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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    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Do It Again
    Röyksopp and Robyn share so much sonic DNA that their team-up is almost self-defeating, blurring the distinction between the two to the point where their respective quirks are essentially scratched in favor of a cohesive but far too clinical production.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Red River Blue
    Red River Blue may be a significant step forward for Shelton, but he's going to have to be far more consistent in his song choices and steer clear of reductive "I'm so country" shtick like "Good Ole Boys" if he hopes to keep pace with the quality of his wife's albums.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Different Ship
    With A Different Ship, Here We Go Magic has essentially removed the "psych" from psych-folk and replaced it with monotony.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gutter Tactics
    As they see it, new president or not, America is still a menace to the rest of the world. This will never change, and apparently, entrenched as they are in a morose pit of doom and gloom, neither will Dalek.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bury Me in My Rings
    While the band's previous record, Sun, Sun, Sun, was a pleasant and occasionally inspired set of summer pop, Bury Me in My Rings plays too fast and loose with its genre pastiches and is a scattershot affair as a result.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Spirit If...
    When Drew tones down his approach on tracks like 'Safety Bricks' and 'Gang Bang Suicide,' the result is underwhelming and seems to want for additional input.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Black Dirt Sessions
    [It's] an album that feels far too blandly somber, ignoring the feel-good clamor that can make Southern-rock revisionism so much fun.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The North
    The North's ultimate undoing isn't that it exudes so much schmaltziness, but that it sounds awkwardly and almost unconsciously dated, similar to the most recent offerings from indie-pop rockers Minus the Bear and Cold War.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beautiful Thing
    While there's certainly no shortage of sonic experimentation woven into this relatively more adventurous album, the British singer-songwriter struggles to find an effective balance between the added electronic accoutrements and the minimalist core that informs his solo work.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Anti
    The ultimate impression the album leaves isn't just that of an artist who failed to follow through on her vision, but who never bothered to conceive one in the first place.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Strangers to Ourselves
    Flashes of contingent weirdness appear throughout the album, and the lyrics remain reliably sardonic, but the band surrenders too often to a prefab pop-rock idiom that isn't entirely their own.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Spiritual Mental Physical
    The band has undeniable horsepower, driven mostly by Dannis's fantastic drumming, and that strength shows itself in a few key moments here, but the collection is unfortunately padded with half an album's worth of inconsequential rehearsal extracts.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sum/One
    As a producer, DeGraw's sonic instincts are nearly beyond reproach, his carefully sculpted synthscapes frequently gorgeous and never boring. But maximalist excess afflicts too much of SUM/ONE, to rapidly diminishing returns.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Other Side of Make-Believe
    A half-baked pastiche of previous releases. Even the album’s highlights can’t compete with the best cuts on later albums like 2014’s El Pintor. In an attempt to move forward, the band has simply disassembled and repackaged the stylistic traits that made them special in the first place.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hold on Tight
    Pitched decidedly near the middle of the road, Burke's final album is a generally pleasing endeavor that might have benefited from a little more effort.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Monomania
    Whereas both Deerhunter and Atlas Sound albums typically reflect the obsessive brilliance and meticulous pathos of Cox's personality, there's few signs of either on Monomania, which is in dire need of a little less impulse and a bit more OCD.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Malice N Wonderland
    Malice N Wonderland (anxiously awaiting the sequel, Through the Hook N Grass) is overcrowded and undercrunk compared to its uneven but exponentially more ambitious predecessor, "Ego Trippin."
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is Not The World
    Since the Futureheads are a talented bunch of lads (who will hopefully live to fight again), some nuances do manage to leak through.... Sadly, the rest of the record tends to blur together, an unmemorable mass of whoo-alright.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In The Dark
    In the Dark is an excessively fundamental album (guitars, drums, and bass, chorus-verse-chorus-that's all there), and viscerally, it's not too offensive.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pink Friday 2
    Despite some catchy moments, there’s almost nothing about Pink Friday 2 that makes it stand out from the current slate of pop and rap music. Unlike its predecessor, the album doesn’t leave much of an impression, and certainly won’t reshape the hip-hop landscape.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love is Dead
    The handful of songs produced by the band themselves—“My Enemy,” the brooding new wave track “God's Plan,” and the gentle ballad “Really Gone”—stand out in their deviation from the glossy, monolithic tracks helmed by producer Greg Kurstin.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Here We Rest
    It's on the songs that bring in the R&B influences that made Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit sing that Here We Rest finally showcases what it is that makes Isbell a distinctive talent.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Black Swan
    It's an expertly crafted pop record, sure, but Black Swan ultimately reduces to its primary points of reference without any broader context or sense of purpose.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Paris
    What's most surprising about Paris's album is that it's really not all that bad; released by any other, ahem, artist, it would likely earn better notices than recent albums by the likes of Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, or Ashlee Simpson--not that that's really saying much.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ringleader Of The Tormentors
    Whereas You Are The Quarry was a welcome return to form, Ringleader Of The Tormentors makes you wonder if seven-year gaps between albums are necessary.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sus Dog
    Chris Clark’s Sus Dog tries on a number of stylistic tics—from stuttering electronics to eerie vocals—that recall those of its executive producer, Thom Yorke, but rarely finds a means of organically incorporating them into the IDM veteran’s bass-heavy sound.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Acid Tongue
    Too much of Acid Tongue ignores what makes Lewis a compelling artist in favor of empty, not entirely successful style hopping.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Boy With No Name
    The band may have paved the way for the likes of Coldplay and Snow Patrol, but they still haven't found their "Clocks" or "Chasing Cars."
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scars
    Scars is a peculiarly irritating sort of failure. It's an overachieving, overqualified failure.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Funstyle
    Phair has never taken herself even half as seriously as the straight, white, male rock press always has, which goes a long way in explaining why she's disappointed so many since she was branded a rock goddess in the early '90s. And Funstyle, though interesting, is unlikely to change that.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The New Classic
    The New Classic mistakenly tries to frame Azalea as hip-hop's newest can't-miss egomaniac, focusing on the riches instead of the far more interesting rags.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Let Me Go, Let Me Go, Let Me Go
    The whole album is relentlessly gloomy, comparable to the general glumness of a Xiu Xiu record but without the fun of a WTF factor.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Belle and Sebastian Write About Love
    Adding another disappointment to an already inconsistent catalogue, Write About Love confirms that Belle and Sebastian is the type of band that's fully capable of genius, just not reliably or often.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Breakthrough
    To the extent that the production and arrangements mask Caillat's inadequacies as a writer and performer Breakthrough is a marginal improvement over her debut, "Coco."
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mean Old Man
    Mean Old Man may be a fundamentally lazy album, but it works in the right places, making sharp choices and offering a mostly agreeable experience.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Multitudes
    The album eschews the extroversion of the singer’s best work, like her 2007 breakthrough, The Reminder, and ultimately struggles to fully elucidate her multifaceted talents.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    X
    Aside from the standout club banger "Add Me In," which is steeped in arithmetic and trigonometry metaphors, and "101," which finds Brown doing "101 on the 101," the album's lyrics largely eschew mathematical objects in favor of soul-baring like "Autumn Leaves" and sex talk like "Songs on 12 Play," which likens a girl to a song from the titular R. Kelly album.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Black Panties
    The onslaught of bawdy imagery eventually grows tedious, but there's something compelling about witnessing one man's psyche laid so completely bare, a crazed prophet whipped into a frenzy by the ecstasy of his own sin.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jennifer Hudson
    By the time Jennifer Hudson gets back to good old-fashioned balladry, it's too late: we're saddled with the same Diane Warren song ("You Pulled Me Through") we've heard at least a dozen times before; a ridiculously trite and histrionic you-stole-my-man duet with fellow A.I. alum Fantasia ("I'm His Only Woman") we've heard at least a half-dozen times before; another Stargate/Ne-Yo concoction we've heard...well, you get the point.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love 2
    Consistently smooth to the point of tedium, Love 2 has the unruffled air of '50s bachelor-pad cool, often recalling Enoch Light and other space-age instrumentalists, but its overbearing electronic elements negate the organic feel it would otherwise inherit from those albums, leaving an impressively dispassionate patina with almost nothing underneath.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    World Wide Pop
    Ultimately, World Wide Pop succumbs to sameiness, with several songs in a row set to a similarly frantic tempo and overly compressed, treble-heavy sound mix. Rather than allowing individual sounds to stand out, the chaotic placement of samples makes them all run together.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Reset
    Reset revels in the whimsical sounds of ‘50s and ‘60s pop and rock but lacks the memorable songwriting that made much of the best music from that era so indelible.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Saga Continues
    Enjoying this album will depend on your tolerance for Wu-Tang at its most generic.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Silent Hour/Golden Mile [EP]
    No matter how sublime Rossen's voice may be, Silent Hour/Golden Mile simply can't transcend the limitations of its origin as a collection of incomplete Grizzly Bear B-sides.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    American Central Dust
    While frontman Jay Farrar was instrumental in defining the alt-country scene, the problem with Dust is that, in the intervening years since Son Volt first rose to prominence, that scene has been bogged down by countless dreary, soundalike albums and an exhausting self-seriousness.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shangri-La
    The result is an ill-conceived concept album, one that, though characteristically sharp musically, feels flat and overwrought.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rosegold
    That lack of lyrical substance isn’t a problem just because we expect more from a songwriter with as compelling a discography as Monroe’s, but because the album’s production—crisp and bright but mostly two dimensional—isn’t interesting enough to carry the songs.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of A Beast
    Ultimately, the problem with Beast is that both its concept and its performance are so defined by their academic removes that it's impenetrable.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Queen
    Minaj is obviously capable of backing up all the posturing. ... But Queen also finds Minaj falling back on some frustratingly familiar shortcomings. The album loses its momentum whenever it aims for the pop charts.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Yes, It's True
    The album's charms are entirely rooted in the familiar, and while that makes it go down smoothly, it doesn't give one any reason to listen again once the last notes fade away.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Invisible Way
    Low has found what they do well and occasionally even exceed the standards they've set for themselves, but the stoicism and gradual build that comprises the band's best songs is at times defeated by their lyrical disinterest and repetition.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Seventh Seal
    Suffice to say there's nothing very compelling here, though Seventh Seal is made interesting by the paucity of Rakim's material.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Invisible Invasion
    The Invisible Invasion isn't necessarily a bad record, it's just nearly critic-proof, providing all of the evidence for whether or not any given listener will like it entirely by its many points of direct comparison.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Charleston, SC 1966
    It's hard to imagine that Charleston, SC 1966 won't continue Rucker's hot streak within the country genre, even if the album suggests that he's content to follow the genre's trends rather than set them.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    God Save The Clientele
    There's nothing to object to and much to admire on God Save The Clientele, but there's also little to celebrate.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    31 Minutes To Takeoff
    Posner's B-boy sound may be derivative as hell, but the album stands to turn him into the latest DIY sensation.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Believe
    Though his new voice has the rambunctiousness that pubescence assumes, it's also marked with the timorousness that's less often celebrated, but equally omnipresent among vocalists trying to figure out the limits of their new range.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Confident
    Lovato mistakes the ability to cram as many syllables as possible into each word with virtuosity. And the album likewise mistakes overwrought for confident.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Clancy's Tavern
    Keith has always been predominantly a singles artist, but Clancy's Tavern has a surprisingly high percentage of songs that play as afterthoughts.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hunger Games: Catching Fire [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    The album's old-guard pros sadly don't lend much more to the proceedings than their younger counterparts.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bones of What You Believe
    While the album has its fair share of sweet spots, the handful of capable melodies never quite balances out its bizarre impulses or the utter lack of thematic unity.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Who You Are
    Unfortunately, the songs on Who You Are that allow Jessie J's ugly, born-that-way vocals to cut loose are in the distinct minority. In the quest to find herself, she seems to have gotten sidetracked.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Are The Night
    We Are The Night, like most high school reunions, fails to kick-start anything other than nostalgia.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Dutchess
    The album too often seems to be striving to display diversity at the expense of artistry.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Century Of Self
    Century of Self is at times a stirring, effective rock album, familiar but stable, but the band's general creativity is less vital than they think, and rather than settle down they continue a fussy streak of projects loaded with hollow, stilted ambition.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Return to the Moon
    Ultimately, the lows are too low, and the highs not high enough to justify either musician returning to the collaboration anytime soon.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sweet Talker
    Unfortunately, after that impressive opening salvo ["Bang Bang"], the album largely relapses on tired MOR pop.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Runaway
    The Runaway may just be a stumble on the band's road to maturity, but it could also signal something more troubling: the beginning of an endless, effortless loop.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Mix-Up
    For an album that truly has nothing to say and risks suggesting nothing more need be said, The Mix-Up sounds merely satisfactory now, but I can't wait until some turntablist uses it to drop the science.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Finally Rich
    There's also a joyless and dispiriting quality to the music, something soul crushing in how the most backward elements of rap culture have coalesced into one hardened teenager.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    System
    Price's remix work has always been more impressive than his original productions and System is no exception.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    100 Lovers
    Devotchka has at least found a way to continue making tuneful, relatively entertaining music, as their contemporaries either verge on self-parody or have given up altogether. But nothing about 100 Lovers suggests anything more than another attempt to break even.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Thing Of The Past
    Vetiver, a band with loads of potential yet to be fully realized, can't help but come across on Thing of the Past like a well-orchestrated coffeehouse act with unusually exquisite taste.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Zig
    Aside from the disco-fied “Motorbike,” inspired by Jack Cardiff’s 1968 drama The Girl on a Motorcycle, most of Zig takes few such risks. As a result, Poppy has become what she’s successfully evaded up to this point: predictable.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pigeons
    Pigeons may be the better album, but it still feels hollow, ringing with the sound of a band accepting their own shortcomings.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In Ghost Colours
    Cut Copy have made a record with an overabundance of ideas and energy and not enough focus.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    News from Nowhere
    Offering the same level of meticulousness as North isn't quite good enough for News from Nowhere, which serves up a wonderfully lush but ultimately rudderless slice of droning electronica that's much too imitative to be anything other than a pleasant distraction.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Surfing the Void
    Yet whereas Myths of the Near Future was often psychotically fun, Surfing the Void finds Klaxons taking their genre rock shtick way too seriously.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Big Whiskey And The GrooGrux King
    Produced by Rob Cavallo, Big Whiskey is a step back toward the more polished sound DMB explored on 2001's divisive "Everyday"--that is to say, a step away from the 2005's return-to-form "Stand Up."
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Woman Worldwide
    At 16 tracks, Woman Worldwide at times feels like an inexplicable rehash of existing material--a time-filler while Justice plots their next studio reinvention.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Big Dream
    Lynch may be devoting much of his time and passion to his new career as a musician, but The Big Dream still has a thin, larky feel, briefly amusing, consistently strange, but rarely resonant.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kid Kruschev
    Seven years after their debut, they remain both confined and defined by their early novelty as the twee pop group with the loud guitars.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man of the Woods
    The majority of the highlights on Man of the Woods, from the faux-Stevie Wonder groove of “Higher, Higher” to the smooth dance-floor glide of “Breeze Off the Pond,” could have appeared on any Timberlake album, give or take a few pointedly rural references to roadside billboards and canoes. The songs that hew more closely to the Americana vibe, meanwhile, are mostly embarrassing.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Now What
    Doesn't stray far from the formula that brought her moderate success her first time out.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Former Lives
    What's most frustrating about Former Lives is that for every single shining moment there are two or three that subsequently fall flat.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Evolution
    I would say she should leave the bumper-sticker philosophizing to Oprah and Tyra and stick to singing, but she doesn't excel at that either.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Easton Corbin
    The album recalls the series of interchangeable, filler-packed albums Strait recorded in the mid '90s. Corbin sings well enough, but lacks the maturity and depth of experience to elevate some of the record's middling material.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hurts 2B Human
    Pink’s eighth album, Hurts 2B Human, finds the singer peddling the same boilerplate pop-rock songs about self-empowerment and existential angst that have defined her career for almost 20 years.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Something To Tell You
    These 11 slickly produced tracks are kept more uniform in tone and content, to the point of repetition, and the feelings expressed sound more manufactured than genuine.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    My Guilty Pleasure
    My Guilty Pleasure, which, if not boring, is too similar both to her own prior work and that of dozens of other European chanteuses who offer dark, icy ballads striving for breathy mystery.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Stoned Immaculate
    A lazy and undercooked album.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Only Built for Infinity Links
    In the absence of Offset, Quavo and Takeoff still adhere to a strict hierarchy of talent: Predictably, the former remains at the top, singing the vast majority of the album’s hooks and leading nearly every song.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In This Light & On This Evening
    Despite embracing their electronic influences with much gusto on these more inspired outings, though, the record's middle stretch feels both forced and forgettable.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Freedom
    It's too bad the songwriting doesn't match the ambition.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Destroy Rock & Roll
    Simple beats and waves of synthesized strings don't, in themselves, make for neo-disco euphoria.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Save Rock and Roll
    Save Rock and Roll pools an assortment of trademark hooks to lure you in, but its commercially formulaic spine will leave you feeling like you should have known better.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Take the Crown
    Take the Crown lapses into the same grandiose self-help talk and too-slick production that's marred his recent albums.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Future This
    The fumbling effort to harmonize their irreverence and earnestness leaves the Big Pink ultimately stranded, and the result is a hook-deficient album that wears on the ears after only a few listens.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Declaration
    Past releases have displayed an ostensible desire to follow in the melodramatic steps of Mary J. Blige and much of Declaration continues in that quest.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soberish
    For her part, Phair still has a knack for sharp melodies and bite-sized lyrical gems (“I tried to stay sober, but the bar is so inviting,” she quips on the album’s title track), and the technical simplicity of her voice is often its best feature.
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