Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,120 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: 1,690 out of 3120
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3120
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3120
3120 music reviews
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    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Z
    Dialing down the reverb and allowing more wide-ranging influences to show through, My Morning Jacket fashions a messy, transitory record that's head-over-heels giddy, curiously experimental, and patently weird in equal measure.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran
    Johnson and the small army of country stars he's enlisted to collaborate on the project all wisely keep the focus on Cochran's extraordinary songwriting, making for an album that highlights the depth and range of Cochran's catalogue and the monumental influence his writing has had on country music.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Petals for Armor
    Petals for Armor is a confident solo debut that suggests Williams has valences she’s just beginning to explore.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Immunity
    Cottrill’s ability to work outside the mold of indie rock and close-to–the-bone commentary puts her in the same camp as contemporaries Mitski and Snail Mail, but there’s something about her aloofness and measured control that feels profoundly unique.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Smoke Ring for My Halo
    Vile's music is inflected with a special kind of magic, which makes it sound grimy while remaining melodically clean, bored and disinterested while granting you its full attention.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let Me Do One More
    As a whole, Let Me Do One More is more punk than its predecessor, and like Australian punk-rockers Amyl and the Sniffers, Tudzin weaves the personal with the political and—in a way that’s as clever as it is uncomfortable—economics with love.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stitch of the World
    Merritt's chemistry with her band makes everything here feel lively, but don't let that obscure her ease of craft.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Good Life
    What elevates Good Life over, to pick the obvious parallels, Hank Williams III's Risin' Outlow and Shooter Jennings's Put the 'O' Back in Country is that Earle's debut isn't limited to simple retro-minded mimicry.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tigers Blood
    The way Crutchfield’s crystalline voice penetrates her music’s often beautiful, serene instrumentation on Tigers Blood dovetails with her gutting truth-telling.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Turn Blue
    There's still a two-man garage band in there, but Auerbach and Patrick Carney are currently catering to earbuds rather than stadiums.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gloss Drop
    Battles is, first and foremost, an instrumental group, but the tracks on Gloss Drop that do feature a guest vocalist are the undisputable highlights.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Martha Wainwright
    Martha has proven to be not just a worthy pupil of such domestic tutelage, but a musician of equal caliber.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tornado
    That they're singing material that's worthy of their vocal skills further elevates Tornado above their previous efforts.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships
    This is a content-saturated album for a content-saturated world. Here, there’s real substance and there’s total fluff, and it’s up to us to find out what’s worth listening to.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quickies
    Merritt’s ability to blend comedy and heartache through finely observed character studies is one of his greatest strengths, and that skill in fine form throughout Quickies.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rated R
    When Rated R ends on an unresolved chord, the sentiment carries over into Rihanna's pop persona. Let's hope that this doesn't mean she's about to back off and start working on her All for You.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kveikur
    If the intuitive, star-gazing Valtari served as the rediscovery of Sigur Rós's signature sound, then the instinctual, sober Kveikur is its compulsive reinvention.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Manners
    just so happens that Passion Pit has released a gorgeous pop album in time for the warm weather, and while Manners would make a perfect soundtrack to any summer, you'll want to keep the best cuts around for far longer.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Contra
    While Koenig rarely shies away from scholastic lyricizing, Contra succeeds apart from its cultural asides and college textbook hat-tips.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Two Hands
    Ranging from guttural yowling to barely contained explosiveness, Lenker’s voice is the perfect vehicle for Big Thief’s dark, pretty songs about personal and political wreckage.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    AM
    Almost a decade into their career, the Arctic Monkeys have aged gracefully into their precociously world-weary image with a mature album about immaturity, a carefully written and produced effort about the desultory careen of youth.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Attention Deficit
    In its ambitious attempts to revive conscious rap and push the envelope sonically, Attention Deficit may be one of the best rap releases of the year even while it lacks the focus of a central persona.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Invitation
    There isn't a moment on Invitation where it sounds like they aren't having fun, and their good time spills over into a dozen songs that are textured, tuneful, and immediate,
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At War With The Mystics
    At War With The Mystics is impossible to digest in a single listen; it's a true headphone album that demands attention and rewards the patient with unexpected delights.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At Mount Zoomer
    With At Mount Zoomer, Wolf Parade has quite easily surpassed the greatness that was their debut, and have very quietly made one of the better albums of 2008.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PRE PLEASURE
    Jacklin spends most of Pre Pleasure offering captivatingly penetrating personal commentary, whether backed by distorted guitars or mere whispers of arrangements.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For Your Consideration
    Mixing R&B and electronica isn’t uncommon in pop music today, but For Your Consideration boasts an unusual combination of production polish and musical eccentricity, harking back to Björk’s early solo albums and Timbaland’s work with Aaliyah.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nikki Nack
    Rarely does an album consider life's eternal struggles in quite this way: searching for answers with its eyes wide open, and silly string in its hair.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wreck & Ruin
    One outright dud of a song and a handful of lazily written lines don't outweigh all that Chambers and Nicholson get right on Wreck & Ruin, an album that tempers its genuine, heartfelt romance with the darkest comedy.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Swanlights
    Swanlights reveals a portrait of the artist looking upward and onward beyond anguish.
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