Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,117 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: 1,687 out of 3117
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3117
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3117
3117 music reviews
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Forth
    While Forth is certainly flawed and overreaching, there's enough to suggest that the Verve, assuming they're able to keep it together, can use the album as a foundation for something as compelling as their '90s output.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Magic Whip
    The Magic Whip isn't a triumphant return of a Britpop champion; instead, it's a mature, measured document from a band that's never rested on its laurels.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mirrored Aztec
    Not all of Mirrored Aztec is as great as “Thank You Jane” or any of the previously mentioned highlights.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Warzone
    That whimsical spirit is perhaps Warzone‘s defining characteristic, despite a tracklist that leans heavily on songs about war and other forms of violence. .... Also fully intact is Ono’s trademark shriek, which has, if anything, grown richer and more resonant with age.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kill My Blues
    The arrangements are organic and lived in, and the distinct influences of each member of the band figure prominently in the album's overall style, making it far more than just a showcase for Tucker.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ships
    Ships is very, very, very good, but it's not always enjoyable.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In the Lonely Hour
    Just when you've started to grow weary of Smith's pity party, it's over. And there are enough moments of genuine musical, lyrical, and vocal virtuosity and soul to crack even the most hardened listener's icy heart.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Caution
    Caution feels like the album Mariah has wanted to make all along: one that literally throws caution to the wind and sees her embracing her inner weirdo. And, ironically, it took her ending up back at Sony Music to do it.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Virgins
    Refreshingly unpretentious, especially by the standards of heavily hyped bands, and as simply entertaining as any recent major label debut, Virgins strikes a careful balance between fashionable and accessible, which makes the band a good candidate for a real commercial breakthrough.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Thank Me Later
    The rapper's insistent navel-gazing isn't the most original concept, and it won't make for the most stable subject matter in the long run, but it certainly works on Thank Me Later, which nails confused introspection in a genre famous for willful misrepresentation of self.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Release The Stars
    It feels more like a collection of tracks than a cohesive work.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dose Your Dreams
    Without Abraham’s consistent presence, Fucked Up’s music sounds almost conventional. Fortunately, Dose Your Dreams proves they’ve got a deep enough bag of tricks--including a towering throng of endless overdubs and genre detours that sound as massive as the band’s ambitions--to make even conventionality sound compelling.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Offend Maggie
    Offend Maggie isn't a huge breakthrough for Deerhoof, but it's a step toward coherence with which few fans should have a problem.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Freetown Sound
    Freetown Sound certainly has the sprawl, hyperactivity, and potential of a personal masterwork, but its master is more conduit and conductor than confessor.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    And Nothing Hurt
    Motivated more by financial necessity than the hubris it must take to even believe such an undertaking would be feasible, Pierce nonetheless constructs a thickly layered album. And while its inherent limitations are evident at times, it's a work of characteristic ambition and poignancy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Cookbook
    The pages of this cookbook are a primer on how Missy let her head get fat.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Is...
    While most of the concerns expressed in This Is... seem wafer-thin, the innovative production and diamond-hard songcraft suggest something else entirely. Icona Pop has few equals in the current landscape when it comes to immaculately crafted radio-dance music.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tapes
    Even if the Rapture really hasn't made much music that sounds like this (their rockist tendencies generally get the better of them), it's nice to know that they're in touch with this fact.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vicki Leekx
    With this mixtape, M.I.A. has made great strides toward liberating her music from herself.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mechanical Bull
    The band is just about out of transgressive fury, but they manage to muster enough rigor and discipline to keep Mechanical Bull kicking.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My December
    Though "My December" cuts much of the adult contemporary-style balladry that marred her first two releases (but also displayed more than just her shouting vocal range), the album still finds Clarkson further exploring different facets of her voice.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cousin
    Though these tracks are perfectly adequate, even pretty (especially the vocal melodies on “Evicted”), it’s disappointing to see the band play it safe on an album that aims to be their most adventurous in years. Of course, the band proves that they can still write pensive ballads without succumbing to the clichés of contemporary indie music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love Streams
    Simply enough, Love Streams is a discomforting listen, and the addition of voices to Hecker's repertoire adds an additional tool of disorientation to his web of repurposed crackles and spurts, not the warmth one might expect.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    For Your Entertainment
    Over the course of the album's 14 tracks, Lambert struts and vamps and brings a real sense of spectacle to his vocal performances.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sleep Well Beast
    There are only a few uptempo cuts here, but unlike on the band's last few releases, each of them propels the album forward.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Inevitable End
    Though the album doesn't skimp on potentially insufferable moments of bottom-lip-biting farewell (the final song is titled "Thank You," after all), the best tracks boast a fiercely renewed energy that suggests Berge and Brundtland still have much more to offer.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Undun
    If it's not as immediately galvanizing as, say, Rising Down, it lingers.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
    The album is a much bigger sounding, musically diverse effort than its concise, uniform predecessor, featuring cellos, horns, and mellotrons, as well as a renewed focus on the versatile fretwork of lead guitarist Chris Funk
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dear Life
    Ultimately, Benson’s impeccable melodic instincts justify Dear Life’s largely featherweight tone.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics
    Adrian Younge Presents is intermittently thrilling, taking familiar genre signifiers and scrambling them within a less rigid context, but also eventually formulaic in a different way, setting a fixed eccentric template and largely sticking to it.
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