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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    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Beware and Be Grateful
    A singular experience and one of the best albums of the year so far.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Magdalene
    The album is a knotty meditation on the process of separating self-perception from public perception, and of twigs’s reclamation of her body and work as hers and hers alone.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Red (Taylor's Version)
    While the two versions of “All Too Well” are the most obvious examples of that skill, it’s the editing over the entirety of Red that elevates it from an album that seemed destined to be remembered as a transitional work in Swift’s catalog into a confident, refined album that demands inclusion in the pop canon.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Life is Good
    What makes Life Is Good stand out is what also made his celebrated debut, Illmatic, so compelling. There's a sense of narrative unity here, a wide-angle look of the artist as a grown man.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Blessing And A Curse
    As a whole, A Blessing And A Curse is the album that Drive-By Truckers have always threatened to make, a hard-rocking testament to the intelligence, sensitivity, and soul of a people often discredited for lacking all three.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Life Pursuit
    The melodic hooks are huge, but what makes The Life Pursuit a legitimately great album is that Murdoch's lyrics are at turns witty, insightful, assertive, and sardonic.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Let's Get Out Of This Country
    While the songs are undeniably beautiful and even fun, the music provides a vital balance to the album's substantial thematic heft, and it's that combination that makes Let's Get Out Of This Country one of the year's best pop albums.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I Am Very Far
    Fans who approach I Am Very Far carrying expectations informed by the group's earlier releases will no doubt find this to be Okkervil River's most challenging work to date, but it's also the group's most grandiose, thrilling, and brilliant.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Blame The Vain
    Represents a new peak in a career full of them.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cosmogramma
    The surprising achievement of Cosmogramma is how capably it reinterprets that kind of innately communal vibe into private introspection without losing a bit of its energy along the way.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    COWBOY CARTER
    It’s an album of Americana not in the banal, produced-by-Dave Cobb sense, but in the truest senses of narrative and musical form.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Color
    Moving forward without the assistance of contributing vibraphonist Keaton Snyder, No Color is especially drum-heavy, and Kroeber's unconventional style works toward forming a repartee between the group's two members, who converse in a style that at times resembles jazz musicians.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Introduction
    An effortless triumph that should appeal to Red Krayola fans and newcomers alike.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Deacon
    On Deacon, Wise continues to prove how insightful he is at weaving his romantic obsessions with painfully honest, emotional expressions of his personal fuck-ups. Only this time his songs are more earthbound, grounded in the secular rather than the celestial.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fur & Gold
    Bat for Lashes' music feels like some lost specter that has fortuitously wandered into your home and can't help but haunt you.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Real Emotional Trash
    The joy of listening to Malkmus's songs has always been the involvement the listener takes in separating the "truth" from the "spoof" (much like with other oddball geniuses like Robyn Hitchcock or Tom Waits). There's plenty of both here, but more importantly, there's enough interplay between the two to keep things interesting and delightful.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carried To Dust
    While most groups lasting over 10 years tend to run on artistic fumes, Joey Burns and John Convertino gush with unbridled creative enthusiasm here.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's Blitz
    Sure, it's easy to lament how fangless they sound here, with just hints of the skuzzy basement ferocity that has made Fever to Tell one of the decade's most enduring records. But the finesse they display here, on their most mature and stylistically coherent record, may ultimately serve them even better.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bon Iver
    For much of Bon Iver, Vernon takes his cues from Volcano Choir, using an array of disparate instrumentation and looping effects to beautifully eerie effect.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Don't Live Here Anymore
    Though the War on Drugs may take a slightly more straightforward approach on I Don’t Live Here Anymore than they have in the past, they still find new ways to engage with complex arrangements. The result is a nimble balancing act of accessible pop-rock anthems and experimental soundscapes.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What's Your Pleasure?
    What’s Your Pleasure? is an album that, just a few months ago, might have felt like a nostalgia trip or a guilty pleasure, but now feels like manna for the soul.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Terror
    There's always been a relentless optimism hidden behind the Flaming Lips' unique brand of pop experimentalism.... Which makes their understated 13th album, The Terror, an evocation of a bleak, post-apocalyptic future, such a striking contrast.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What Heaven Is Like
    What Heaven Is Like's wizardry lies in the band's uncanny ability to make their finely tuned chemistry sound like off-the-cuff jamming between amateurs in a basement.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue Banisters
    By stripping back the sonic density of her previous work and taking its sweet time to unfold, Blue Banisters further fleshes out Del Rey’s increasingly vivid personal world.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Outside Society: Looking Back 1975-2007
    For most of its runtime, Outside Society captures a time when Smith's music was as naïve, romantic, and unforced as her memoir, even if, by the end, the labored intensity of her poetry has prevailed.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Absolute Garbage
    'Tell Me Where It Hurts' is an undeniable sign that, despite their extended hiatuses and internal turmoil, Garbage is very much alive with ideas and ambition.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Golden Casket
    While The Golden Casket doesn’t match the heights attained by some of Modest Mouse’s earlier work, it’s their first album since 2000’s triumphant The Moon & Antarctica that doesn’t feel like it could benefit from some editing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Blue Room
    Loyal to her own dual heritage and willing to value her own divided animal instincts, Peyroux remains such a beguiling singer that it's hard to care if her albums often sound the same.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sinner Get Ready
    Ignota has demonstrated throughout her career that she can pen an evocative confession and seductively deliver a melodic line. But her more essential talent is an ability to simultaneously embody and channel a range of psychological and spiritual states. Sinner Get Ready is driven by a penetrative imagination, a preternatural sense of empathy, and an innate awareness of the paradoxical nature of human existence.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blakroc
    Without a doubt, Blakroc can be considered a gamble that has most certainly paid off; this is the most credible fusion of the two genres in a long, long while.
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