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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    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fibs
    The songwriting on FIBS is just as experimental as the arrangements, at least on the album’s first two-thirds. ... f there’s a dip in momentum, it starts at FIBS’s most conventional song, “Limpet,” which follows a more typical guitar-rock arrangement. Downtempo tracks like “Ribbons” and “Unfurl” also suffer in comparison to the album’s richer, bolder experiments.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Everything All The Time
    With individual tracks that ebb and flow between emotional extremes, Everything is an album that has a definite sense of momentum for much of its running time, which it unfortunately loses in its home stretch.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Vision
    The Vision will reward your temporary suspension of good taste with a solid hour of instantly gratifying party jams.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Funhouse
    If the album doesn't always make that point in its words, it consistently makes that point by being as fun a pop record as Pink's albums tend to be.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Napalm
    Napalm comes on in old-school fashion, with beats as mere vehicles for lyrics, and lyrics that work on a reassuring number of levels.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Neon Bible
    The music of Neon Bible is rarely anything less than uplifting. What the songs fail to do, though, is provide any real payoff to all of that uplift and passion.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage: 1982-2011
    The 40 tracks collected here are arranged more or less chronologically, which makes enough sense for a best-of set, and are divided almost perfectly evenly between the three eras of R.E.M.'s career, a choice that actively dilutes the quality of the album.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Break It Yourself
    Whereas on another album these kinds of sidepaths would be no more than frustrating distractions, here the scenery looks so good, you'll gladly take the long way home.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dear John
    What makes Dear John stronger than last year's Loney, Noir, then, is Svananen's ability to compensate for his shortcomings with arrangements that reference his disparate influences
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Garden
    The songs are good, but the production is even better.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    B4.DA.$$
    Bada$$ may not have Lamar's gift for lyricism or narrative, but his work is impressively composed for such a young voice, stringing together intricate series of metaphors over crisp, non-intrusive old-school beats.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    200 Million Thousand
    The result is a gleefully presented disaster. One that's consistently captivating if not irresistible.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Universal Themes
    Kozelek veers between wry, pissed-off, and ruminative expression without ever really settling on any of those. While that means Universal Themes never reaches the same highs as Benji, it does allow the listener to become fully immersed inside Kozelek's head, which is an alternately terrifying and hilarious place to be.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Are We There
    The lyrics, direct and occasionally graceless, find a deeper resonance in Van Etten's unhurried delivery.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chemistry
    The tropical closing track, “That’s Right,” feels even more leftfield, a quirky but apt conclusion to an album that captures the fickle, out-of-body aftermath of heartbreak.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rhumb Line
    Counting a violinist and cellist among their ranks, Ra Ra Riot has fashioned a gritty yet polished post-punk sound fit for a Sofia Coppola film.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tarot Classics [EP]
    Tarot Classics might be nothing more than a pleasant, irreverent distraction, but Surfer Blood probably wouldn't have it any other way.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Infinity On High
    The band's unusual songwriting method generally works.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Brood X
    Time has done little to dull the band's dive-bar swagger and spastic groove-making, and has had no effect on the caustic pin-up posturing of lead singer Cristina Martinez.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Under Great White Northern Lights [Live]
    Northern Lights captures the live show as circus, the aura where group participation and the raggedness of improvisation supersedes a faithful rendering of songs, an interpretation that, if not always satisfying to listen to, is at least fascinating to behold.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Future Bites
    The Future Bites is neither a huge stylistic departure nor the betrayal that many Wilson diehards have claimed it to be. Conceptually, the album revolves around a post-apocalyptic vision of an overly materialist society, and while the electro-pop trappings are almost never “happy,” they serve as a slick backdrop to the dystopian landscape Wilson envisions.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paranoïa, Angels, True Love
    What follows is a collection of wiry, introspective songs that break from pop conventions while asserting the life-affirming power of love.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Dreamer/The Believer
    This is about as good as a rap album can be while still qualifying as inessential listening.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Remember Her Name
    Guyton’s wide-ranging vocals have a way of investing even the weakest tracks on Remember Her Name with a freshness and power, sometimes belting an octave or two higher in a way that emphasizes the weight that her words carry.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
    The Tortured Poets Department plays out as a pop album that sounds fine enough but sure is long-winded.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    WE
    The melodies and arrangements here are as excellent as they are predictable, and the band recaptures their classic sound on “The Lightning I, II,” with a comfortingly familiar blend of wide-open-skies Springsteen/U2 bombast and pour-out-your-heart emotionalism. But at times, especially toward the beginning of the album, WE takes a more tentative approach.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Slang
    With American Slang, the Gaslight Anthem takes another step away from their riff-punk past, leaning more heavily on their classic-rock influences and letting their snotty, Warped Tour tendencies take more of a backseat than ever before.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rainbow
    While it might not be the discovery of a new talent, it's certainly the deepening of an existing one—another in a long line of female pop stars initially given limited creative and professional agency now intent on exploding the patriarchy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Two Eleven
    Two Eleven is at its core a singer's album, and it's the clearest portrait yet of Brandy's instrument.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ready for Confetti
    In dropping the irony for a moment, Keen yet again toys with expectations and shakes up his formula, and it's that openness to change that makes Ready for Confetti one of Keen's finest albums.
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