Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,122 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: 1,692 out of 3122
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3122
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3122
3122 music reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Con
    The Con is undoubtedly as sweet as it is short.
    • Slant Magazine
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Viva La Vida
    Coldplay have come up with the rare major-label pop record that stands to move a ton of copies even as it's at least a little bit challenging to its primary audience.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blunderbuss
    Blunderbuss feel satisfying, but not astoundingly progressive. It's a solo debut that can be interpreted in two ways, with White either easing his way into a new template or putting window dressing on the same old ideas.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen
    Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen's most vital resource is Casiokids' boundless sense of playfulness, which enables them to effortlessly blend the familiar with the transgressive.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mahal
    At times, the album’s songs are so breezy that they’re barely indistinguishable from one another. There are moments here, as is Toro y Moi’s wont, where the pursuit of mood takes precedent above all else.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lover
    Some pop stars may be too big too fail. Swift’s songwriting suffers from occasional bromides, and Lover can feel both overthought and, at a lengthy 18 tracks, under-edited. But Swift’s well-earned reputation for over-sharing, reflective of the generation for which she’s become a spiritual envoy, coupled with her newfound egalitarianism makes her not just a compelling pop figure, but an essential one.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Another One
    Call it a low-stakes play, but Another One is a snapshot of an artist who's found his lane and continues to mine it for affecting, melodically spry material.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Here for a Good Time
    It's this willingness to take some calculated risks with his trademark sound and to develop his voice as a songwriter that makes Strait's most recent run the richest and most rewarding of his career, and Here for a Good Time is both a good time and a new peak for Strait.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood
    Barnes's willingness to use it as a mechanism for bearing his deepest fears and vulnerabilities--even through the highly stylized filter of a paranoid retro-futurist nightmare--makes White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood deceptively relatable.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alicia
    Alicia is at once her most accessible and forward-minded album in years.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chief
    In what has been a truly dreadful year for country music, Chief is a surprise standout.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Goddess
    Several of Goddess's tracks are carryovers from last year's Fall Over and London EPs, which partly explains the deluxe edition's daunting 18-track, 76-minute runtime. While they add some variety to an album that veers dangerously close to homogenous.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In The Maybe World
    In The Maybe World is an accessible, if lyrically opaque, work that should please fans of avant-pop that doesn't sound remotely like any of the other cerebral chanteuses out there.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
    This is a Deerhunter album, so closer listening reveals much more going on beneath the surface. To be fair, though, Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? isn’t as viscerally challenging as many of the band’s prior efforts.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Archive 2003-2006
    If Archive 2003 - 2006 is at times a runaway mess, it's consistently a beautiful one, and a triumphant example of Rossen and Nicolaus's penchant for chilling, intricate soundscapes.
    • Slant Magazine
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Rope
    Tucker and Brownstein deserve credit for continuing to take risks and experiment with Sleater-Kinney’s established sound, resulting in another solid effort in an unexpectedly fruitful late period.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Abnormally Attracted To Sin
    But even with its bloated running time, Sin is more thematically satisfying and sonically adventurous than anything Amos has recorded in years.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tomorrow, In A Year
    A truly revolutionary piece of work, the album is also an awfully hard sell that begs for an "even for the Knife" qualifier.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sondre Lerche
    It may not be the most exciting or innovative record, but Sondre Lerche emphasizes all of the artist's strengths, making it far and away his most mature album to date.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Watch the Throne
    While Watch the Throne is ultimately a minor entry in their canons, it's still a terrific snapshot of the friendship that has ended up defining mainstream rap.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    World Wide Funk
    World Wide Funk is a timely and welcome reminder of Collins's place in popular music. Long may he funk.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Signs
    While not without its flaws, Signs heals in this way. It’s often so joyous and spirited that, for a moment, it’s easy to envision better times ahead.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Glacial Glow
    The album is a turning point for Lipstate, offering some of her most compositionally cohesive, refined songs, while managing to sacrifice none of the verve and licentiousness of her past work, which makes it the most complete-and most likely accessible-Noveller album to date.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Appeal To Reason
    Because of the current pop landscape's shift away from melodic rock it's impossible to tell if Rise Against will ever break out, but it's nice to know that, either way, they're still making aggressive, well structured pop-minded hardcore.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Spirit Indestructible
    Whether her strategy is to sing-song her way beyond the abrasive edges or to conversely turn her voice into an even more abrasive element, Furtado makes it all work.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mumps, Etc.
    Mumps, Etc. is an assured, thematically united set.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    1612 Underture
    1612 Underture is most effective when the curious synth tones play over quips about poky limestone villages and "suppers for the worms and the owls."
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Preliminaires
    As always, Pop's lyrics are not something you want to spend too much time focusing on, but separated from the dumb strut of rehashed cock rock, they settle nicely into an eerie landscape of dread and malaise.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Colour The Small One
    Repeat listens reveal the album to be what the one-time Zero 7 vocalist describes as a "slow burner," a druggy mesh of acoustic guitars, keyboards, and lush, cinematic string arrangements.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Move in Spectrums
    Not until "Hand Over Hand" does the band let lazier atmospherics trump their talent for catchy songcraft, with the song never quite building to anything resembling the memorable melodies of the album's highlights.
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