, and gentle piano envelop much of the album in a pastoral haze, and while Mogwai's signature guitar dynamics are both present and predictably melodramatic, they eschew the balls-out heavy-metal tantrums that Burning so capably highlighted.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Dark Age
    For better or worse, Little Dark Age is an album for its time: moody, backward-looking, a little depressed. ... This is a soundtrack for the long hangover.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Two Eleven
    Two Eleven is at its core a singer's album, and it's the clearest portrait yet of Brandy's instrument.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Good Luck
    Good Luck fits roughly into similar experiments by Backxwash or JPEGMAFIA, but it’s even harder to pin down to a single genre. It’s an album that testifies to the liberating potential of making a racket.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hesitation Marks
    In almost every way, this is the least outré effort NIN has proffered since Pretty Hate Machine. It's focused but inquisitive, as opposed to declarative.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues
    Between the Buried and Me is dependent on their ability to generate momentum, by virtue of which they can keep listeners engaged in these unwieldy but ultimately rewarding compositions. By that standard, The Parallax is a success, though its true significance will be determined by how the band capitalizes on that momentum when they complete the two-part series with their forthcoming LP.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Don't Stop
    Annie deserves credit for attempting to stretch, both vocally and lyrically, but she's better off when quietly lamenting lost love or championing the power of the dance floor to bring people together, as she effectively does on the opening track 'Hey Annie.'
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chastity Belt
    With production assistance from Jay Som, Chastity Belt presents a tangible thickening of the band’s sound, with the introduction of strings on “Effort,” “Rav-4,” and “Half-Hearted” and keyboards on “Split” adding texture to their characteristic fuzzed-out guitar arrangements. Each melody and every drum fill feels intentional, and the group’s shared vocals and light-as-air harmonies seem like a meaningful statement of where they are as a band—and as friends.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stitch of the World
    Merritt's chemistry with her band makes everything here feel lively, but don't let that obscure her ease of craft.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hummingbird
    While there's nothing as immediately engaging on Hummingbird as Gorilla Manor's "Wide Eyes," the album compensates with beauty and seriousness.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shadow Offering
    Demonstrating their versatility throughout the album, Braids locate something of a sweet spot, embracing a restrained plainspokenness without completely veering from the outré flourishes and melancholic, midtempo jams that are their specialty.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Most Normal
    Aside from sludge rock veterans like Cherubs or fellow experimentalists like Lightning Bolt, it’s hard to think of another act capable of creating such daringly deranged slabs of noise.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Red Barked Tree
    There's enough good to be found here, as well as in the band's restless exploration of new avenues, that Red Barked Tree can stand on its own in the enduring continuum of the band's progress and not just as a pale imitation of older material.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Civilians
    Even in its rare maudlin and melodramatic moments, the album is saved its many precise, stainless sounds: Henry's compassionate, reverb-shaken voice, Bill Frisell's excellent fretwork, a bewitched pump organ, a snare hit that always echoes a bit too long.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hypnotic Eye
    By the time the second half of the album rolls around, the near-constant procession of sluggish tempos and downbeat refrains begins to wear.... These missteps aren't enough to erase the positive impression of Hypnotic Eye's best moments, but they may cause you to wish that Petty would just lighten up already.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Days
    The album's 10 songs manage to both hold up well individually and amount to more than the sum of their parts, and it's an album capable of entrancing its audience within a calm mindset free from unnecessary ties to genre-snobbery.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kiss Each Other Clean
    This is not an edgy or restless record, but rather introspective, warm, and almost tropical.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The New Year
    Fortunately, no surprises are really needed, as the New Year's technique, while somewhat dated and profoundly unadventurous, still holds solid in all its sleepwalking, ponderous glory.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nothing Hurts
    Nothing Hurts is a more honest, more somber take on the current garage wave. There's no sense of silliness or sniggering irony; these songs were written with a heavy heart, and that makes the record a lot more captivating, and a lot easier to invest in.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
    The album is a much bigger sounding, musically diverse effort than its concise, uniform predecessor, featuring cellos, horns, and mellotrons, as well as a renewed focus on the versatile fretwork of lead guitarist Chris Funk
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    E-MO-TION
    With an uncanny melodic gift that enlivens even the most tired sentiments and a chameleonic ability to seamlessly transition between disparate production styles, Jepsen proves she's worthy of those comparisons [to Taylor Swift and Rihanna].
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Some Nights I Dream of Doors
    In much the same way that he juxtaposes Afropop and R&B, Obongjayar alternates between modes of vulnerability and swagger throughout Some Nights I Dream of Doors.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    La La Land
    Not only does the band’s output remain as inexhaustible and freewheeling as ever, the album stands as some of their best late-career work.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fibs
    The songwriting on FIBS is just as experimental as the arrangements, at least on the album’s first two-thirds. ... f there’s a dip in momentum, it starts at FIBS’s most conventional song, “Limpet,” which follows a more typical guitar-rock arrangement. Downtempo tracks like “Ribbons” and “Unfurl” also suffer in comparison to the album’s richer, bolder experiments.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Every Open Eye
    Every Open Eye is pop music with sharp edges and high stakes.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mykki
    A pop debut of disciplined eccentricity and disarming force.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Shadow I Remember
    The intensity of Cloud Nothings’s sonics—all of the wailing noises a guitar can produce as well as hard-hitting, double-time drumming—provide a cathartic outlet with which to confront the pains of self-definition and personal growth in an ever-amorphous world.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Reason Why
    The performances have always been there for Little Big Town; The Reason Why provides just more evidence that there isn't another act in any genre of popular music with greater skill in arranging vocal harmonies. At this point, there's no logical reason that this shouldn't be Little Big Town's long overdue star turn.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Proof of Youth
    Every fade-in and chord change on Proof of Youth is perfectly calibrated to make for seamless song-to-song transitions and for an album that seems to end entirely too quickly.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Abandoned City
    By allowing himself to trust his instrument and push himself to make bolder, more resonant statements, Hauschka has created the finest work of his career.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs
    The result is an album that pops with attitude, relaxed but never lazy, a groove-driven album structured around Quest's minimalist drum attack, Kirk's old-school rhythm n' blues licks and wahs, some Curtis Mayfield-style string arrangements, and a lead singer whose voice sounds oddly youthful, as though channeled from his Imposters days.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Forgiveness Rock Record
    the bulk of the tracks are the work of a septet consisting of frontman Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning, Sam Goldberg, Lisa Lobsinger, Justin Peroff, Charles Spearin, and Andrew Whiteman. That makes for a more streamlined, accessible album than many of BSS's devotees might expect, but it also makes for a more mature recording.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Where The Wild Things Are [OST]
    If there are occasional missteps (even for a soundtrack to a children's film, one song that hinges on spelling is plenty), Where the Wild Things Are stands as the rare soundtrack that's an essential listen.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Big Roar
    The Joy Formidable has been backed with the recording budget to fully realize their vision. They're a band with ideas, perhaps a little too much confidence in them, and one that's benefitted from an album clearly assembled by expert hands.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Total Loss
    By focusing both on overt dynamics and dozens of quiet, underlying ripples, Krell has lent his work a subtle weightiness that becomes clear only after repeat listens.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gliss Riffer
    What results is a swirling accumulation of sound, forming into manic campfire roundelays emphasizing themes of community and recovery, the scrappy spectacle of beauty shaped from shiftless sonic waste.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Notes of Blue
    After that opening salvo, though, Notes of Blue is driven more by stylistic immersion than a renaissance of Trace-level songwriting. While this results in the occasional lapse into bland formula (namely the joyless dirge “Midnight” and the drifty acoustic piece “Cairo and Southern”), Farrar for the most part sounds utterly invigorated by his new sense of direction.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ancient & Modern
    If Ancient & Modern can't stand up to the band's best efforts, it's more than a worthy addition to an imposing body of work.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Let's Get Out Of This Country
    While the songs are undeniably beautiful and even fun, the music provides a vital balance to the album's substantial thematic heft, and it's that combination that makes Let's Get Out Of This Country one of the year's best pop albums.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Making a Door Less Open
    A set of dizzyingly creative and often uncategorizable songs.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Big Doe Rehab
    Given that a relevant part of his appeal has always been his eccentricity and willingness to take risks, a record mostly defined by his adherence to the tried and true is bound to feel like a bit of a copout.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Never Learn
    Though she's largely eschewing Youth Novels's bubbly synth-pop and Wounded Rhymes's slick power ballads for simpler arrangements and derelict instrumentation, Li still manages to make the ramshackle music of I Never Learn sound grand and, perhaps more impressively, inject a kind of dark romanticism into her depictions of crippling separation.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Michael
    Almost every other song on Michael relies on a similar arrangement of choirs, pianos, and organs, which risks becoming tiresome, though its sonic divergence from most mainstream American hip-hop today is refreshing. In that sense, the album is a kindred spirit to the prolific British collective Sault, who incorporate lush R&B and gospel into their eclectic sound.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Colour The Small One
    Repeat listens reveal the album to be what the one-time Zero 7 vocalist describes as a "slow burner," a druggy mesh of acoustic guitars, keyboards, and lush, cinematic string arrangements.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Brood X
    Time has done little to dull the band's dive-bar swagger and spastic groove-making, and has had no effect on the caustic pin-up posturing of lead singer Cristina Martinez.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Everything Will Be Alright in the End
    In their best work, unashamed flaws and vulnerability become a secret weapon, even when it's slathered in squealing bait for a future Guitar Hero release like it is on "Lonely Girl," which finds the band finally casting off its slacker straitjacket.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Clearing
    The album will reward listeners who are willing to let it grow on them.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    El Pintor
    The band has delivered something even better here: an elegantly simple, aggressive album that understands and acknowledges its own past without nostalgia or bloat.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    How Do You Love?
    Throughout, these songs depict human connection in all its messy glory, making the case that the glory is worth the mess.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tarot Classics [EP]
    Tarot Classics might be nothing more than a pleasant, irreverent distraction, but Surfer Blood probably wouldn't have it any other way.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    White Crosses
    Against Me!'s roots in punk and newfound interest in arena-rock should make them doubly disposed against any kind of subtlety, which makes it all the more refreshing when White Crosses only occasionally veers into the self-serious terrain for which both genres are known.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Guns Don't Kill People...Lazers Do
    Guns comes with a plot that has absolutely no bearing on the album's songs or list of guest collaborators. That its ostensible backstory makes for little more than some colorful, comic-inspired cover art keeps the album's focus where it should be: on some of the year's most compelling beats.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The '59 Sound
    While they might not be the most original band on the block, the Gaslight Anthem's interpretation of their influences makes for one of the more rewarding punk albums of the year.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Chaos
    By bringing at least a little bit of an edge and a more distinctive point of view to their songwriting, and by throwing themselves into their performances with real fearlessness, the Futureheads demonstrate meaningful growth here.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Brighter Wounds
    An album that's grimly effective at conjuring unease.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yard
    Whereas the earlier album was full of light, poppy beats, there’s more nuance to be found in the saturated, driving hooks here.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Something
    Something could end up a strong and satisfying default listen for forward-thinking pop fans.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rhett Miller
    He sounds like a pro here too, turning in uniformly high quality performances, but without much thrill or excitement.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    SBTRKT
    This is an album that's clearly designed with immediacy in mind, from the ever-grinding bass to the generous supply of playful pop flourishes, and its best songs will get bodies moving by night even if they don't quite stick in the head the next morning.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Brandy Clark
    Brandy Clark mostly pulls back on the spirited provocativeness of Clark’s earlier work, with lyrics about loss accented by a musical motif of heartfelt strings, but its standout tracks deploy the traditional themes and sounds of country in inventive ways.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ruins
    The album's lyrics are full of heartbreak and dashed dreams, so perhaps it was the Söderbergs' fragile state of mind that inspired them to venture tentatively out of their comfort zone.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Body Talk, Pt. 2
    Pt. 2 is further evidence that Robyn is still one of the most consistently innovative major-label pop artists working today.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Time Skiffs
    The album finds Animal Collective gracefully adapting their kaleidoscopic, existentially focused songs to the universal theme of life’s ephemerality. By definition it just means we’re hearing some vitality elude them too, as their usually energetic music gives way to wistful reflection.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Go
    Even if the era of Sigur Ros is indeed over, Jonsi's solo career contains all the exhilarating promise that a new beginning should.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On a Mission
    It's an album that only aims to give off the sensation of having rubbed up, briefly, against someone incredibly attractive on the dance floor and having the chance, missed encounter resonate for days afterward.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wonderland
    In rightly avoiding the sweeping, anthemic electro jams of compatriots like Robyn and Niki and the Dove, Berglund offers an unpretentious and hypnotic listening experience, the kind of album that allows its audience to be a member of a nameless, nebulous crowd immersing itself in pure street spectacle.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Confess
    While both of Lewis's albums are brimming with nostalgia, Confess jettisons Forget's sense of caution for adventure and a greater spectrum of genres, making it an altogether superior effort, and one of the few modern indie releases that handles its '80s reverence with dexterity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Conor Oberst
    It's no surprise that Oberst is able to pull off this style exceptionally well, but what impresses most about the record is how its relaxed vibe--the album was recorded with the specially assembled Mystic Valley Band in just two months at a private house in Mexico--carries over into Oberst's songwriting.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Songs in A&E
    It runs a little long, and it doesn't break much new thematic ground, but the album's great depth of feeling and its sure-footed execution outshine such minor problems.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hug of Thunder
    Hug of Thunder thrives in these quieter moments, which depart from band's established sound in order to play to specific vocalists' strengths. The album's more discordant and propulsive tracks are more of a mixed bag.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Watch Me Fall
    Watch Me Fall, the emphasis is more on quality than quantity, a focused sense of attention which flowers here, each song brimming over with hooks.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eskimo Snow
    Alopecia and Eskimo Snow may be classic examples of beautiful, expressive sad-sackery, but I hope Wolf realizes that there are colors in the rainbow other than black and blue.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Payback
    Lyrically, Swain brings it, and the album's conceptual structure is sturdy enough to support nearly 90 minutes of nimble versification.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ganging Up On The Sun
    The album is often as strong as Fountains Of Wayne's Welcome Interstate Managers.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?
    For the most part, though, it’s the album’s more stylistically adventurous songs—like the propulsive “Easy to Sabotage” and “Reese,” which hits on a very particular sort of ‘70s-style jazz-inflected folk-rock also recently explored by the likes of Clairo and St. Vincent—that leave the greatest impression.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trying To Never Catch Up
    Power-pop with brains that doesn't try too hard.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Two Suns
    Dark, but never needlessly so, Two Suns offers a rich, distinct world of subterranean lullabies, spacey timbres, and ghostly beauty.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Myth Takes
    Myth Takes is a record that's tough not to enjoy, even while you're wondering if you shouldn't.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Obsidian
    For Obsidian, Wiesenfeld has simply stripped off the top layer of fluff to expose the raw pathos beneath his work. It is, as a result, a much more thematic and personal effort.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Avalanche: Outtakes & Extras From The Illinois Album
    The more interesting discussion to be had about The Avalanche is whether it says more about Sufjan Stevens or everyone else that a collection of even his second-tier material ranks among the most superior releases of the year.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Yes, I'm A Witch
    The hit-to-miss ratio is high.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Real Emotional Trash
    The joy of listening to Malkmus's songs has always been the involvement the listener takes in separating the "truth" from the "spoof" (much like with other oddball geniuses like Robyn Hitchcock or Tom Waits). There's plenty of both here, but more importantly, there's enough interplay between the two to keep things interesting and delightful.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Back Room
    Leavening the melancholy with a tense, literate sense of foreboding, The Back Room flows like an obsidian wave from first song to last.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Down There
    Down There may not be inherently more complex than the standard Animal Collective album, but its deliberate languidness, its songs measured and exposed as opposed to the usual frenzy, lends itself more fully to an exploration of how carefully the songs are shaped.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Unfinished Business
    Earle's decisions are always in service to the individual songs and complement Jackson's dynamic performances without overshadowing them.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Feed The Animals
    Feed the Animals, while perhaps not as fresh as "Night Ripper," is a sweaty, neon-lit, seizure inducing, off-the-wall, utter delight.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Too Will Pass
    Hirway's music is a little too gauzy for its own good, but there are enough hidden surprises... to keep you wide awake, and the album is so majestic that it remains with you like a cherished memory... even if it is a fuzzy memory.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Get Closer
    Get Closer plays out as vintage Urban. Considering how long it's been since he really hit his marks this well, that makes the album a welcome return to form.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grace
    The album is a sort of homecoming but not a return to basics. As these songs of experience prove, she’s grown far too much for this album to feel like anything but a fresh new chapter, even as it draws a connection to all the places she’s been.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All Things Will Unwind
    She inevitably succeeds by walking this fine line, a quality that gives her music its own stamp, saving it from the trap of uninspired pastiche.
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