Slant Magazine's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    F.A.M.E.
    Sadly but predictably, it really isn't until the bonus tracks on the deluxe edition, when he drops a Bomb with Wiz Khalifa, that you ponder how Mr. Black and Yellow has hooked up with Mr. Black and Blue, and then you remember what's been hiding in plain sight throughout the entire album.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Strange Weekend
    These subtle, sublime moments are few and far between as the songs on Strange Weekend start to slope downward and into a blur of mediocrity.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kingdom Come
    If all of Jigga's future records sound as labored and flat as Kingdom Come, do we really need him back?
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Little Bit Longer
    Even if it stands to be one of the year's biggest sellers (which it most assuredly will be), Longer is hard to envision as an album that will allow the Jonas Brothers to transcend their place in this teen-pop cycle.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Anarchy, My Dear
    The biggest problem with "Admit It Again," and Anarchy, My Dear as a whole, is that its smart-ass barbs aren't aimed with the kind of precision that separates biting wit from regular old meanness.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Quicken The Heart
    For an album that so readily cruises along on autopilot, the absence of a satisfying lyrical presence keeps it resolutely sandwiched in the middle of the pile.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Real Power
    Real Power stands as a testament to the Gossip’s unyielding dedication to their signature style. Admittedly, reminding fans and critics that the band helped pioneer pop-punk disco isn’t an unsmart way to stage a comeback. But for anyone hoping that the Gossip might have evolved in the years since 2012’s A Joyful Noise, Real Power is likely to be a real letdown.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am Not a Human Being
    I Am Not a Human Being is kind of a crummy album, rife with laziness and repetition.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Five Ghosts
    The formula works better elsewhere (see the perky, airy single "Fixed"), but like the adolescent musings that serve as its inspiration, The Five Ghosts is, at best, awkwardly sweet and, at worst, fumbling and tone-deaf.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wake Up!
    Pedantic spoken-word sections heighten the feeling of this-is-good-for-you laboriousness and make Wake Up! come off as heavier than it needs to.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Six
    At times this fascination with dark, eerie sulkiness can have a certain kind of weird charm; more commonly, it's a grating, self-serious masquerade.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Higher Than The Eiffel
    The aforementioned hangovers, though, feel like just that, overly morose and saccharinely slushy numbers that sound labored and fail to give Higher Than the Eiffel the worthwhile breather it needs following those breakneck party numbers.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    LP1
    This a wholly acceptable effort, but it makes it clear that Stone is stalling out a mere decade into what looked at first like a promising career. It's time for her to throw the throwback shtick aside and really figure out what kind music she'd like to make.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Doo-Wops and Hooligans
    Doo-Wops & Hooligans kicks up no fuss, and shortchanges on its promise of both doo-wop and hooliganism.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    LotusFlow3r
    LOtUSFLOW3R only occasionally transcends the same anesthetized gloss that gummed up "3121" and "Planet Earth," both of which feature stronger songs, not that you'd know it beyond all that polish.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Outside
    Obviously, Tapes 'n Tapes wouldn't be content as a glorified indie-rock cover band, but what Outside lacks is a sense of what they would want to be instead.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Babel
    While the quartet may be perfectly competent musicians, though, their fundamental conservatism plays against them on Babel, making for an album that's entirely too familiar and safe.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    so sad so sexy
    So Sad So Sexy is a sleek, homogenous pop-oriented album that feels both conceptually half-formed and technically fussed-over.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Embryonic
    Embryonic, then, sounds like an over-correction to that trend, pushing the Lips's sound back into more experimental territory.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Title
    This blue-eyed soul is ultimately just pale.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Memories: Do Not Open
    Uunfortunately, the sound they've settled on is parked firmly in the middle of the road.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How Do You Do
    Hawthorne just doesn't have the vocal chops to pull off an otherwise solid album.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Aphrodite
    The entire album has the sonic consistency of cotton candy: It won't exactly give you a headache, but it could leave you with a stomachache.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Play On
    She still lacks the grit and the distinctive, intuitive phrasing of the best country singers, but the better moments of Play On suggest that she's capable of developing into more than a technically proficient cipher.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dawn of Chromatica
    If the original album favored pop hooks over musical invention, many of the versions on Dawn of Chromatica are noisy or just plain tuneless.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Outer South
    The result is an album that's unfortunately baggy and sodden with filler, which could have benefited from a little less camaraderie and a little more revision.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Star Is Born [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    There’s undoubtedly a strong 10-song album lodged at the core of A Star Is Born, but unlike the film, wherein an outsized sense of sentimentality is rendered affecting by the more grounded performances, there’s not nearly enough substance here to justify all the bombast.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shine
    The restraint that she shows in both her vocal performances and her song selection are a refreshing change of pace. Unfortunately, she still lacks the instincts of some of the genre's superior interpretive singers, especially with regard to choosing quality material.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Maybach Music Group Presents: Self Made, Vol. 3
    Perhaps just a little more scattered and weak than the previous two installments, the Rick Ross-governed Self Made, Vol. 3 achieves little out of the ordinary, while providing a few solid tracks that stand out from the general unevenness on display.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ashes & Fire
    Adams's songwriting may be as sharp as ever and better edited than it ever has been, but Ashes & Fire makes some terrific songs sound impossibly bland.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lollipop
    While the band maintains a glimmer of their former selves, writing sturdy, comfortable songs with a minimal capacity to surprise, Lollipop still sounds a little tired.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Sound of the Life of the Mind
    There's a pall of maturity over The Sound of the Life of the Mind that both unifies and wrecks it. It rejects, if only halfheartedly, the nerdy, masculine piss that once made the band such guilty fun.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Tragic Treasury: Songs From A Series Of Unfortunate Events
    The Tragic Treasury is rarely charming: instead of being faux funereal, dirges like "Dreary, Dreary" and "Things Are Not What They Appear" are just funereal.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No One's First, And You're Next
    Boring when they're not acting out, but too jarring when hitting their groove, Brock and company are forced to toe a finicky line between normalcy and absurdity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    True Romance
    While a few slivers of genuine spontaneity can be found throughout True Romance, particularly in the watery K-pop-esque opus "Nuclear Seasons," the sum as a whole feels rather forced.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Good Time
    Good Time, however, too often finds Jackson adopting unfortunate trends in modern country music in place of the thoughtful songwriting that characterizes his earlier work.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    MPLSound
    On an individual song-for-song basis, the lyrical hooks are even shallower than they are on LOtUSFLOW3R.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Million Masks of God
    When the band dabbles in more disruptive sounds that deviate from A Black Mile to the Surface, the effect is fresh and exciting. ... The remainder of the album, however, is composed mostly of midtempo songs that all similarly build to predictable climaxes.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Invented
    Invented doesn't entirely lose those attributes that make Jimmy Eat World such a doggedly likable band, but it struggles to know what happens when emo kids get over it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    She Is Coming [EP]
    The EP’s dubious employment of hip-hop tropes and graphic sexual metaphors reaches its nadir on ballroom-inspired “Cattitude,” part boast track and part ode to Miley’s female prowess.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett
    Cautionary Tales is underwhelming, but it's also a victim of context.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Boy King
    By blatantly exposing a core of raw sexuality, previously presented only indirectly in their music, the group ends up removing any possible release valve while stripping the songs of nuance.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Here I Am
    The inherent blandness of Rowland's persona makes for too much roundly mediocre material.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fragrant World
    The band's tendency to overreach may be muted on Fragrant World, but Yeasayer is still as earnestly silly as ever.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Teflon Don
    Ross's greatest tool is still his presence, which vouches for the strength of his persona when his lyrics can't.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fluorescence
    The musical bliss is short-lived, and the rest of Fluorescence is pretty much the musical equivalent of throwing darts at a wall full of sticky notes while blindfolded and drunk: Some happy accidents, but mostly a forgettable, sloppy mess.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    X
    One of the most contemporary (and least pleasant) aspects of X is its scattershot production, which gives it the focus-grouped attention deficit disorder more typical of a Gwen Stefani record than one of Minogue's laser-honed disco-princess home runs.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pete Yorn
    While that may not necessarily make Yorn any more distinctive on this album than on any of his previous efforts, Black's energy at least gives him more of an edge than the singer-songwriter has been known for in the past.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lioness: Hidden Treasures
    "Lioness" adds nothing of substance to the Winehouse narrative, nor do its individual tracks showcase the best of her writing or singing.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Somewhere Else
    Nothing on the album is overtly bad (except for the goofy blather of "Starman," notably the only upbeat love song on the album) and some of it is actually good (the wailing saxophone of "Sundown" is ghostly and surprising), but what does it offer other than comfort and familiarity?
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Will We Be
    Through supplementation and wider instrumentation, he's traded in quiet haunting oddness for drowsy tranquil oddness, an exchange that may at some time pay better dividends than it does here.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Observator
    While the album may improve on its predecessor, Observator still finds the Raveonettes engaging in far too many self-indulgent habits: They've left Hot Topic, but they don't seem to know where they're headed next.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    100 Miles from Memphis
    While it's admirable to hear an artist with such a well-established aesthetic branch out, 100 Miles from Memphis doesn't stretch far enough to work as either a contemporary soul record or as a purely retro-minded tribute.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Why You So Crazy
    Unfortunately, neither Why You So Crazy’s eclecticism nor its polish can make up for its lack of memorable songs. For all their stylistic diversity, most of the tracks here ride a single musical hook.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Brain Thrust Mastery
    Brain Thrust Mastery eschews the scenester party-and-sex themes of the band's sorta-breakthrough "With Love and Squalor" for more grown-up subject matter.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    the record
    Throughout The Record, Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker frequently return to the idea of an elusive search for identity. But they don’t seem to have found clarification just yet, failing to land on a collective identity or collaborative creative method that complements their myriad talents.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tron: Legacy
    It's all too clear Disney wanted the cachet, not the daft nor the punk. Trick yourselves into thinking the robots are twisting some radical new spin on the form if you wish, but I'm logging off now.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tribute To [EP]
    The covers attain a ghostly somnolence but also blend together, most of the color drained from the originals in favor of a uniform austerity.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Women + Country
    Dylan clearly set out to cut a classic country album in the tradition of Williams and Cash (and that other famous Dylan), but the end result feels more studied than spirited-somewhat like a poor period film, where the lovingly recreated sets and costumes only seem to highlight the bland performances.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Feedback
    Feedback, for the most part, disintegrates into a cloud of unremarkable noise.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Drive All Night [EP]
    Whereas the rest of the EP feels contrived, with Hansard coasting on grade-school-level insights into romance, the title track captures the controlled intensity that's been a signature of Hansard's dusty troubadour aesthetic.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Only Place
    The band sounds like they're struggling to come up with a new template, a feeling that leaves The Only Place sounding shiftless and adrift.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Colors
    At times, it seems as though Beck is grasping at something, anything, to add conflict and tension to this effusive album. But all he comes up with are the most well-worn of sentimental platitudes.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Slip
    Individual songs on The Slip aren't particularly dynamic; the album has two levels: loud and soft.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Penny Sparkle
    For all its dreaminess, Penny Sparkle is clinical and almost always predictable, despite the exotic murmurs of lead singer Kazu Makino.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Heroes
    Inconsistency and lack of focus mars Heroes, which relies too heavily on misguided collaborations that don't add anything of value to the album.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Minnesota
    It's the handful of tracks on which Jennings stretches beyond familiar troubadour conventions that are Minnesota's best.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Storytone
    Even though Storytone's gloppy Disney-movie strings and half-assed singing can be trying to sit through at times, the extent to which Young is willing to go to avoid resting on his laurels and making Even Longer After the Gold Rush is admirable. Namely, making an album that features almost none of the musical tropes listeners associate with Neil Young—or rock music in general.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too
    I Know You're Married would be a solid effort, but based on her own output alone, it's a considerable disappointment.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soft Airplane
    With a lack of lyrical development, an emphasis on sound effects is insufficient to make Soft Airplane memorable.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Music Speaks
    One can only hope she escapes the pitfalls of being a non-songwriting R&B singer in an inhospitable pop scene and finds collaborators who know what to do with a good old-fashioned powerhouse.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rolling Papers
    As a whole, the verses on Rolling Papers are so boring that I'm not convinced that even Khalifa finds them interesting. They seem to exist solely to fill space between the hooks, which are sung, tolerably, by Khalifa himself
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    So Runs The World Away
    The creaky structures he inhabits and the source material he chooses to pilfer are smart choices, good things that are highly redolent on their own. But the atmosphere of rough, old conceits scrubbed clean, with just enough dirt left to seem genuine, is ultimately a disquieting one
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stars Of CCTV
    Cribbing from Franz Ferdinand's sonic playbook (with a healthy dose of fellow revivalists Dead 60s, Kasabian, and--why not?--Kaiser Chiefs thrown in), Hard-Fi builds roiling, angsty anthems built upon Richard Archer's stark evocations of life in suburban London.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chloe and the Next 20th Century
    The album doesn’t possess the observational heft of 2017’s Pure Comedy, a post-apocalyptic survey of America’s anxieties and lamentable cultural habits. Rather, the narratives and wordplay found on Chloë and the Next 20th Century, while at times evocative given Tillman’s way with language, are comparatively toothless and too clever by half.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Sellout
    Unfortunately, The Sellout doesn't just embrace the fluffier side of the Gray persona, it smothers it in an awkward, goofy hug.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bloodless Coup
    Were Kirwan's production a bit meatier, Bloodless Coup might be able to overcome the lapses in the band's songwriting.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Family Sign
    Eschewing the dynamic pop and soul flourishes that made Lemons something of a crossover vehicle, The Family Sign is simply flat.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Swords
    Considering the quality of the singles drawn from "You Are the Quarry," "Ringleader of the Tormentors," and "Years of Refusal," it's an utter disappointment that Swords, the collection of B-sides from those singles, is so uneven.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Egypt Station
    While the loping acoustic guitar figure that drives “Happy With You” isn't nearly as compositionally compelling, it's one of the only other songs here in which it sounds like McCartney is actually singing about something real. ... There are a few other tonally comparable songs on the 16-track Egypt Station, but the rest are largely bogged down in some eye-rolling cliché of one kind or another.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Our Love
    Snaith eventually does work his way out of the darkness, and while the consistent production value and a pair of vibrant, energetic closing tracks keep the album from feeling like a total wash, it's also an uncharacteristically uneven effort from a generally consistent artist.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Paula
    Robin Thicke texts his estranged wife, Paula Patton, in the music video for the pointedly titled "Get Her Back," the lead single from said album, Paula. "I don't care," she replies. And it's likely no one else will either.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Raise Vibration
    Raise Vibration's more serious shortcoming is its lyrics, which stumble whenever they reach for grand proclamations on the state of the world.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Nextwave Sessions [EP]
    Eight years after their debut, this is still the sound of an adolescent band that, despite its persistence in tackling adult topics, hasn't yet found a way of approaching them in an adult manner.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    First Impressions Of Earth
    First Impressions introduces some subtle new colors to the band's musical palette... but the pervasive sense of inert boredom, which has been noted as a strength in the past, is difficult to shake.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Circles Super Bon Bon Sleepless How Many Cans? True Dreams of Wichita Monster Man Mr. Bitterness Maybe I’ll Come Down St. Louise Is Listening I Miss t
    Everything Soul Coughing once made darkly curious and subversive has become predictably benign, but despite its affability, Circles Super Bon Bon... can't quite shake the obvious negativity of its creator, who seems far more interested in tearing down the old rather than building something new, rendering the album a completely superfluous labor of hatred.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Til The Casket Drops
    Clipse seemed much more comfortable on Road, nesting inside the work of others. Casket provides no such comfort, finding them without their usual subject matter or a strong musical backbone, resulting in a clear sense of discomfort.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Punching Bag
    While Turner has often used his immediately distinctive voice to salvage some middling material, that isn't the case on Punching Bag.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Eclipse
    While Twin Shadow's first two efforts were defined by an uneasy balance between gaudy theatrics and finely detailed production, most of the songs here lack that innate tension, catchy but unsatisfyingly thin.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Light
    While working his broad sonic palette with ingenuity and verve, he sacrifices the opportunity to develop a sound that is truly his own. Light ends up with exciting moments, but few memorable songs.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    These Systems Are Failing
    While a curious, if somewhat jarring, departure from 2013's serene Innocents, this distortion-laden album too often blurs into cacophony and muddled by passive-aggressive calls for anarchy.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Mary Christmas
    A Mary Christmas is an undeniably listenable but sadly too-safe hodgepodge of department-store standards, kid-friendly showtunes given glockenspiel-enriched arrangements to seem more festive, and one or two white-elephant gifts from out of leftfield.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    TM:103 Hustlerz Ambition
    Unfortunately, he sounds far less in command on most of TM:103, never lost, but rarely entirely at home.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Taking Chances
    The laborious 16-track record purportedly finds the queen of adult contemporary-turned-Vegas attraction taking chances by modernizing her treacly power ballad sound with lots of overdubbed guitars and of-the-moment collaborators.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Salutations
    Ultimately, Salutations abandons the potent vulnerability found on the sparer versions of many of these songs, and muddies its tone with the uneven newer ones.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fading West
    Jon Foreman's ability to write hook-laden melodies remains, and he's an often poetic and perspicacious lyricist, but the themes of redemption and hope on Fading West are too abstracted, frequently degenerating into cliché.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    People Who Aren't There Anymore
    As on past albums like 2017’s The Far Field, the quieter passages here are projected with too much force to either serve as a contrast to the songs’ more bombastic sections or fully convey the import of the lyrics. This grows especially tiring on tracks like “The Fight” and “Corner of My Eye,” which are synth-pop equivalents of stadium power ballads. Were the music itself able to match the downbeat undertones of Herring’s words, it might pack a bigger punch.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Another World [EP]
    I wouldn't put it past Another World to grow on me, as Hegarty is one of those vocalists (like Tom Waits and Daniel Johnston) whose work initially strikes you as the weirdest fucking thing you've ever heard but magically becomes something you can't live without a couple of listens later, but rather than being as starkly demure and affecting as "Bird," Another World just seems underwhelming.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Interpreting The Masters, Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall And John Oates
    For now, the musicianship is there, and I can't fault them their enthusiasm in the Hall & Oates back catalogue. It's just that Sara's smile gets lost in the interpretation.
Page: