Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,124 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: 1,694 out of 3124
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3124
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3124
3124 music reviews
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gloria
    For as much as Smith tries to step out of the box, they still sound most comfortable playing to their previously established strengths.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dying To Say This To You
    Slick and propulsive, the quintet needs a little meat on their songs to help elevate their slavish '80s enthusiasm into something a little more memorable.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Automaton
    Musically, Automaton possesses a freewheeling swagger that's energizing and intensely danceable, and Jamiroquai updates their familiar brand of disco and funk into something that feels fresh and progressive. But unfortunately Kay doesn't have anything new to say, as his views on society, technology, and relationships are trapped in a bygone era.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everyday Is Christmas
    Sia too often sounds like she's singing with a mouthful of Christmas candy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Living Thing
    In addition to a deficiency of hooks, Living Thing is further crippled by an all too obvious absence of charm.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Déjà-Vu
    Deja Vu reminds the listener of something, all right: every other song currently playing, as Donna Summer once sang, on the radio.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Remember Me
    The sense that Hudson's singularity was lost on the I Remember Me team is reinforced by the fact that we've heard almost all of these songs before.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
    The psychiatric exercise of creating the album may have done him some good, but fans of Deerhunter's transcendent rock will have to wait for the band's next album if they want the kind of catharsis that is only hinted at here.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Kind of World
    A strangely rockist album that ignores the importance of hooks and melodies and then makes the mistake of equating lo-fi production with seriousness.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bitter Rivals
    While "24" might be the best song Sleigh Bells have penned to date.... The rest of the album doesn't fare so well, and like the proverbial Potemkin village, its bravado is illusory, its songs precarious, one-dimensional façades that sag under anything more than a passing listen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    You & Me
    You & Me is a thoroughly Walkmen-esque album, however tautological it may be to say so.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am the West
    Judging by moments like these, when Cube's performance is allowed to take center stage, I Am the West becomes an engaging hip-hop record.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Made In China
    A confused, sloppy, childish, conflicted mess.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Californian Soil
    Their third album, Californian Soil, is so “current,” filled with so many of-the-moment trends, that it winds up feeling anonymous.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Happy In Galoshes
    Galoshes is a fascinating mess.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wonders of the Younger
    There are plenty of "real" songs on Wonders of the Younger, and the more simplistic sing-alongs sound boorish and annoying in their company.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Strength In Numbers
    You could say Strength in Numbers is all bark and no bite, except there's not any bark either.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    5.0
    5.0 is never overtly awful, but it definitely sinks into the zone of mediocrity occupied by so many mainstream rap albums, where they sit like dishes moldering beneath dirty water.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Celestial Electric
    Celestial Electric settles into its midtempo shuffle early on and rarely strays from it and doesn't do enough to command attention when it does.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Return of Mr. Zone 6
    The Return of Mr. Zone 6 proves to be not just a return to making music, but to the same damning patterns that have left him content with his own mediocrity.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Live from the Kitchen
    As with so many of the tracks on Live from the Kitchen, the material isn't good, and Yo Gotti doesn't strain himself trying to save it.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Traveling Alone
    With her extraordinary voice having gone AWOL, and with her producer having evidently fallen asleep at the mixing board, Merritt can't overcome Traveling Alone's fundamental dreariness.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tao of the Dead
    I can't imagine why anyone would want to hear another half-hour of this crap, but if you've got brain cells to spare after Tao of the Dead's wonky, caterwauling sendoff, then by all means, put on your +2 Boots of Moshing and get to it!
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Born This Way: The Remix
    It's best enjoyed on its own flawed, bombastic terms.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Best Damn Thing
    The Best Damn Thing is a big step back for an artist who was just starting to grow up.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Beginning
    The Beginning, the Black Eyed Peas's sixth and least original album yet, is the sound of the pigs' blood dumped on Carrie White's head congealing into a sticky, hardened scab of forced good times.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    55 Cadillac
    It's hard to speak ill of W.K., whose insistent excitement is disarming, and though the album is a mess, it's shiftless meanderings further his ethos of refusing to take rock stardom seriously.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Devil's Rain
    The Devil's Rain is the work of a band that aspires to give the genre little more than its answer to "The Monster Mash."
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Snoop Dogg Presents Bible of Love
    A stultifying two discs of competent but generic Christian platitudes.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Motion
    Regrettably, such ear candy [like "Blame"] is few and far between.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Blacc Hollywood
    This sense of puzzled division remains the only really interesting thing about Blacc Hollywood, an album that's remarkable only as a ghostly portrait of a half-formed figure prowling the fringes of success.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Alright, Still
    The production on tracks like "Shame For You" and "Alfie" is fantastic, and there are plenty of catchy melodies and clever samples, but Allen is a poser who lacks charisma, bites off of everyone else, and is so sickeningly contemptuous of everyone but herself that it makes the pretty, melancholy piano-and-drum-loop ballad "Littlest Things" seem like a farce.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mature Themes
    It's another tiring exercise from an artist who may never tire of releasing such proudly hideous messes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Robed in Rareness [EP]
    Despite the fact that Robed in Rareness runs about the length of an episode of your average sitcom, its songs are so vaporous that one may have a difficult time remembering them. Put bluntly, the album underscores just how much Shabazz Palaces is running on fumes.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Only 1 Flo, Pt. 1
    The fact that he sings many of his own hooks might seem like a useful skill, but the combined blandness of his singing and rapping only increases the overwhelming blandness of Only One Flo, an album that seems insistent on reminding us how dispensable he actually is.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Grey Oceans
    Undoubtedly containing their best material since their debut, Grey Oceans has the unfortunate inability to get all that material in the same place.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Feels
    Feels fails to come together as a coherent whole.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Me vs. Myself
    In the end, A Boogie plays it too safe, and in the process, ultimately proves how accurate the album’s title really is.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sundark and Riverlight
    The album neither works on its own merits nor captures what's made Wolf one of today's most compelling musical talents. Sundark and Riverlight takes one of the most captivating, progressive catalogues in contemporary pop and makes it sound like a Picnic with the Pops concert.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    United Nations of Sound
    In between the record's one marked high point and its half-a-dozen contemptible lows, the former Verve frontman takes the United Nations of Sound to places he's been countless times before.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Strange Weather, Isn't It?
    Simply put, Strange Weather, Isn't It? is beat for the sake of beat. !!! has certainly mastered the means of dance-rock, but they haven't mastered the ends.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Carnival Ride
    Carnival Ride simply doesn't offer anything for the unconverted in terms of Underwood's growth either as a vocalist or as an artist.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Exclusive
    There's still nothing very "exclusive" about Exclusive at all.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    New Moon
    Whenever the Men establish any semblance of momentum, they quickly squander it.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Somebody's Miracle
    If she still manages to retain a major label recording contract after this bomb, that'll be the real miracle.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tomorrow Morning
    In stark contrast to its title, Tomorrow Morning is dull, dark, and hopeless.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mr. Beast
    Simplicity doesn't make Mr. Beast unpleasant, just dumb.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dumb Luck
    The beats are so incongruous and unnecessary that the only way to read the album is as a quirky novelty.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Zeitgeist
    Zeitgeist is the Pumpkins' most aggressively metal album to date. But heaps of guitars, vocal overdubs, and ridiculous effects don't mask a lack of inventiveness or even plain ol' quality songwriting.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tiger Suit
    Tiger Suit fails because it doesn't refine or advance Tunstall's songwriting in any way when compared to her previous efforts.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Japanese Motors
    Amid the sobering headlines explaining the collapse of high finance and a heated presidential election, Japanese Motors feels superfluous, not sunny.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Feel That Fire
    Having good taste in collaborators and influences doesn't make up for how often Bentley repeats himself here though, and it isn't enough to keep Feel That Fire from being more than a tremendous disappointment.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Supermodel
    Had Supermodel ended with this potent one-two punch, one might be inclined to view the rest more charitably. Sadly, it finishes with two bits of acoustic muzak ("Fire Escape" and "Goats in Trees") and a bid to beat Imagine Dragons at its own game with the kind of frantic Meatloaf-goes-electronica favored in YA-movie soundtracks.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    MTMTMK
    Decidedly un-fun... Stuffed with manufactured Euro-pop, stale preset beats, Auto-Tuned vocals, and other assorted fallbacks, the album lacks both the harmonic precision and jubilant, vista-inspired mood that defined Mwamwaya's modern rendition of Malawi music on Warm Heart of Africa.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hello Waveforms
    The album is distilled down to Orbit's basic, knob-twirling ambience but stripped of any and all personality.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Certified Lover Boy
    Drake comes across as an artist who’s bought into his mythos and persona a bit too ardently. ... The production on Certified Lover Boy is svelte yet airless, filled with lots of solemn piano lines and muted snares but absent of big flourishes or attempts at pop crossover. It’s an approach that’s likely aiming for tasteful restraint, but the effect is languid and rather directionless.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Li(f)e
    Splashed with the marks of two styles veritably at odds with each other, Li(f)e is a messy example of creative head-butting resulting in a conflicted whimper of an album.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Laws of Illusion
    Laws of Illusion sounds both effortless and effort-less, and McLachlan has proven that she's capable of more compelling work.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    One Of The Boys
    While One Of The Boys isn't a good country album by any stretch, it also isn't offensive or reductive in any of the ways that made her two prior albums such problems.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hands All Over
    Hands All Over won't fulfill Levine's ambition to redefine Maroon 5's identity: If anything, it only steers the band further from the potential suggested by their 2002 debut, Songs About Jane.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Saturnalia
    They were probably aiming for hypnotic or dreamy, but except for the cinematic bookends 'The Stations' and 'Front Street,' the slow dances mostly crash-land in Snoresville
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Stand Still, Look Pretty
    Really, all there is to be said about The Wreckers is that, in playing country star dress-up, they're reasonably pleasant and inoffensive, which puts them a bit ahead of a good deal of what's currently popular in country music.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Jessie James
    While she's able to pull off that bad-girl vamp far more convincingly than Underwood, that isn't saying much, and James certainly doesn't hold a candle to Aguilera at her skankiest.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Alter The Ending
    The leaden pillow talk of Alter the Ending deigns to simulate a whispered avowal of wounded love delivered straight to your ears, but Carrabba's lyrics suggest someone who needs you, not someone who loves you.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Still Standing
    It's pop at its most unembellished and bland, which is especially disappointing for an album that enlists big-league producers like Jermaine Dupri and Missy Elliott.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Magna Carta Holy Grail
    Jay proves less of a presence than ever, and his rapping is lifeless and anemic enough to skirt self-parody.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Yes!
    Unfortunately, his wide-lens worldview leaves Yes! feeling like the musical equivalent of a G-rated sitcom.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Crush Songs
    Boredom isn't the worst feeling an album can conjure; a sense of wasted opportunity and squandered potential is a wholly graver offense.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Travellers In Space And Time
    An insufferable post-twee jaunt which represents the messy sound of a band fooling around with a studio full of toys.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ryan Adams
    He may have matured in the last 14 years, but there's no indication that's been good for his music, which on Ryan Adams feels lazier and more watered down than ever before.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Another Fine Day
    Another Fine Day is blandness personified: syrupy vocals and forgettable melodies stretched out over 15 tracks and 65 dull minutes.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    New Life
    With 11 different producers credited on just 10 songs, it's no surprise that New Life is so scattered and uneven, but the album still sounds shockingly cheap.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Further
    Further is by definition not the most embarrassing music of their career--merely the most boring.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Como Ama Una Mujer
    The problem is that Lopez easily ages herself by a decade or two. In other words, Mama Lopez is probably going to love this album.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lines
    The root of the album's failings lies in Lynch's failure to take risks.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Cheek to Cheek
    Gaga comes off more as a dilettante than an aficionado on Cheek to Cheek.... Bennett doesn't fare a whole lot better, his otherwise charming performances strained throughout. The pair's solo efforts, particularly Gaga's clumsy interpretation of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" and Bennett's surprisingly pitchy rendition of Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady," only serve to spotlight their shortcomings.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    With a Little Help from My Fwends
    Most of the covers on With a Little Help from My Fwends don't aim for creative rearrangement; they tend more toward pointless sabotage.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    One Of The Boys
    'Mannequin' features some cleverly written lyrics, but Perry doesn't possess the grit or vocal prowess to follow through, and the title track is like No Doubt's 'Just a Girl' sans personality and conviction.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    All Or Nothing
    The calculated monotony of All or Nothing's set isn't only predictable--it's downright boring. The entire album is stuck in the missionary position.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Based on a T.R.U. Story
    Overall, there's little to recommend about T.R.U. Story, with the album perhaps best serving as a warning that not everyone can make the transition from pinch hitter to bona-fide star.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fixin' The Charts, Volume One
    Like the band's name, which reeks of lazy jokery slapped onto a tiring concept, the album is trite, cute, and completely forgettable.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Austin
    Yes, Malone is still able to whip out some sticky refrains, but the songs here all follow the same overly simplistic pop structure, to the point that their catchiness is less an affirmation of his songwriting talents and more of an inevitability of pop formula.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fever Dream
    The fireside warmth that made songs like “Dirty Paws” and “Human” feel so intimate has dissipated in favor of squeaky-clean production, leaving the album feeling generic and non-specific.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wondrous Bughouse
    With both the humor and production style of his densely layered music remaining overwrought, Wondrous Bughouse leaves a distinct impression that it was a lot more fun to make than it is to listen to.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Long Road Out Of Eden
    They're proving that they're still commercially relevant, but the calculated, tepid Long Road Out of Eden isn't likely to influence another generation of musicians.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Someone To Watch over Me
    Boyle has proven herself capable of doing one thing and one thing only, and Someone to Watch Over Me simply doesn't change that.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Postcards from Paradise
    With its chintzy synths, plastic horns, and feather-lite reggae (the stiff, dunderheaded "Right Side of the Road") and lifeless white-guy funk (the bleating "Bamboula"), the album might as well be made up of outtakes recorded 30 years ago.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Goodbye Alice In Wonderland
    While Goodbye Alice In Wonderland is a return to form for Jewel, said form is bland, mostly colorless, and devoid of any truly memorable cuts that elevate the album to a disc worth spinning more than once.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    O.N.I.F.C.
    Surprises are few and far between.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Funk Wav Bounces, Vol. 2
    Outside of a few standouts—like “Obsessed,” where breakout dancehall sensation Shenseea’s deft wordplay and bouncy timbre strike a nice contrast with Charlie Puth’s gravely tenor—there’s zero discernable identity to the album on a track-by-track basis.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Postelles
    At their best, the Postelles sound recalls Elvis Costello, only poppier and sans drollness; at its worst, it's grown-up pop-punk with a weak handle on irony.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Trigga
    Trigga is otherwise designed like a Hollywood blockbuster: squandered talent, obvious themes, and fleeting moments of creative excellence that stick among the clichés.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Dark Leaves
    Twelve years into a career made leaden through a devotion to keeping up appearances, Matt Pond PA finds itself spinning in an ever-deepening hole, where questions of good and bad become secondary to the material's unvarying refusal to do anything but match expectations.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Morningwood
    Sure, Morningwood is trashy, enjoyable, and utterly insignificant entertainment, but so is shotgunning a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings
    The electric guitar interludes sound obligatory, particularly when paired with lyrics that don't approach immediate or visceral
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Red Pill Blues
    Listening to Red Pill Blues makes one yearn for an era when there at least seemed to be more room for genuinely ambitious, artful Top 40 pop. In other words, I'll take the blue pill.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In My Mind
    Stylish and confident to a fault, Pharrell's success as a solo artist is, unfortunately, pretty much where the album title says it is.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    When You Found Me
    When You Found Me is what happens when a talented songwriter and a skilled band shoots for the hills and misfires.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    I'll Be Your Girl
    The eight-minute, two-part “Rusalka, Rusalka/Wild Rushes” stands in stark contrast to the rest of the album in almost every way. ... By comparison, the rest of I'll Be Your Girl feels painfully half-baked.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Callus
    Unfortunately, Gonjasufi's attempt to turn his solidarity with the angry and the dispossessed into a musical concept is too blandly realized to be convincing.
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