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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    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wild and Free
    For his latest release, Wild and Free, he rarely feels the need to stray outside this tried and tested outline: Each track bounces along with a carefree groove and exudes blissful vibes without really offering anything fresh or innovative, but is there really any new ground to break in a genre that reached its creative zenith over 30 years ago?
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Magic Place
    In the end, The Magic Place is a beautiful, ambiguous diversion better suited as a companion soundtrack to some experimental film or art installation than as the debut for a promising young singer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unorthodox Jukebox
    While not an unqualified triumph, Unorthodox Jukebox is a step forward.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A.H.A.T.H.H.A.F.T.C.T.T.C.O.T.E.
    Nothing on this album hooks quite like True Widow's darkly romantic highlights (check out "Duelist" or "Bleeder" if you want to hear True Widow's gothic revision of the '90s alt-rock template); instead, all but a few of the tracks here sound like variations on that album's "Sunday Driver."
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    II
    It's their densest and most detailed work to date, but without the cathartic spirit of their live shows (Gamelan was written largely in a live setting), II sounds stripped of the music's previous rapture.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Live It Out
    Think of Metric as a poppier Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Breeders and think of Live It Out as another step toward indie-pop splendor.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fastlife
    Jonas certainly can't match someone like Timberlake in terms of a defined aesthetic or presence, but at least he and his team had the smarts to enlist producers who know how to construct solid pop songs.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shrines
    Purity Ring is trying to do too much, and true to the less-is-more adage, the busier Shrines gets, the emptier it feels.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Free To Stay
    An arresting collection... The only real criticism you can level at the sisters is that about halfway through the album, everything begins to sound the same.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anxiety
    Despite all its plasticized production and cartoon antics, however, what makes Anxiety so endearing is that it's the candid expression of an artist with nothing left to hide, and something real to share.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Before I Self Destruct
    Before I Self Destruct plays as a prudent step back. It's not that 50 has suddenly become terrifying, but the album possesses a sense of latent menace that's been left unexplored since his early mixtapes.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bloom
    An anthology of pretty but aimless ambient rock, and a starkly disappointing regression after the thoughtfulness of 2010's Teen Dream.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    An Object
    While there are times when the band seems complacent, they still have plenty of sounds left to explore and destroy.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Farm to Table
    In casting off the lo-fi chaos of Live Forever and, thankfully, most of its flirtations with hip-hop, Bartees strikes a somewhat anonymous note with this album’s well-executed but rather straightforward rock, replete with several showy guitar solos.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
    Ocean Blvd traffics in some nimble, effervescent melodies, a few memorable vocal passages, and the occasional tuneful duet (Father John Misty proves to be an exceptional bedfellow on “Let the Light In”). But the album feels more like a placeholder in Del Rey’s discography than a truly audacious chapter in the singer’s blossoming late-period reawakening.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Flesh Tone
    Her new album, Flesh Tone, sounds dated in the worst kind of way-that is, not enough to sound retro-cool, but enough to sound totally uncool
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One More Time...
    It doesn’t exactly reinvent the pop-punk wheel—it also could’ve stood to lose about half a dozen songs—but its brightest, most exhilarating spots are a welcome reminder of what made the trio so iconic in the first place.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Convivial
    while Convivial sometimes sounds urgent (as on album standouts like the soaring, gothic 'Love You All' and the bright and twitchy 'Gets Along Fine'), virtually nothing about it sounds truly fresh.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Look To You
    For the most part, I Look to You manages to sound completely contemporary without the use of guest rappers, dumbed-down lyrics, or slang.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wasting Light
    Wasting Light appears to be just another good, if forgettable, entry in the Foo Fighters catalogue.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Xenophanes
    The feel is still sketchy and somewhat improvised, but there's no sense that these songs are simply impressionistic doodles.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hendra
    Hendra is such an impressively executed time capsule that it contains not only all of the pleasantries of the genre, but also its excessive earnestness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Real Thing: Words And Sounds Vol. 3
    The Real Thing isn't exactly a step down from the last volume, 2004's "Beautifully Human," but it's conceptually even less diverse, which makes it her weakest album to date.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Doll Domination
    Like the Dolls's debut, "PCD," the new album could use a little more of that cabaret style and a little less of the anonymous, by-the-numbers R&B and dance formulas that have become the modern girl-group convention
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tears, Lies, And Alibis
    Her production instincts are spot-on, never overindulging in the freedom afforded by her role as the producer. Unfortunately, Lynne's songwriting isn't as sharp here as it has been on records like Suit Yourself and Identity Crisis.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Leaders Of The Free World
    The album is a reverb-laced dirge, a slow-motion version of "you're prettier after three beers." Unfortunately, Elbow's lyrics--while plenty fatigued, especially coming from the disinterested vocal cords of lead singer Guy Garvey--are pretty sober.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sawdust
    Sawdust will still fill in the void for fans--to which the album is dedicated, natch--while they wait for a new LP.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Colorado
    Its highs—vintage Crazy Horse guitar workouts, a small handful of charmingly intimate ballads—are intermittently marred by the same sort of problems that have characterized Young’s recent solo work. This includes particularly tuneless vocals and a tendency toward clunky, Facebook uncle-level environmentalist and political ranting.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Songs of Innocence
    From the nails-on-a-chalkboard solo of "Sleep Like a Baby Tonight" to the whining guitar strains of "Every Breaking Wave," the Edge's melodies and atmospheric licks are the real star of the album, which is otherwise marred by the kind of slick MOR pablum that plagued the band's last few efforts.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Not Your Kind of People
    Not Your Kind of People adheres so doggedly to formula that it often sounds dated... There's no indication that the band has evolved much.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Year Zero
    Reznor seems to eschew depth for surface explosions and instant gratification, and the result is a finished product that, while decent on an individual track, doesn't hold up as Year Zero progresses.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Isn't It Now?
    The breathtakingly gorgeous “Stride Rite” is about as pensive as Animal Collective has ever been. Composed of a myriad of cascading piano chords, the song amounts to an eerie, ethereal experience about the many heartbreaks that come with maturation, one expressed with a level of clarity that’s sorely lacking from the rest of Isn’t It Now?
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Long Player Late Bloomer
    On his previous albums, Sexsmith's choices of producers haven't always played to his strengths, but Rock's light hand makes Long Player Late Bloomer the best sounding record in Sexsmith's extensive catalogue.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Obliterati
    The Obliterati is underwhelming not because it's bad, or weak, or mediocre, because it's none of those: it's just not essential.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beast Epic
    The sneaky-sounding arpeggios and the hushed, fragile vocal performances that defined albums like Our Endless Numbered Days are eschewed in favor of bright strumming and unbridled joyousness, rendering most of Beast Epic undeniably pretty but ultimately toothless. That's not to say Beast Epic doesn't sometimes explore hefty themes.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In Our Nature
    These songs are never less than lovely, but they're never really more than lovely either.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vulnicura
    When the singer finally begins to emote dynamically in the album's second half, that's also when Vulnicura's musical foundation comes apart.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shook
    TThe group consistently proves their mettle as musicians throughout Shook. But the sequencing of both the songs’ individual elements and the tracklist as a whole is less than the sum of the parts.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jesus Is King
    There are flashes of genius throughout, moments that insinuate where Kanye could go next with his music. In a sense, the album’s modest pleasures play to its (intended) message, which is supposed to be one of human fallibility and the prospect of improving oneself. But Kanye is eventually going to have to confront the serious limitations that his faith is putting on the range of his art’s expression.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Man On The Moon: The End Of Day
    From its bombastic title to Common's annoying narration, Man on the Moon vies for both a bigger pop platform and indie credibility.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Head Over Heels
    Chromeo's formula is well-suited to producing unpretentious, likeable pop-funk; it's just too bad that it's never felt more like a formula than ever before.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Center Won't Hold
    The Center Won’t Hold clocks in at just over a 30 minutes and lacks a certain spark—a song with the barn-burning intensity of “Entertain” or the heartrending emotion of “One More Hour.” In many places, these songs feel derivative in a way that the band’s music never has before.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Michael
    Michael rarely serves up anything that will have its listeners making a b-line for the dance floor.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love at the Bottom of the Sea
    There's still a feeling of something missing here, and while the material is much stronger than on the band's most recent releases, there's also a sense that these are the first 15 songs Merritt wrote for the project and not the best of a larger selection.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Junto
    Even in their diminished current form, Basement Jaxx still have a facility for turning pure cheese--dusty pianos scales, boilerplate diva-soul squawking, and tacky synthetic brass sections with "Yamaha" stamped on the side--into unabashed cheesy fun.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's All True
    It's All True takes a sullen half-back step into the Junior Boys' mood-lit comfort zone, sounding not so much like capitulation than the chastened partying that follows an especially bad hangover: Last night things got a little out of hand, so tonight they're just having a few friends over to drink and play old dance records.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    GhostDeini The Great
    So, there you go, Ghostface, you've given us time to reflect on your weird, surprisingly lengthy career while enjoying some choice and not-so-choice songs from your panoply of albums.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Goldenheart
    Richard is a talented artist, and her musical palette and tenacious personality remain consistently interesting, but when it comes to conveying emotion, falls back on the same tired tropes that have made many conventional R&B acts feel so exhaustingly familiar.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla [EP]
    More difficult to embrace than earlier Grandaddy releases.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lightning Bolt
    Years removed from the raw emotion and desperate appetites of youth, Pearl Jam has slipped into alt-rock elder statesmanship as one would a comfortable old sweater. And as Lightning Bolt mostly attests, it's a decent look for them.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Invaders Must Die
    You'd think a group that leaned so heavily on their capacity to shock you off wouldn't wear this unabashed regression as well as they do.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Talking To You, Talking To Me
    In looking beyond the confines of the often stuffy alt-country style of Rabbit and their underwhelming debut, Fire Songs, Leigh and Chandra come up with a sound that capitalizes on the richness of their vocal harmonies.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lotus
    By virtue of the fact that Lotus is Aguilera's shortest album since her debut, it boasts less filler, but also fewer obvious standouts.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    G I R L
    G I R L may have benefited from a few more introspective trips back to the drawing board.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweet Heart Sweet Light
    Throughout Sweet Heart Sweet Light, the lyrics are as thin as the songs are bare, and with lines like "Don't play with fire and you'll never get burned," the band feels dangerously close to becoming a parody of itself.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rome
    While it's difficult to imagine there being a large demand for this kind of music, it's impressive how little the producers and performers behind Rome seem to care. Like a lot of love letters, it exists as much for the sender as for the recipient.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Among the Leaves
    Among the Leaves may not be the most captivating way to spend 70 minutes, but it's a valuable effort nonetheless, a deeply felt record of one man's never-ending struggle with himself.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Errant Charm
    Vetiver weren't particularly freakish purveyors of freak folk to begin with, but in becoming so deliberately inoffensive, The Errant Charm makes them sound more like a Shins cover band than an act with its own distinct identity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Later...When the TV Turns To Static
    Later isn't quite the world-conquering rock opus their debut turned out to be, but it proves that Glasvegas has effectively shaken off their second-album hangover.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Finding Forever
    Finding Forever is something to be admired, even if it is uneven.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Boys & Girls
    Boys & Girls is a fine album, full of sturdy Southern-fried blues performed with swagger and verve. As the proper debut for a band that's built its reputation on the fearless pandemonium of its live shows, however, Boys & Girls is curiously and deliberately subdued.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cannibal Sea
    Cannibal Sea is a mellow concoction well-suited to fans of cerebral indie pop.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blackout
    For every hot, of-the-moment track, though, there's something like the nonsensical 'Hot As Ice,' which was co-penned by the thoroughly talentless T-Pain and might have worked two albums ago but just sounds retrograde here.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crayons
    The music is harmlessly listenable, and the requisite nods to her dance-floor legacy, like the sweeping, dramatic house anthem 'I'm a Fire' and the lockstep 'Stamp Your Feet,' are (at the very least) no less opportunistic than the latest albums by Madonna and Janet Jackson.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everything Is Borrowed
    Everything in the entire album is really just catching up to Skinner's words.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love to Love You Donna
    The lesson isn't so much "don't mess with perfection," but rather "don't bother trying to gild the lily of genius. To uneven ends, the collection of newly commissioned remixes in the tribute compilation Love to Love You Donna dance around that notion.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Angel Guts: Red Classroom
    Angel Guts is yet another example that the world needs a guy like Jamie Stewart treating music the way Jamie Stewart does: painfully, harshly, intuitively, and with psychotic aplomb.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dame Fortune
    In short, a breezy DJ set attuned for meditative easy listening. When this approach clicks, the results are nothing less than sumptuous, a rich panorama of material organized by an artist whose greatest talents seem to lie in curation.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Xscape
    In the end, Xscape justifies its existence with a handful of potential singles that stand up to Jacko's peerless oeuvre, all of them about love's delirious power.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sun, Sun, Sun
    Sun, Sun, Sun is a likeable enough album, sure, but it leaves only the most faint of impressions.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    To Willie
    The fact that the album works may speak most to the strength of Nelson's original material, but To Willie certainly has a creaky, good-natured charm, is light on frills, and puts a clear focus on the songwriting.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Serpentine Prison
    While Serpentine Prison may invoke familiar accusations of dullness, it’s refreshing to hear Berninger’s disaffected songwriting style take on a more grown-up perspective.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    King Animal
    The album is less a triumphant return than an example of what happens to most middle-aged rock bands: They've returned as a slightly more conservative version of what made them famous in the first place.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mind Chaos
    It's the enthusiasm of the performances that makes Mind Chaos work, but the fact that it's always dialed up so high also works against the album, as though Hockey is insisting a bit too much that they're fun.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blown Away
    Although the album is still a far cry from being great on its own merits or from being a fully realized, well-calibrated statement of artistic identity, it's nonetheless a welcome surprise to hear Underwood finally making some substantive headway toward recording music that aspires to be more than merely pleasant and safe.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gigaton
    Pearl Jam has been locked in cruise control since the late ‘90s, and their latest, Gigaton, is largely more of the same.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Planet's Mad
    While it’s culled from a mélange of styles and influences, Planet’s Mad manages to stand on its own for its sonic depth and detail. And even if the album’s themes aren’t fully articulated, Baauer’s use of bass, constantly elongating and amplifying, succeeds to evoking a sense of doom.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Curse Your Branches
    Still a little dry at times, Curse Your Branches is saved by its attempts at lightness and levity, a positive step which shakes the singer out of a funk of self-serious gloominess.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nineteeneighties
    Phillips's husky tenor makes this collection of college radio staples feel less like ironic cash-in and more like a genuine, affectionate nod of gratitude.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    True [EP]
    Even under a half hour, it still manages to wear itself out.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us
    Though Nothing's eerie lullabies are sweet in their own sing-songy way, the album's more energetic moments only serve as a frustrating indicator of Thibodeau's potential—if only he would think outside of his usual (voice) box.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cannibal
    Ke$ha doesn't branch out in any significant way here, so it's unlikely to do for her what the similarly packaged The Fame Monster did for Lady Gaga.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Boarding House Reach
    A postmodern assault of freaked-out sonic ataxia, it's messy, wildly uneven, and at times even close to unlistenable, but its sheer audacity makes it utterly intriguing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Droppin' Science Fiction
    The album mostly succeeds, though, especially where its ambitions reach beyond standard social-issue theorizing and rap-game bashing.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Silence Is Loud
    Silence Is Loud tells a fairly coherent story, of a person trying to salvage a relationship but weighing skepticism about how worthy it is of being saved. Archives, though, is ultimately unable to wring enough pathos from the narrative she presents. She’s a skilled designer of breathless jungle soundscapes, stocked with immersive details like aquatic synths, endless breakbeats, and jagged basslines, but she hasn’t fully mastered the autobiographical soul-pop mode.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    How I Got Over
    They're driven, even though their latest venture is stylistically the most inert, contemplative, offputtingly soft music they've possibly ever released.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cole World: The Sideline Story
    Amply stocked with warmth and charisma, the only thing Cole World really wants for is the kind of out-of-the-park highlight that would pull the whole album together; as is, it shows off the scattered but considerable strengths of a talented rookie whose potential for long-term success is palpable.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
    Anohni’s charting of various cycles of decay and change have the weight and import of a Greek tragedy. It’s a pity, then, that so much of the music on My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross underserves her anguished storytelling.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Great Misdirect
    As the album stretches on, it's hard not to notice that some of the unbridled enthusiasm that made Alaska and Colors the heavy, heady trips that they were has been sacrificed. That's forgivable. The type of a maturation process that Between the Buried and Me has embarked on is never easy, and the record shows that few bands from rock's progressive edges pull it off.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Saviors
    These songs may diverge from the ones that made Green Day a household name, but three decades later, they continue to strike a balance between teen spirit and maturity.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    VII: Sturm und Drang
    For all its, well, sturm und drang, the bulk of Lamb of God's latest is pretty formulaic.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Sweet Escape
    It's not that The Sweet Escape is an unwelcome diversion or that it comes too soon on the heels of Stefani's debut (it's been two full years), but it's starting to feel like No Doubt's future—you know, the one left in question after 2001's Rock Steady, the band's third consecutive creative zenith—is being squandered amidst all the solo stargazing.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    MAYA
    It may be an above-average album, but its aesthetic matches her persona only at its shallowest levels, in the thinness of its ideas and the often-forceful ugliness of its message.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Alpinisms
    The dual harmonies and inherently hypnotic cadences render music that is largely exhilarating occasionally monotonous.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Defend Yourself
    Defend Yourself still suggests a creator with an obsessively huge record collection, only the heady variation of explored genres seems more boilerplate, a sense of variety for variety's sake rather than a desire to put a unique stamp on old musical tropes.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Writer's Block
    There's lots of sunny '60s pop that was prominent on PB&J's previous records ("Start To Melt" is the most successful one here), but the group has expanded their palette and broadened their strokes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Champ
    Give them a couple more albums, and this thoughtful young band might become a touchstone for the next generation of prematurely nostalgic indie-rock upstarts.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Comedown Machine
    Comedown Machine remains a pretty good album, possibly the least characteristic thing they've released to date.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Casablanca Nights
    There's a hell of a lot of air amid Casablanca Nights's piecemeal, electronically transferred elements. Just not much oxygen.
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