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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    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Missiles
    For every interesting and bold move involved in the writing and packaging of Missiles, however, the musical orchestration and production of the record is problematic.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American VI: Ain't No Grave
    If anything, the figure Cash presents here, a ghost of his former self, cobbling together his last artistic statement, only serves as a reminder of how great he once was.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nightcrawler
    It's the first album on which the distinctive, likeable laziness of his vocal style seems to have seeped into the production.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dreams and Nightmares
    The problem is that this pronounced personal narrative frequently buts up against the album's upper-crust trappings.... Still, Dreams and Nightmares delivers a few standout tracks and a ringing confirmation of the rapper's skills.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ambition
    Lloyd's chorus on "Sabotage" is easily the most immediately engaging portion of the album (it's actually quite a lot better than most of the material on his own overpraised King of Hearts), but the brunt of Ambition is as forgettable as big-budget rap gets.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Rarities
    “Here We Go Around Again,” an unreleased song from Mariah’s demo tape, and “Can You Hear Me,” a Whitney-esque piano ballad from the Emotions sessions, find her in fine voice but offer little insight into Mariah the burgeoning artist. By contrast, a live rendition of the jazz standard “Lullaby of Birdland,” recorded during her 2014 tour, allows Mariah to fully exploit the imperfections of her voice, lending the performance a lived-in authenticity often missing from the earlier tracks.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Indigo
    More complex ruminations are few and far between, with Tatum too often getting bogged down in generic binaries, from the fire and rain dichotomy on “Canyon on Fire” to a fickle romantic partner always “pulling me close” and “pushing me back” on “Oscillation.” Delivered with Tatum's vocals so prominent in the mix, these trite lyrical moments blemish Indigo's otherwise pristine musicality.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Twins
    Segall throws a lot of stuff against the wall to see what sticks, and not all of it does, but it's still impressive that he's capable of pumping out so much music in so many closely related veins without repeating himself.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Wretched Virile Lore
    For better or worse, though, the album illuminates qualities in Hardcore Will Never Die that would have been easy to either miss completely or conveniently ignore, making it a worthwhile supplement to an already exceptional album.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lost & Found
    At times, it's as if Smith's sheer vocal talent becomes a crutch that restrains her from treading into riskier musical terrain. A large part of the singer's allure derives from her vocal prowess, but she sacrifices invention here, letting the album fizzle out too quietly. Smith is at her best when she reinterprets classic R&B sounds and experiments with the color of her voice.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Warpaint
    Given Warpaint's complex, operatic highs, its experiments in minimalism and tranquility make for some awfully low lows, but there are worse things than a band that seems to be evolving in two directions at once.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Monsters Exist
    This contrast, however, between bouncy or turbulent beats and contemplative or cosmic ambience, which recurs throughout Monsters Exist, is so dissonant that it effectively gets in the way of the album making a cohesive statement.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oral Fixation Vol. 2
    Vol. 2 finds the singer straddling the line more than ever, one part Natalie Merchant and one part Jewel.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Euphoric
    The album’s second half leans too heavily on slow, subdued songs, and Georgia’s ostensibly personal lyrics rarely speak in anything but the most general terms. So while singles like “Give It Up for Love” and the title track make for rousing enough dance-pop, It’s Euphoric never quite rises to the promise of its title.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Long Island Shores
    With so little substance, Long Island Shores is simply pretty for the sake of being pretty.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Broken Hymns, Limbs, And Skin
    Except for a few slow numbers, which drag as the band overestimates the charm of their shtick, Broken Hymns works consistently, distracting from the staleness of its themes by burning them from the ground up.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Id
    Disappointedly, the glut of sampled soundbites, from an engine starting to gurgled vocals, tend to grate, distracting from the flow of the album, which also sadly lacks a standout track of the magnitude featured on previous Wise Blood releases.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Songs About Girls
    will.i.am's lyrics are almost appallingly bad enough to retract my impending endorsement of the album.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Humanz
    Humanz falters not when its concept runs thin, but when Albarn and his cavalcade of co-conspirators begin to run out of the meaty hooks that have defined Gorillaz's best work.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Magic Numbers
    High, lovely harmonies notwithstanding, a good 15 minutes chopped could've meant the difference between merely being noticed and creating a minor masterpiece of nostalgia-infused pop.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Infinite Arms
    Infinite Arms is a surprisingly understated affair.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bionic
    Sure, her voice remains full, brash, and loud. But ultimately, so much of what passes for hedonism on Bionic feels synthetic and compulsory.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nashville, Vol. 1: Tear the Woodpile Down
    Genre formalism is all well and good when there's genuine creativity and exploration behind it, but Tear the Woodpile Down exposes the limitations of Stuart's hardline conservatism.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Emeritus
    If this is truly the end for Scarface then Emeritus is a backdoor exit, an unassuming, professional album that quietly gets the job done.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Plastic Hearts
    Cyrus’s habit of enlisting high-profile artists from the upper echelon of a given genre continues here with appearances by Jett, Billy Idol, and Stevie Nicks, who all adequately do their thing. As usual, though, Cyrus is most indelible when her own voice takes center stage and the music mingles with and amplifies her messages of self-empowerment and emotional culpability. If nothing else, Plastic Hearts gives her license to unapologetically rock out.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living
    Skinner goes with the flow but the flow isn't pretty, and though dissonance is his strong suit, the conflict in these songs isn't so much located within them as it is in the space that separates them.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Red
    If Red is ultimately too uneven to be a truly great pop album, its highlights are career-best work for Swift, who now sounds like the pop star she was destined to be all along.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black Sea
    Black Sea is a headphone album, packed with fragile, briefly presented sounds that seem in constant danger of escaping unheard.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ruins Of Berlin
    Though his lyrics are underwhelming, his smart choice in collaborators and inventive instrumental cuts like 'Polish Work Song' and 'Grey Skies' more than compensate, making Ruins of Berlin both a testament to Romweber's ongoing influence and a compelling record in its own right.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rolling Blackouts
    Rolling Blackouts eventually circles around to the type of funky, percussive stuff that the Go! Team does best, though not before detouring through a few instrumentals-typically a mixed bag for the band, and no less so on this album.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mount Moriah
    When they keep their songs focused and kick up the tempo a bit, Mount Moriah is far more compelling.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Don't Look Down
    At heart, Don't Look Down is a vaguely hip-hop-inflected homage to '90s pop, not so much uninteresting as underwhelming and repetitive in its orchestration.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cyr
    The singer’s m.o. has long been to cram each project with every creative idea he has—an approach that, though effective during the Pumpkins’s heyday, now largely results in diminishing returns. It would be time better spent fleshing out songs that are too often merely shadows of ideas.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Welcome To The Dollhouse
    Dollhouse is a solid collection of appropriately vacant party jams, slinky come-ons, and modern, urban balladry.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    August Greene
    The album is admirable and at times rewarding for its sense of experimentation, but only for those willing to meet it on its own terms.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black Holes & Revelations
    The album is a black hole of pomp and nothingness, a perfect document of the times. So, to fully enjoy it, it's best to turn your brain off and let yourself get sucked in.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Press Play
    Diddy still doesn't have an original bone in his body or a fresh idea in his head, and he relies on his previously successful formulas... but damn if it doesn't actually work.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Furr
    Furr is country-chic posturing that works from a distance: as twangy background music for those elites who watch their politics on MSNBC.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Not Animal
    Not Animal is a more modest album that presents a shrewd view of Margot's strengths and weaknesses, indicating that the band is most successful when it doesn't try to be particularly complex.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'm Going Away
    The use of repetition as a substitute for size is intriguing, but in the end it has the same deadening effect as the band's earlier use of overcomplicated compositions, creating music defined by a few overpowering elements rather than its intelligence or melodic dexterity.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Uno!
    For all of the expansion in the band's aural palette, it's difficult to escape a sense of déjà vu on some tracks, which sound like only slightly altered versions of previous entries in the Green Day catalogue.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
    That Wolfgang positions Phoenix as a slightly hipper alternative to the Killers may finally break the band to a wide international audience, but it ultimately draws attention to how quickly trends shift in contemporary rock and how difficult it can be for even the most progressive bands to sustain their relevance.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A.K.A.
    The album features more guest rappers than even her 2002 remix album, and the standout "Acting Like That," featuring the always reliable Iggy Azalea, is handily the hardest beat she's ever bought. Unfortunately, A.K.A. also includes a slew of midtempo ballads whose soaring hooks and slick production are wasted on Lopez's reedy voice.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Golden Age of Apocalypse
    A little muscle, and maybe even a little heavy-metal menace, would have balanced the album out nicely.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Revelations
    Revelations is one step closer to their mutation into a more unified rock outfit.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Changes
    There’s a weightlessness to it that seems to signify the slipping of a long-held burden from Bieber’s shoulders. His most personal offering to date, the album feels like a reflection of actual experience as opposed to a projection of a fantasy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Life II...The Journey Continues (Act 1)
    Is the album a worthy successor to My Life? Not remotely, despite being a listenable chapter in Blige's ongoing Remembrance of Joints Past.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Golden Delicious
    Golden Delicious as a whole, feels like it has the potential to be great but falls short.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Evolver
    For a change, Legend doesn't constantly sound as though he's trying to impress the VH1 cognoscenti with his impeccable musicality. Sure, that's to say it's occasionally dumb, but oh so approachable.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Good Girl Gone Bad
    Lyrics are once again an Achilles high heel for Rihanna.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Safe Trip Home
    The album might be Dido's least adventurous to date, her brand of vanilla soul going down like a warm cup of milk.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Back & Fourth
    It seems Yorn has found his sincerity again....Yet Fourth has its fair share of missteps, most of them coming when Yorn abandons coarseness for a milky, lukewarm production.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rapprocher
    Underneath the litany of angular instrumentation, Rapprocher is, both musically and narratively, conventional glam-pop fare, but it's difficult not to admire how well the bedazzled glove fits.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fire Away
    While their verses might be disappointingly lightweight this time out, Ozomatli provides more than enough substance where it counts.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    @#%&*! Smilers
    Her wise, bitter lyrics never let her listeners off the hook; it'd be nice to hear her challenge herself as well.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Metals
    However gorgeous and warm Feist's voice may be, Metals is just too dull for her to overcome.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    COW / Chill Out, World!
    COW‘s inward-looking is often gray and formless, and suggests that Paterson and Fehlmann are indeed best understood when exploring the concepts they can’t understand.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    can'tneverdidnothin'
    Scal[es] back the turntable scratches, samples, and hip-hop beats that defined the striking and unique Everybody Got Their Something for more organic-grown productions.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Endless Summer Vacation
    The lyrical clichés that occupy much of Endless Summer Vacation do little to scratch away at the album’s blithe veneer, though at the very least they deliver on its promise of fun.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    99 Cents
    More often than hitting a sweet spot in between, the songs here are overly busy (like “Big Boss”) or short on ideas (the by-the-numbers “Before the Fire” and the psych-rock “Outside the War”), and the album's title turns into an unfortunate allusion to a warehouse stocked to the brim with cheap toys, none built to last.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future
    The album, which at just seven tracks long (and none of them 15-minute monsters on the order of “Juanita”) feels almost like a two-fisted EP.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Here Lies Love
    The roster's promising and the concept is offbeat enough to be brilliant. The execution? It could have been a lot more inspired. Unless you come to the record already a die-hard fan of each and every one of the guest vocalists, you're going to find yourself skipping around in search of highlights.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stone Temple Pilots
    It's not groundbreaking stuff, but it surpasses all expectations for a group who've spent almost a decade apart.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Apocalypse
    Here Bruner again shows that he has the tools for crafting tuneful compositions, but presents little that's dynamic enough to anchor an entire album, resulting in innocuous background burbles that never come off as especially attention-grabbing.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All Birds Say
    All Birds Say is worn down by its sluggishness and suffers overall from a surfeit of ineffectual good humor.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fantastic Plastic
    Plastic Fantastic isn’t essential or especially relevant--though the aforementioned “What the Hell’s Goin’ On” does capture a certain familiar sense of aging-liberal bewilderment. It is, though, a utilitarian product, offering up 12 newly recorded songs that will allow the band to get back on the road.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hard Believer
    Without enough concrete musical or lyrical details to anchor the album's songs, they occasionally become too abstract for their own good.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    High Hopes
    Morello appears on most of the tracks here, and he's largely an enlivening presence, electrifying Springsteen's revolutionary spark, but he still hasn't figured out how to open up a solo without changing the entire tone of a song. Springsteen himself has a similar problem, struggling to deliver pointed social critique without sliding into his comfort zones.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Far
    Here she leaves behind the flaky-as-adorable posturing long enough to salvage Far from its role as capricious sideshow, and so, too, long enough for listeners to get a glimpse of the songwriting talent that lurks beneath the peculiarity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Director's Cut
    The reinterpretations offer interesting what-if scenarios, tweaking and altering familiar material, but inevitably reveal more about Bush's fussiness over her own legacy than anything else.
    • 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.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Life In Cartoon Motion
    It's irreverent, in-your-face, sexually nebulous, and infuriatingly catchy.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Planet Earth
    While all three albums ["Musicology," "3121," and "Planet Earth"], at their best, contain precisely the sort of seasoned professionalism you wouldn't ever cite as an actual compliment, there remains a nostalgic pull that's no less electric for being completely anesthetized and overly rehearsed.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In Our Bedroom After The War
    'The Night Starts Here' is the kind of boy-girl baton-song that's become a signature for the band, with Campbell and Millan trading verses while we play analysts, and though this one is sufficiently cinematic and electro-psychedelic, it's not quite 'Your Ex-Lover is Dead.'
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American Utopia
    While American Utopia isn't as vital a statement as it wants to be, it's the sound of one of pop music's most idiosyncratic voices continuing to follow his wayward muse.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Summer Of Hate
    At times they recall labelmates Wavves, short of their devotion to fuzzy landscapes--another sonic comparison for an album that recalls the messy disorder of a tipped-over jukebox.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sculptor
    Sculptor's Achilles' heel lies in its skeletal song structures, which feel too flimsy next to the enormity of the album's message of eschewing complacency.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Atlantic Ocean
    Despite sometimes dissolving into monotony, the mood remains light, and Swift's playfulness, evidenced by moments like the falsetto opening of 'Lady Luck,' keeps things in check.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    La Roux
    At the end of the day, this is just good pop music.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Understanding
    Even the best tracks bobble like a helium balloon tugging from a child's clenched fist... but not quite forcibly enough to pull free.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Enemy/Lover
    Given a wider range of material to show off the group's considerable strengths (Jones is a powerful and expressive vocalist, and the band's control of texture and ambience is exquisite), Dreamers of the Ghetto could have produced a much more compelling debut.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Skelliconnection
    There's not much to any given song on the album to distinguish it from its obvious sub-genre counterparts.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    BE
    For better or worse, Be’s sights are trained on BTS fans, meaning the album is too insular for broader appeal.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fuse
    Even when Fuse is firing on all cylinders, it feels risk-averse, leaving one longing for an album that mines its gloomy outlook and ambiance for greater impact. As far as proverbial “comebacks” go, though, an exercise in pared-down style, where the music is a little darker, slower, and a bit more mature than what’s come before, is far from the end of the world.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    July Flame
    With [Jim] James, Veirs has proven that she's capable of breaking out of this pattern. Now she just needs to learn to do it on her own.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Firewater
    Much of Firewater has a blast-from-the-past feel.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
    In the end, the Texas band can't help but eventually indulge their desire to produce epic, guitar-driven film-score material, and after some initial feints into other territory, Take Care is business as usual.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ready For The Flood
    If there's nothing particularly innovative about Flood, it's nonetheless gratifying to hear Olson and Louris writing and performing together again, and hopefully the album is but a starting point for future projects.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Too Young to Be in Love
    Between the camping, the re-contextualizing, the endless musical cut-n'-paste, Hunx and His Punx throw up a lot of barriers between their listener and any kind of un-self-conscious appreciation of their songs.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sky Full of Holes
    The juvenile wordplays, ironic pop-culture references, and narratives about sad-sack folks undone by mundane, everyday minutia that are among the band's trademarks remain fully intact: The content of the songs on Sky Full of Holes is, by and large, as wry and idiosyncratic as their songs have ever been.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Canterbury Girls
    Canterbury Girls still succeeds at being Lily & Madeleine’s most personal and cohesive work to date, but the siblings too often seem as if they’re reluctant to let loose and lean into the music.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Under The Covers Vol. 2
    If Vol. 2 feels oddly rote, it'll still be interesting to hear how the pair might tackle the music of their actual contemporaries should they move into the '80s and '90s on subsequent outings.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Am What I Am
    There are some traditional country ballads and some flourishes of Dixieland-style jazz that give character to the album's production, but the overall collection comes across as slight, even fragile.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hold On Baby
    An album that might have had greater impact if it didn’t feel so literally and figuratively pre-programmed.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Deeper Than Rap
    Deeper provides more of the same flawless sonics, with production contributions from J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, the Runners, and DJ Toomp, and guest spots from Kanye West, Nas, and Lil Wayne. Amazingly, Ross himself has become less of an embarrassment on the mic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Learned The Hard Way
    Even if the album is stagnant from an artistic point of view, Jones and the DAP-Kings really do their damnedest to make it seem fresh.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Revelation Road
    Ultimately, Revelation Road needed more of that passion and range.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stiff
    This is the problem with the album's more ambitious tracks: They confuse rather than clarify the band's identity, and sound more like demos than full-fledged songs. ... Still, White Denim manages to slow the pace and discover its soul more than a few times here, most notably on the winking Al Green sendup “Take It Easy (Ever After Lasting Love).”
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anjulie
    Levine's production style isn't quite as edgy or intricate as his former colleagues', but it provides a lush, retro-soul bed upon which Anjulie lays her confessional lyrics.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Junk
    On a base, per-song level, Junk is a sturdy little workhorse of an album.
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