Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,117 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 35% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 62% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Who Kill
Lowest review score: 0 Fireflies
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,687 out of 3117
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3117
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3117
3117 music reviews
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    • 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
    • 60 Critic Score
    Young Heart
    While Birdy meets the warmth of the album’s production with vocal skill and sensitivity, the overall effect is a very beautiful album littered with clichés that muddle its emotional impact. Still, there are seeds of great ideas here.
    • 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
    • 60 Critic Score
    Strays
    Strays continues in the classic rock-inspired direction of 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started, breaking from the neo-traditional country music that put Price on the map. The arrangements employ slide guitar and keyboards—even xylophone on “Time Machine”—with a punchy yet spacious mix, but the album flaunts its influences a bit too transparently.
    • 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
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harry's House
    The album both sees Styles cementing his status as music’s premier sensitive, shy guy and growing comfortable enough within the pop idiom that he inhabits to push against it—but only ever so slightly. Styles may be a fashion trendsetter, but with Harry’s House, he continues trying on different styles in an effort to discover his own.
    • 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.
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