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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    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Montero
    Lil Nas’s expressions of anxiety and self-doubt are served with honesty and tenderness, as well as some awkwardness.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Old Road
    If the delivery is occasionally lacking, the writing, as anyone would expect, is This Old Road's selling point, and in that regard the album is undoubtedly a success.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sincerely, Future Pollution
    Sincerely, Future Pollution's contrast of bright synths with dark lyrics shows the band approaching their sound with refreshing irony. By filtering the seedier byproducts of our modern world through their gaudy yet gloomy lens, Timber Timbre reflects the hyperbole of an increasingly toxic culture.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Finally LP
    Light as it may feel, Finally provides a concrete diagram for what Kozelek has been doing for years: taking big songs and packing them into very small boxes.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Singles
    Though rock has always been the ideal genre for artists to explore entropy, Herring and his bandmates have somehow found a way to inject what is arguably the safest kind of music, adult pop, with their own weird brand of controlled chaos.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hug of Thunder
    Hug of Thunder thrives in these quieter moments, which depart from band's established sound in order to play to specific vocalists' strengths. The album's more discordant and propulsive tracks are more of a mixed bag.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hunter
    By revealing the full spectrum of her sexual expression and identity, she makes a bold and defiant statement on postgenderism through uncompromising music that's alternately elegant and raw.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Pinkprint
    This is a big step forward for the genre, and makes one wish that Minaj's content could be as good as her form, that more attention was paid to crafting complex rhymes and less on floating through halfway conceived tracks in a sing-song burble. Yet even if she hasn't fully nailed the balance between her different modes, at least Minaj is doing something challenging, offering a third different approach on her third album.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Regions of Light and Sound of God
    There's a certain variety to the approach here, but it coheres for the most part on James's insistently tuneful interrogation of himself. He remains a smart commentator on the voyeuristic elements of attraction.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Everybody's Coming Down
    He's right that the troubadour and his feeble attempt at greatness really are small potatoes in an indifferent universe, but at least his band can still manage to make albums worth a few spins.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    From a Room, Vol. 2
    If anything, the album flows together even better than Volume 1, where the disparity between light-heartedness and heavier themes was an occasional distraction.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Culture II
    With Culture II they've given us just enough to keep us on the hook.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bish Bosch
    Bish Bosch may sound a little strained at times, but it's still a big, ballsy achievement, the work of a committed artist delving further into a land of vaguely sketched nightmares.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Circuital
    Circuital is probably a necessary step after that strange thrust into foreign territory, a regrouping effort that serves as a reminder of My Morning Jacket's ever-present strengths.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crystal Castles [2010]
    The superior but occasionally milquetoast Crystal Castles: Book Two inadvertently underscores the pitfalls of maturity and liberation.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Echo
    At just under 30 minutes long, the Portland-based singer-songwriter’s 11th album is more concise than it is confessional, but Veirs imbues her lyrics with vivid imagery and gentle humor that trade misery for escapism.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    We All Want the Same Things
    We All Want the Same Things is cut from the same cloth as everything Finn's done before as an artist, but it isn't quite fair to call it more of the same. The way an album feels matters, and this one feels comfortable--and self-possessed in a way that his other solo albums aren't.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Healing Is a Miracle
    Healing Is a Miracle can sometimes be so delicate as to be weightless, and the music’s accumulation of details and small shifts in tone makes it more interesting in theory than practice. Even still, the album overcomes its slightness thanks to its willingness to dabble in different textures.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    White Women
    Derivative though White Women often is, and knows it is, Chromeo's level of engagement remains well above #TBT posturing.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wanderer
    Time and again, Marshall has been reductively pegged as a gloomy singer-songwriter struggling with substance abuse and mental illness. But while her vulnerability here lends itself to melancholy, it’s also triumphant and resolute.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Abbey Road Sessions
    Minogue's early material fares well, if only because any incarnations would be an improvement over the cheesy Stock, Aitken, and Waterman originals, but it's the songs that receive the most drastic revisions that elevate the album above a mere exercise or cash grab.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
    An album of relatively accessible pop music that pulses with the pain of a life in pieces.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    For the Good Times
    While the album sticks to the general formula of its predecessor (covers of classic country tunes with a focus on thoughtful, creative arrangements), the consistently on-point execution of that formula makes For the Good Times an endlessly likable record.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Valentine
    If Lush presented a snapshot of a particular mindset, a woman trapped in a psychological limbo, Valentine captures the blurry nature of an inquiry still in progress.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Transcendental Youth
    Transcendental Youth, Darnielle's strident delivery and all, can be an exercise in sadomasochism, but at times a very rich one. Still, Darnielle seems willing to walk over coals that most of us would rather experience secondhand.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    High Road
    Those mottled sounds make High Road Kesha’s least consistent album to date, at least sonically. But there’s a clear emotional through line. ... With High Road, Kesha has found a way to double back and carve out a comfortable, if not happy, middle ground.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kala
    M.I.A., undoubtedly the truest "outsider" to emerge on the pop landscape in ages, has crafted an album that, in its best moments, positions her as an impassioned advocate for the disenfranchised.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heaven Is Whenever
    These aren't the band's strongest songs, but they're definitely some of their most interesting.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Surprise
    What is startling about Simon's latest solo effort is how fresh and alive it sounds.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life Without Sound
    By focusing less on inner tribulations and looking at the broader context of his place in the world, Baldi’s typical impulsivity and urgency of a frenzied youth transforms into the deliberateness of a wiser and more seasoned songwriter.
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