Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,119 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: 1,689 out of 3119
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3119
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3119
3119 music reviews
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    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Inside the Old Year Dying
    The music throughout I Inside the Old Year Dying rattles and quakes in stark contrast with Harvey’s studiously composed intellectual exercises. Which is to say, this is an album that gives about as much as it asks in return, even if its medieval trappings and intentional obfuscation do risk letting listeners walk away feeling more bewildered than moved.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Daddy's Home
    An impeccably produced album that deeply honors her arty influences and leaves room for complex and difficult lyrical themes that should please poptimists and indie kids alike.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Late Registration
    Late Registration's salvation (and, undoubtedly, Kanye's own) are when it basks in the sunshine after the rain.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Stay Positive
    It is not only the Hold Steady's best record, but acts as a culmination of all of the ideas, stories, musical paths and character journeys that they've so pointedly led us down before.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Reality Show
    Part of what makes her new album, Reality Show, so remarkable is how often it dares to foreground her pen over her pipes.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sleep Well Beast
    There are only a few uptempo cuts here, but unlike on the band's last few releases, each of them propels the album forward.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Walk Through Fire
    Yola seems capable of not only expertly mimicking the sounds of the past, but also creating something that will itself stand the test of time.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Un Verano Sin Ti
    Un Verano Sin Ti is more often than not fueled by the artist’s silky, pleading singing than his kinetic rapping. And rather than play culture vulture and disingenuously embody an ascendant style, Bunny doubles down on his heritage and cultural identity.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I See You
    It's by taking these types of chances and stepping out from their established aesthetic that the xx bares their self-professed anxieties, moving themselves into an audacious new direction.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Midnights
    Folklore and Evermore felt innovative in how they rebuilt Swift’s sound from the ground up, but despite its own idiosyncratic delights, Midnights ultimately feels too indebted to her past efforts to truly push her forward. If nothing else, the album proves she’s unwilling to operate on anyone’s terms other than her own.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Helplessness Blues
    Helplessness Blues succeeds because Fleet Foxes find a way to consistently balance the added level of nuance with their natural inclinations toward epic songcraft.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twin Cinema
    Best (and nearly perfect) when taken two or three songs at a time, as an entire album, Twin Cinema overstays its welcome. It's simply too much of a good thing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Drift
    The album is powerful stuff, and though it's unlikely to be heard by many, it's even more unlikely to be forgotten by those who do hear it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Atrocity Exhibition
    The music is dementedly, nihilistically danceable. The propulsion of certain tracks seems designed to irrevocably drag the listener into Brown's contemplative, paranoid psyche and deep-welled emotionality and, though stylized, intimates the horrors he's seen and felt.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Semper Femina
    The result is an album that seeks to push folk's innate naturalism into an even more progressive space, eschewing any trace of outmoded roles and stereotypes. In doing so, Semper Femina never feels strained or disingenuous, the effortless antithesis to the studied, conservative posing of so much modern folk.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Have One On Me
    The end result is a strange, and strangely pretentious mess: an album pitted deep in the psychic world of stories that nonetheless can't figure out when it should begin, when it should end, or which parts are even worth the audience's attention.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    El Rego et Ses Commandos
    [It] works both as a general career summary and a standalone album, identifying another vital, exciting voice from a continent whose musical significance is still being discovered.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Things Have Changed
    Songs like those find Things Have Changed making good on its promise: the chance to hear a legendary interpretive singer reach deep into one of pop music's richest songbooks, and to refashion its contents in her own image.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Good News
    While Megan is still figuring herself out stylistically, she’s undeniably in touch with herself. Throughout Good News, Megan doesn’t spend all that much time referencing her beloved alter egos: the pimp persona of Tina Snow, the lustful Hot Girl, and the relatable Suga. Rather, she coalesces qualities of each in her lyricism and delivery, suggesting that the mask is off and she’s being wholly, 100% herself.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ultra Truth
    While the almost hour-long album does suffer the occasional lull, at his best Avery effortlessly pushes the sounds that influenced him into new territory.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Veckatimest
    The album dips and tips and ultimately soars as a result, Rossen and company having turned near-disaster into sonic triumph.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bitte Orca
    They've done it here, and Bitte Orca is close to a masterpiece.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Devotion
    Despite the myriad references [Sade, Aaliyah]... it's clear Ware has found a voice of her own on Devotion.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Classic Objects
    Perhaps above all else, Classic Objects is thoughtful or, really, defined by thought. The song structures are clever, the production is deeply layered, and the lyrics, which largely catalog Hval’s thoughts, are writerly and complex.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Walking Proof
    On Walking Proof, she’s emerged wiser and more confident, ready even to dispense advice of her own. She also finds herself in full command of her broad stylistic palette, melding influences as disparate as backwoods country and garage punk into a cohesive signature sound.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
    I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass is a bloated, overreaching long-player in the tradition of bloated, overreaching long-players like Sign O' The Times, Exile On Main Street, and London Calling. But it's also business as usual for Yo La Tengo.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chemistry Of Common Life
    Chemistry is a natural and seamless masterpiece that might never have happened but for the band's own need to thumb its nose at expectations.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Girl with No Face
    Almost every song on Girl with No Face was written and produced by Hughes, and this creative autonomy gives the album a personal touch that past releases like 2017’s CollXtion II lacked. The songs here are imbued with an obvious newfound strength and confidence.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Old Ideas
    The voices that accompany him here are by turns syrupy and overwrought, and they work less to melt the icy tenor of the singer's voice than to soften the tracks into complete mush.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vertikal
    Mirroring the Fritz Lang film's portrayal of man operating and essentially becoming a part of a machine, the Swedish band plays their instruments meticulously and repetitively.
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