Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,125 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: 1,695 out of 3125
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3125
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3125
3125 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Run Rabbit Run
    Run Rabbit Run's ample highlights not only illustrate Osso's mastery of their string instruments but emphasize Stevens's incredible talent as a songwriter and arranger.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blood Bitch
    An intimate existential chronicle of imprisonment and liberation, its visceral, blood-smeared intensity works off a steady heartbeat of acute artistic ferment, the roiling passion underlying Hval's powerful declaration of self.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Post-War
    It's an inventive, sharp delight of a record, and possibly one of the year's best.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Confess
    While both of Lewis's albums are brimming with nostalgia, Confess jettisons Forget's sense of caution for adventure and a greater spectrum of genres, making it an altogether superior effort, and one of the few modern indie releases that handles its '80s reverence with dexterity.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    International Blackjazz Society
    There's definitely a smart-dumbness to what Shining does here: International Blackjazz Society sounds like Nine Inch Nails circa “The Hand That Feeds,” with an earnest deployment of such dinosaur vulgarities as cowbells, hard-boogie keyboards, and shout-along choruses.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cupid Deluxe
    Cupid Deluxe picks up where that track ["Everything Is Embarrassing"] left off: Blood Orange's sophomore effort chronicles alienation and broken romance with slow, melancholic, '90s-gazing jams.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Formal Growth in the Desert
    There’s long been a political edge to Protomartyr’s doom-and-gloom art rock, and it’s heartening that the band continues to avoid sloganeering and boring moralism.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Galore
    Galore makes for one of the most self-assured, strutting debuts in recent memory.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Exister
    Like 2018’s Criminal, the album represents another step forward for the Soft Moon, as Vasquez processes his pain with a newfound level of honesty, and an uncanny ability to build on the well-established musical ideas he so enthusiastically draws from.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Weighing of the Heart
    For all of the new developments (major-key melodies and upbeat tempos and rhythms), Schott's skill at fashioning held-breath drama remains undimmed.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beyond
    It's in between the showboating, when Mascis demonstrates his folk and country-tinged melodies and subtle but elaborate leads that you realize what you're listening to is pretty fucking close to genius.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hiss Spun
    Though it may be her second consecutive album to lean heavily on metal, Hiss Spun deftly incorporates a diverse range of sounds.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Long Line of Heartaches
    Long Line of Heartaches should earn her a place alongside genre vets like Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash, whose late-career albums have ranked among their strongest work.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The List
    The List still pulls off a rare feat: It's a covers album that stands as an essential addition to an artist's catalogue.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Radical Optimism
    Despite their short runtimes, though, many of these songs still pack an undeniable punch, thanks in large part to Parker and Harle’s meticulous production.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twin Cinema
    Best (and nearly perfect) when taken two or three songs at a time, as an entire album, Twin Cinema overstays its welcome. It's simply too much of a good thing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skying
    While in some sense these tracks are truer to the band's past than Skying's more formally ambitious cuts, that only convinces me that the Horror's biggest leaps forward are the ones in which they follow other musician's great ideas to new places.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    evermore
    The stories she tells are about how her narrators’ choices impact others, often in ways that cause irreparable harm. That makes the songwriting a bit riskier than on Folklore, and not all of those risks pay off. If that means Evermore isn’t quite as strong as that album, she nonetheless managed to release two of the finest albums of her career in the span of just a few months.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Us
    Considerably brighter, both thematically and tonally, than its predecessor, the album ascertains the guileless exhilaration of love.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Javelin
    These contrasts—between the intimate and the grand, the divine and the natural—dovetails with what Stevens has always done best as a songwriter: bridging the universal and the personal. Javelin doesn’t just feel like a return to form—it feels resurgent.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dereconstructed
    Dereconstructed sounds like a continually exploding bombshell.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tracer
    One of the most consistent EDM albums of the year, Tracer refuses to simply alternate between disco and electronica; it blends the two, and should prompt enough repeat listens to confirm Weiss and Takahashi's place alongside the pioneers they've collaborated with.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Concrete
    Sweeney just gets the economy of country songwriting and the presence that the best country singers possess, and that innate understanding makes Concrete a tremendous, heady record.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tournament Of Hearts
    There have been better albums released in 2005 than Tournament Of Hearts, but it's probably the album most ideally suited to be a left-field commercial success.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Catastrophe Keeps Us Together
    A terrific collection of thoughtful, energetic rock songs.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Nashville Sound
    The album is more eclectic and energetic than his other recent efforts, which have seen Isbell’s voice and vitality as a songwriter crystallize just as his sound, for better or worse, has become slicker and more uniform.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
    Finally receiving distribution in the U.S., Junior Senior's Hey Hey My My Yo Yo sounds every bit as fresh and exuberant now as it first did in the summer of 2005.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Trying Hartz
    Despite its no-frills approach, Trying Hartz works solidly, presenting a satisfying microcosm of one of the world's most inventive and ridiculous bands.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Monsters Of Folk
    With all four players clearly bringing out the best in each other, one hopes that Monsters of Folk makes for more than just a one-off side project.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Descended Like Vultures
    If not as easy to embrace as its predecessor, the album compensates with a great deal more ambition in its scope.
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