Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,122 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: 1,692 out of 3122
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3122
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3122
3122 music reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood
    Barnes's willingness to use it as a mechanism for bearing his deepest fears and vulnerabilities--even through the highly stylized filter of a paranoid retro-futurist nightmare--makes White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood deceptively relatable.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    I'll Be Your Girl
    The eight-minute, two-part “Rusalka, Rusalka/Wild Rushes” stands in stark contrast to the rest of the album in almost every way. ... By comparison, the rest of I'll Be Your Girl feels painfully half-baked.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American Utopia
    While American Utopia isn't as vital a statement as it wants to be, it's the sound of one of pop music's most idiosyncratic voices continuing to follow his wayward muse.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Productive Cough
    Despite the clean production and largely decreased noise level, A Productive Cough is Titus Andronicus's freshest, wildest, most unexpected work to date.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Onion
    Onion mostly attempts to wring earnest feeling from platitudes.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    By the Way I Forgive You
    The most emotionally direct and revealing album she’s to released to date.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Brighter Wounds
    An album that's grimly effective at conjuring unease.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Dark Age
    For better or worse, Little Dark Age is an album for its time: moody, backward-looking, a little depressed. ... This is a soundtrack for the long hangover.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Always Ascending
    Always Ascending may only serve as an incremental progression for Franz Ferdinand, but in departing from their upbeat romps in favor of a more nuanced, philosophical approach, Kapranos and company have reinvigorated their music by reaching for higher ground.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Knew You When
    When Seger sticks to growling out his lyrics over jagged riffs and a relentless beat, as he does on the driving “Runaway Train” and the synth-driven “The Highway,” he proves that craft can be rewarding in its own right, and that he still excels at creating emotional investment in something as tried and true as barreling, locomotive rock.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twin Fantasy
    With its tight and at times almost arena-sized arrangements and clean--though not slick--production, the new version of the album, subtitled Face to Face, jettisons that entire aspect of the Twin Fantasy experience. For some who may have had trouble finding an entry point to the songs through the original album's lo-fi haze, this will be good news.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Last Night All My Dreams Came True
    It pulls off the neat trick of wrapping up their legacy while also adding something new to it.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man of the Woods
    The majority of the highlights on Man of the Woods, from the faux-Stevie Wonder groove of “Higher, Higher” to the smooth dance-floor glide of “Breeze Off the Pond,” could have appeared on any Timberlake album, give or take a few pointedly rural references to roadside billboards and canoes. The songs that hew more closely to the Americana vibe, meanwhile, are mostly embarrassing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Culture II
    With Culture II they've given us just enough to keep us on the hook.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life
    She doesn't lash out at external forces. Instead, she internalizes that dialogue, resulting in her most contemplative album to date.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Between Two Shores
    An album that wrestles with heartbreak but always balances it with warmth and sincerity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Encore
    East has such a commanding presence that anything he does is bound to be a triumph of performance, but Encore is also a master class in arrangement. ... The album’s original material is slightly less memorable, if only because the lyrics sometimes trend toward the generic.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ruins
    The album's lyrics are full of heartbreak and dashed dreams, so perhaps it was the Söderbergs' fragile state of mind that inspired them to venture tentatively out of their comfort zone.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Revival
    Eminem can still dazzle with his wordplay--“Adversity, if at first you don't succeed/Put your temper to more use/'Cause being broke's a poor excuse” is an early highlight on “Believe”--yet his delivery, listless torrents of language, makes him seem noncommittal to the songs he's performing. He's not quite on autopilot throughout, but he does sound distracted. Eminem is more engaged on Revival when his focus turns to his family.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tribute to 2
    An album that builds considerable emotional depth and complexity both in its song selections and production values but most of all through James's fully engaged performances.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Versatile
    It's disappointing to hear one of the all-time great vocalists turn in such mundane performances.
    • 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.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    War & Leisure
    Even if the commercial tea leaves don't come together in his favor, War & Leisure has shown that, artistically at least, Miguel is exactly where he needs to be.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Visitor
    Listeners who've already given up on Young's current output are unlikely to be lured back by anything here, but for those of us still following his uniquely meandering path—in and out of the proverbial ditch--it's a ride well worth taking.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everyday Is Christmas
    Sia too often sounds like she's singing with a mouthful of Christmas candy.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Utopia
    The bit of dead weight here [the album's excessive duration] is especially frustrating, since Björk seems to have reconjured the elements that made her music so exceptional, and consistently enough that one can imagine a shorter, more curated iteration of Utopia that could stand with her very best albums.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Low in High School
    Too often, though, Morrissey sticks with sturdy, stomping rock, its workmanlike construction bogged down by turgid lyrics.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If All I Was Was Black
    Of course, things were even more dire during the civil rights movement, and like the music that the Staple Singers produced during that era, If All I Was Was Black is hopeful and optimistic not in ignorance of political reality, but in spite of it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Soul of a Woman
    The loving details with which she and her band fill these songs transcend the same R&B clichés they reinforce.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wizard Bloody Wizard
    They're not breaking new ground, or trying to: True to their sorcerous name, the band simply performs the right incantations and brings forth old demons from the abyss. Some things don't need reinventing, and fortunately for Electric Wizard, heavy metal is one of them.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    reputation
    It's Swift's willingness to portray herself not as a victim, but the villain of her own story that makes Reputation such a fascinatingly thorny glimpse inside the mind of pop's reigning princess.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kid Kruschev
    Seven years after their debut, they remain both confined and defined by their early novelty as the twee pop group with the loud guitars.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Glasshouse
    With affectionate stability at home, perhaps she'll be emboldened to take greater risks as an artist, marking the polished, pleasurable Glasshouse not as a culminating point, but the start of a bold, new direction.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Red Pill Blues
    Listening to Red Pill Blues makes one yearn for an era when there at least seemed to be more room for genuinely ambitious, artful Top 40 pop. In other words, I'll take the blue pill.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Thrill of It All
    He's deepened his craft without exactly broadening it, which makes The Thrill of It All feel more like a fine-tuning than a bold new adventure.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Meaning of Life
    Meaning of Life doesn't reinvent the genre, nor does it try to, but it portrays an artist continuing to redefine herself—in the process, solidifying her position as one of her generation's greatest singers.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    World Wide Funk
    World Wide Funk is a timely and welcome reminder of Collins's place in popular music. Long may he funk.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All American Made
    These songs are littered with allusions to Price's difficult past as a broke, troubled magnet of misfortune with a late-blooming career, but they're by and large so vague that they don't have much of an emotional impact.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pacific Daydream
    His oddball pop-culture references and fondness for clichés can be charming amid wailing electric guitars, but taking center stage, they too often fall flat.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ken
    The album is murky and claustrophobic but still consistently melodic.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fantastic Plastic
    Plastic Fantastic isn’t essential or especially relevant--though the aforementioned “What the Hell’s Goin’ On” does capture a certain familiar sense of aging-liberal bewilderment. It is, though, a utilitarian product, offering up 12 newly recorded songs that will allow the band to get back on the road.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Masseduction
    Clark's baroque musical sensibilities remain intact throughout Masseduction, but the increased tenderness of her vocal performances, coupled with more thematic emphasis on the push and pull of romantic relationships, offers a moving counterweight to St. Vincent's typically wry cultural commentary.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Saga Continues
    Enjoying this album will depend on your tolerance for Wu-Tang at its most generic.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beautiful Trauma
    Beautiful Trauma's neat construction renders the album less than the sum of its parts, but individual songs work well enough, thanks in no small part to Pink's personality and charisma.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Colors
    At times, it seems as though Beck is grasping at something, anything, to add conflict and tension to this effusive album. But all he comes up with are the most well-worn of sentimental platitudes.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Carry Fire
    The album's roots go back to Zeppelin's immersion in English folk and American blues, but here Plant displays everything he’s learned along the way; Carry Fire's sophistication and mystique place it among the most ambitious and evocative albums of his legendary career.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lotta Sea Lice
    What the album lacks in ambition or surprise, it makes up for as a showcase of the two artists' chummy chemistry and lovably droll personalities.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Younger Now
    It's the sound of a promising young singer who tried and failed to produce compelling music on the margins, turning back and self-consciously striking a more conservative pose. It's not as interesting a story, maybe, but it's also not as problematic.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Double Dutchess
    Fergie struggles to balance the new with the old throughout the album. Where Stefani’s raw confessionals helped distinguish This Is What the Truth Feels Like, though, Double Dutchess is stuck in the past.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tell Me You Love Me
    Unfortunately, an excess of downtempo tracks mires Tell Me You Love Me's momentum in its second half, concluding with a pair of refreshing but nearly identical back-to-back acoustic-driven R&B songs that might as well be a medley.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Roll with the Punches
    It's the first Van Morrison album in over a decade that doesn't just rest on his legacy, but actually expands it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cry Cry Cry
    Wolf Parade captures how complacency allows simmering tensions to metastasize.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Gathering
    It's as diverse as anything Ritter's done yet also focused in its exploration of joy, sorrow, and their strange intermingling. It's proof enough that Ritter is one of the true keepers of the American folk lineage--a proud traditionalist and an utter original.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grace
    The album is a sort of homecoming but not a return to basics. As these songs of experience prove, she’s grown far too much for this album to feel like anything but a fresh new chapter, even as it draws a connection to all the places she’s been.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hiss Spun
    Though it may be her second consecutive album to lean heavily on metal, Hiss Spun deftly incorporates a diverse range of sounds.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Haiku from Zero
    Pervasive throughout is the sense that yearning for the unobtainable is its own reward, and the band successfully imbues Haiku from Zero with the notion that both pleasure and pain remind us that we’re alive.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wonderful Wonderful
    Wonderful Wonderful finds them more comfortable in their own skin: They've managed to condense their operatic impulses into an album of tight, relatively low-key pop songs.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dedicated to Bobby Jameson
    Like the rest of Pink's catalogue, the hooks here can be elusive, buried amid a cornucopia of silly voices, hyperactive genre pastiche, and murky production values. But when they land, they land hard. ... It's that roughness around the edges that makes Dedicated to Bobby Jameson so deeply resonating.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    How Did I Find Myself Here?
    They're a little more mature, a little tighter, but just as virile, and definitely not just cashing in.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Okovi
    Danilova's music is often at its best when her powerful voice complements the gloomy arrangements rather than towers over them.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Native Invader
    When Amos eschews her band in favor of barer piano-and-vocal arrangements—as on the contemplative “Breakaway,” the surprisingly reverent “Climb,” and the lush “Mary's Eyes,” a mournful plea to the gods to reverse Amos's mother's aphasia--Native Invader fulfills the promise of its stunning opener.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Omnion
    Omnion is polished, precise, and familiar-sounding, but it's also indelibly soulful. It recalls the discotheque's formative role as sweaty, secular alternative church.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    American Dream
    As far as reunion albums by aging bands go, this one is about as gratifyingly unpredictable as anyone could have hoped for. American Dream is notably more rock-oriented than its predecessors.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Villains
    If anything, Villains could have used more overt pop influences, as it may have resulted in more delightfully wild experiments like the closing “Villains of Circumstance,” whose sulking verses contrast with sweeping, glitzy choruses to suggest Michael Bolton as a deranged Weimar-era cabaret singer.
    • 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,
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beast Epic
    The sneaky-sounding arpeggios and the hushed, fragile vocal performances that defined albums like Our Endless Numbered Days are eschewed in favor of bright strumming and unbridled joyousness, rendering most of Beast Epic undeniably pretty but ultimately toothless. That's not to say Beast Epic doesn't sometimes explore hefty themes.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Not Dark Yet
    None of the songs covered on Not Dark Yet really count as obscurities, but Moorer and Lynne's interpretations are loaded with surprises and packed with personal conviction.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Deeper Understanding
    The album's lyrics, however, can't match this same level of musical precision, and Granduciel too often repeats the same vague sentiments using threadbare imagery.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    TFCF
    TFCF lacks the forceful unity of the best Liars albums, particularly the thoughtful avant-garde theatrics of They Were Wrong So We Drowned and Drum's Not Dead. The songs here function more like a series of half-developed sketches, often invigorating but a tad shambolic, the lyrics' cryptic nature failing to connect with any coherent central thesis.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Painted Ruins
    Painted Ruins stops short of fearlessly exploring new musical terrain, instead content to approach the familiar from new angles.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Road, Vol. 1
    The Road, Pt 1 thrives in its quiet, contemplative moments, which break new ground for Unkle, even as Lavelle touches on a more familiar sound with thrumming numbers like the trip-hop-infused “Arm’s Length.”
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Flower Boy
    If “maturity” isn't quite the word for Flower Boy, however, the album is nevertheless a significant milestone. This is easily Tyler's most emotionally risky, and rewarding, work to date--and, in its own way, more transgressive than anything from Odd Future's punk-rap peak.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything Now
    The result is by far Arcade Fire's most upbeat and easily digestible album to date.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paranormal
    For anyone who thinks Cooper's music has lost its edge, Paranormal is a reminder that loud, lumbering rock never goes out of style.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lust for Life
    In something of a seismic shift for the usually downcast artist, the constant of the songwriting here is a buoying faith in the power of love, and all the many forms it can take: romantic (“Love”), carnal (“Cherry”), platonic (“Coachella”), effusively adulatory (“Groupie Love”), fetishistic (“White Mustang”), and, yes, self-loving (“In My Feelings”).
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Goodnight Rhonda Lee
    Everything on Goodnight Rhonda Lee is immediate. Throughout, Atkins’s lyrics eschew metaphor in favor of a more confessional mode, and her arrangements are punchy and direct.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    4:44
    There's not a wasted moment on this rare Jay-Z album that's too taut and focused for crossover singles or distractions from its central thesis. He takes 4:44 seriously but doesn't forget to have fun along on the way.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Something To Tell You
    These 11 slickly produced tracks are kept more uniform in tone and content, to the point of repetition, and the feelings expressed sound more manufactured than genuine.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Need to Feel Your Love
    It’s just as intense in terms of either volume or passion as their self-released EPs, but the album’s somewhat surprising emotional and stylistic eclecticism prevent the band’s library of overcharged ’70s-style riffs or its maximalist energy, epitomized by singer Tina Halladay’s wailing typhoon of a voice, from becoming too fatiguing.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star
    The music itself provides the surface glitz, unspooling in sumptuous tapestries in which no element ever takes center stage for long, swapping out repetitive beats for a style that makes an ethereal asset of its mutability.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Out in the Storm
    After a while, Crutchfield's melodies also blend together, especially during the album's middle stretch, where the similar-sounding “Sparks Fly” and “Brass Beam” are sequenced back to back.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Funk Wav Bounces, Vol. 1
    By showing little interest in challenging the clichés of men fixated on conquest and status symbols and women focused on “feels,” Harris undermines what could have been an inspired creative reinvention.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    TLC
    TLC succeeds only to the extent that it captures the sound and style of the group's golden era, but absent of Left Eye's signature swagger; though T-Boz and Chilli are in fine voice, the group's success largely relied on the delicate balance of all three members.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Together At Last
    The album won't ever take a place among the landmarks in Tweedy's catalogue, but it does provide a fresh way to hear and appreciate them.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Woodstock
    Instead of putting their own offbeat stamp on danceable pop music, Portugal. The Man abandons their once-unique sound and retreats into imitation.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Melodrama
    Whether it's a party record disguised as a breakup album or a breakup album disguised as a party record, it's cathartic, dramatic, and everything else you could want an album titled Melodrama to be.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crack-Up
    Crack-Up takes contrasting musical ideas and textures and makes them functional, if not transcendent. Ultimately, though, the album fails to shed much light on the mind of an artist more preoccupied with shrouding his songs in crashing waves, shadow, and smoke.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    So You Wannabe an Outlaw
    You can call it a return to his roots if you like, but really, So You Wanna Be an Outlaw is just a very good Steve Earle album--one that engages his past without ever sounding stuck in a rut.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Nashville Sound
    The album is more eclectic and energetic than his other recent efforts, which have seen Isbell’s voice and vitality as a songwriter crystallize just as his sound, for better or worse, has become slicker and more uniform.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Witness
    The album lacks both the big hooks that propelled Perry's past hits up the charts and the conceptual and sonic focus to give her pop real purpose.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Waiting on a Song
    It's a complete, self-contained work that's just as finely crafted as its musical predecessors.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Parking Lot Symphony
    If there's a weakness here, it's that Shorty's lyrics feel like placeholders. ... The same could certainly not be said of the music, which is as rich and as complex as any he's made.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Welcome Home
    If the album's greatest sin was simply sonic banality, it would be a lot more palatable. Far worse is the cynical nature of the album's roosty overtures.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    You're Welcome
    There was an inherently intriguing incongruity between his Brian Wilson-inspired melodies and the unfathomable level of DIY grime with which he rendered them on the first couple of (self-recorded) Wavves albums. Absent that tension, Williams's melodies must be judged by their own ingenuity, and on that count, the ones on You're Welcome, especially those in its back half, too often fall short of the mark.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Goths
    Darnielle deftly weaves through memories of an impressionable period in his life and its accompanying soundtrack while avoiding the pitfall of nostalgia or sentimentalism for the music of his youth.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Turn Up the Quiet
    Her [more traditionalist approach] certainly doesn't raise the bar, but it does offer an alluring elegance and low-key appeal.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Kind Revolution
    A Kind Revolution never feels fragmentary, even though it’s certainly wide-ranging and eclectic. The difference is that Weller really gives his best ideas time to develop here, and his usual frenzied pacing is relaxed a bit, letting the songs fully unfold.
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