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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    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Secret Life Of The Veronicas
    The Secret Life Of The Veronicas won't ever be considered anything more than what it is: utterly disposable, shamefully enjoyable, and transparently unoriginal music that, in a just world, will spend its brief moment in the sun entertaining the 11 year olds who wouldn't dare miss an episode of That's So Raven.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Push The Heart
    The Devics' music is chamber pop at its most lush and dreamy.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mockingbird
    Whether or not it works as a testament to "the feminine voice" is debatable, but Mockingbird reasserts that Moorer's is an artistic voice worth hearing.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse
    Undisciplined R&B pastiches, however, the album has in spades, especially ones that hearken back to her own career.... With surprising internal logic, the album's two unabashedly uptempo ditties are also the forums for Mariah's most serious-minded performances.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Outer South
    The result is an album that's unfortunately baggy and sodden with filler, which could have benefited from a little less camaraderie and a little more revision.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    can'tneverdidnothin'
    Scal[es] back the turntable scratches, samples, and hip-hop beats that defined the striking and unique Everybody Got Their Something for more organic-grown productions.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Travelling Like The Light
    Brown brings that same sense of fearlessness to her vocal performances. With her slightly raspy timbre, Brown makes for a terrific, swaggering frontwoman....What gets Brown into some trouble is that she often lands on the wrong side of the line that separates homage from rip-off.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kill
    While the album lacks a certain degree of accessibility and thematic coherence, Electric Six's wiseass humor and, moreover, their superior technical skill make Kill an energetic, frenzied party of a record.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Swords
    Considering the quality of the singles drawn from "You Are the Quarry," "Ringleader of the Tormentors," and "Years of Refusal," it's an utter disappointment that Swords, the collection of B-sides from those singles, is so uneven.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    We Bought a Zoo [Original Soundtrack]
    We Bought a Zoo might just hook newcomers who are intrigued by what they hear.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Candy Salad
    These high points are the result of the band finding that musical sweet spot where corporate rockism is a well-executed (albeit silly) guilty pleasure rather than a collection of melodramatic gimmicks and air-rock hat-tips.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Friends
    Friends so incessantly refers to its generic seasons-change premise that its emotional impact is wholly blunted by the album’s end.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Head Over Heels
    Chromeo's formula is well-suited to producing unpretentious, likeable pop-funk; it's just too bad that it's never felt more like a formula than ever before.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Magic Hour
    A muddled, uneven album that, for a few interminable stretches, sounds like it could've been recorded by just about anyone.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Human
    What prevents Human from being a sort of Afro Pt. 2, then, is a minor onslaught of adult-contemporary schmaltz, something Afrodisiac's producers wisely eschewed.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Public Warning
    The slick, flashy façade that renders tracks like the predictable "Love Me Or Hate Me" and the bland title cut seemingly hollow detracts from the obvious skill of the self-proclaimed "biggest midget in the game," making Public Warning less of an instant classic and more of a promise of things to come.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This Is Acting
    Sia deserves credit for so easily slipping into the personas of her muses, but “Sweet Design,” which harks back to the go-go sound of Beyoncé's B'Day, and “Move Your Body,” whose unabashed 4/4 beat and clattering EDM percussion are straight out of Rihanna's Loud, seem more like dated outtakes than underappreciated gems.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American Classic
    If not on the same level as "Stardust," American Classic nonetheless finds Nelson sounding as soulful and youthful as he has in years.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Aphrodite
    The entire album has the sonic consistency of cotton candy: It won't exactly give you a headache, but it could leave you with a stomachache.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Yours Truly, The Commuter
    Commuter may be a welcome return of an idiosyncratic talent, but it also finds Lytle a bit too stuck in his own head to stand alongside Grandaddy's most challenging, accomplished albums.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Strange Weather, Isn't It?
    Simply put, Strange Weather, Isn't It? is beat for the sake of beat. !!! has certainly mastered the means of dance-rock, but they haven't mastered the ends.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scratch My Back
    Much of this material feels beneath him. What doesn't initially is brought down to that level by an absence of any real idea of how to give these songs a distinctive cast.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Uno!
    For all of the expansion in the band's aural palette, it's difficult to escape a sense of déjà vu on some tracks, which sound like only slightly altered versions of previous entries in the Green Day catalogue.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nightcrawler
    It's the first album on which the distinctive, likeable laziness of his vocal style seems to have seeped into the production.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Adventures Of Bobby Ray
    The album's middle sags futilely, with bigwig producers like Dr. Luke and Jim Jonsin turning in weak beats. But even then, B.o.B. carries the weight with burning charisma.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Snowflake Midnight
    Its dependence on fussy, meticulous electronic elements tempers some of the band's drippier new-agey tendencies, which makes it easier to appreciate how often Snowflake finds Mercury Rev at their most majestic and most ambitious.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Keep On Loving You
    It's a good thing that McEntire is in such fine voice, because her performances elevate some awfully pedestrian material and overcome some strident contemporary country production choices.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Utopia
    He seems less concerned with what he’s saying than with the emotion and feeling his music conveys. It’s a bit of a lopsided approach, but few in today’s hip-hop landscape can truly be considered an auteur the way Scott is. While his artistic vision may be a shaky one, there’s no denying that Utopia, bumps and all, is one hell of a ride.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shine
    The restraint that she shows in both her vocal performances and her song selection are a refreshing change of pace. Unfortunately, she still lacks the instincts of some of the genre's superior interpretive singers, especially with regard to choosing quality material.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hard Believer
    Without enough concrete musical or lyrical details to anchor the album's songs, they occasionally become too abstract for their own good.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kintsugi
    Where Kintsugi falters is in its sacrifice of momentum for structure.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am Not a Human Being
    I Am Not a Human Being is kind of a crummy album, rife with laziness and repetition.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Amnesty (I)
    The album meets all goth-adjacent indie-dance needs squarely. It doesn't, however, ever transcend those needs.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dunes
    Goldsworthy has built a stratum of battered, creaky atmosphere atop Gardens & Villa's already richly layered mood.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    TKOL RMX 1234567
    In the end, TKOL RMX 1234567 does a better job at delivering Radiohead's snowy ennui than its forebearer, suggesting that the band should have collaborated with these electronic purveryors from the get-go and skipped The King of Limbs altogether.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Back & Fourth
    It seems Yorn has found his sincerity again....Yet Fourth has its fair share of missteps, most of them coming when Yorn abandons coarseness for a milky, lukewarm production.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    This Is Us
    Most of the songs are just complete misfires.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Element Of Freedom
    With so few highlights, an unwieldy 52-minute runtime, and a second half nearly devoid of strong material, Freedom doesn't begin to contend with that release--or indeed, even many of those by Keys's objectively less talented contemporaries.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mercy
    Overall, Mercy doesn’t quite measure up to the band’s stellar triptych of albums released between 2012 and 2014, on which they stretched to expand their repertoire, challenging themselves to explore various sounds from throughout the history of rock while refining their chops and chasing wild hares. Mercy boasts a few moments of exploration but seems more staid in its ambitions.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's a Corporate World
    Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.'s dedication to branding has earned them plenty of attention, but on It's a Corporate World, their music too often feels like an afterthought.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Postelles
    At their best, the Postelles sound recalls Elvis Costello, only poppier and sans drollness; at its worst, it's grown-up pop-punk with a weak handle on irony.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Learn To Live
    While Looking for Lucky incorporated some traditional elements into Hootie's brand of bland frat-boy rock, Learn to Live is strictly a mainstream country effort, and that doesn't always work to Rucker's advantage.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Mountain Will Fall
    The Mountain Will Fall is just slack, with perfunctory ideas waiting impatiently for guest stars to enliven them through association.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fastlife
    Jonas certainly can't match someone like Timberlake in terms of a defined aesthetic or presence, but at least he and his team had the smarts to enlist producers who know how to construct solid pop songs.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Album
    While the album’s sheer eclecticism is admirable in theory, each foray stops short of reaching its full potential, leaving listeners stranded in a musical no man’s land of half-baked ideas and missed opportunities.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy
    Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy--though a significant step up from their last album--doesn't break much new ground.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dos
    Dos works as great background music, but simply isn’t consistently engaging. On the other hand, it succeeds as an exercise in minimalist rock deconstructivism, so choose your poison.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    4 x 4 = 12
    As dedicated, efficient, and resourceful as deadmau5 is, he's ultimately unable to escape the severe limitations of his craft, and therefore can't elevate 4X4=12 beyond standard club fare.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magpie and the Dandelion
    Too many edges have been sanded off the brothers' music, and whether the blame lies with Rubin's influence or the accelerated writing pace, the result is an album devoid of the band's usual charming lyrics and adroit melodies.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kiss Me Once
    In terms of the number of classic, summer-ready Minogue singles on hand, Kiss Me Once is pretty much par for the course. But there's an element of that that makes it better than your typical Minogue album, in that it's not content with pleasing the people on the dance floor.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Xscape
    In the end, Xscape justifies its existence with a handful of potential singles that stand up to Jacko's peerless oeuvre, all of them about love's delirious power.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything Now
    The result is by far Arcade Fire's most upbeat and easily digestible album to date.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sundark and Riverlight
    The album neither works on its own merits nor captures what's made Wolf one of today's most compelling musical talents. Sundark and Riverlight takes one of the most captivating, progressive catalogues in contemporary pop and makes it sound like a Picnic with the Pops concert.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ready to Die
    While Iggy's feral mischievousness may still be intact, the Stooges no longer feel like a band capable of anything but embarrassing themselves.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Time To Love
    It sounds better than any album that begins with background vocalists crooning "Moooo…moo-moo-moooo" probably has any right to, and contains at least a couple lo-fi AC ballad keepers.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Raven in the Grave
    The Raveonettes have always made use of heavy reverb on their albums, but the overall impact is that Raven in the Grave just sounds sloppy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Breakout
    For teen-pop (despite what Annie Leibovitz would have us believe, Miley is only 15, after all), your kid could do worse.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Outside
    Obviously, Tapes 'n Tapes wouldn't be content as a glorified indie-rock cover band, but what Outside lacks is a sense of what they would want to be instead.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pale Fire
    One of the most beguiling and unique offerings of the Swedish pack.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Look To You
    For the most part, I Look to You manages to sound completely contemporary without the use of guest rappers, dumbed-down lyrics, or slang.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mo Beauty
    The album is weighed down by too many slower-paced ballads, but on the whole Ounsworth's songwriting and singing abilities have mated with the New Orleans atmosphere to produce something special.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Austin
    Yes, Malone is still able to whip out some sticky refrains, but the songs here all follow the same overly simplistic pop structure, to the point that their catchiness is less an affirmation of his songwriting talents and more of an inevitability of pop formula.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anjulie
    Levine's production style isn't quite as edgy or intricate as his former colleagues', but it provides a lush, retro-soul bed upon which Anjulie lays her confessional lyrics.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Callus
    Unfortunately, Gonjasufi's attempt to turn his solidarity with the angry and the dispossessed into a musical concept is too blandly realized to be convincing.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dig Out Your Soul
    Those follow-up albums were disappointments because, aside from a catchy song or two, they were tedious. Dig Out Your Soul defies this trend and is their most compelling offering in years.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As I Am
    Keys isn't quite a superwoman come to save R&B from itself, but the timeless quality of As I Am is right on time.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chase This Light
    Chase This Light is also a return to form for the band in terms of their ingratiating power-pop.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This is PiL
    If lyrically This Is PiL marks a step forward for Lydon, then musically the album seems caught in a mid-'90s production rut, the color and texture of the band's rhythm section feeling leached out.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Only Place
    The band sounds like they're struggling to come up with a new template, a feeling that leaves The Only Place sounding shiftless and adrift.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trespassing
    Trespassing marks a strutting step forward for Lambert.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Naked Truth
    The preemptively defensive album's biggest problem is that it's surely nowhere near as interesting as its yet-to-be-recorded post-slammer follow-up will be.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    100 Miles from Memphis
    While it's admirable to hear an artist with such a well-established aesthetic branch out, 100 Miles from Memphis doesn't stretch far enough to work as either a contemporary soul record or as a purely retro-minded tribute.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crayons
    The music is harmlessly listenable, and the requisite nods to her dance-floor legacy, like the sweeping, dramatic house anthem 'I'm a Fire' and the lockstep 'Stamp Your Feet,' are (at the very least) no less opportunistic than the latest albums by Madonna and Janet Jackson.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Never Trust a Happy Song
    The Californian quintet returns with a full-length release that quite literally recycles the acmes of their EP: "Colours" and "Naked Kids" return untouched and unchanged, while the remaining 10 tracks suggest the band may be a one-trick pony.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As Above So Below [EP]
    What makes As Above So Below such an effective mood piece are the sparse, forward-thinking arrangements producers Andy LeMaster and the Faint's Todd Fink, Orenda's husband, give the duo's straightforward songs, creating a real sense of tension by contrasting the nature imagery of the lyrics with haunting, otherworldly sounds.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Adventures In The Underground Journey To The Stars
    Adventures is a bright, beautifully wrapped package filled with nothing but styrofoam packing peanuts.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Not Animal
    Not Animal is a more modest album that presents a shrewd view of Margot's strengths and weaknesses, indicating that the band is most successful when it doesn't try to be particularly complex.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Junk
    On a base, per-song level, Junk is a sturdy little workhorse of an album.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Told You I Was Freaky
    The material is better served in context, complete with music videos and framed with dialogue, whereas as a standalone record it misses more than it hits.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Party Ain't Over
    One of White's strengths has always been his ability to separate pastiche from a genuine aesthetic, and The Party Ain't Over is suffocated by its overly stylized, affected '50s put-on.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Bedlam In Goliath
    Sadly, this album takes sound and fury, signifying nothing, to new depths.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Interpol
    Interpol may not be quite self-parody, but it's also not the sort of thing that's going to make them hip again anytime soon. Not that they would even care.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Anarchy, My Dear
    The biggest problem with "Admit It Again," and Anarchy, My Dear as a whole, is that its smart-ass barbs aren't aimed with the kind of precision that separates biting wit from regular old meanness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Little Bit Longer
    Even if it stands to be one of the year's biggest sellers (which it most assuredly will be), Longer is hard to envision as an album that will allow the Jonas Brothers to transcend their place in this teen-pop cycle.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    1977
    Beyond their immediate allure, the tracks here benefit from a profusion of weird touches that elevate and separate them from boilerplate exercises.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Angel Guts: Red Classroom
    Angel Guts is yet another example that the world needs a guy like Jamie Stewart treating music the way Jamie Stewart does: painfully, harshly, intuitively, and with psychotic aplomb.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Places Like This
    Architecture's instrumentation is more varied than ever before. Though they could've made another fine record by sticking to the simpler approach of their previous albums, it's refreshing to see a band take a more ambitious route, and do it well.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Such Fun
    The band's sunny and melodic exuberance ensures that Such Fun is, above all else, a lot of fun.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Octahedron
    Octahedron is something of a new beginning for the band. It's uneven, sometimes clumsy, and a bit incomplete-sounding. But in spite of itself, the Mars Volta sounds exciting again.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Kind of World
    A strangely rockist album that ignores the importance of hooks and melodies and then makes the mistake of equating lo-fi production with seriousness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Have Fun with God
    Compared to Dream River, Have Fun with God sounds like a featureless expanse of echoing congas, with the artist occasionally rising from the depths to sing something that doesn't make sense.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss
    I'm Not Bossy is sonically diverse, but rarely do the songs give O'Connor the opportunity to flaunt her impressive vocal range or, aside from closer "Streetcars," explore the more intimate side of her still-striking voice.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Preliminaires
    As always, Pop's lyrics are not something you want to spend too much time focusing on, but separated from the dumb strut of rehashed cock rock, they settle nicely into an eerie landscape of dread and malaise.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Love You, It's Cool
    With its bright spots marred by detachment, despondency, and meandering, I Love You, It's Cool fails to deliver on the promise of Beast Rest Forth Mouth, knocking Bear in Heaven back a tier or two in the race for indie electro-pop supremacy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Long Trip Alone
    It's a pleasant surprise that Long Trip Alone, if not quite up to the level of the best recordings in mainstream country's recent artistic resurgence, succeeds in establishing Bentley as an artist worthy of more than just passing attention.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Napalm
    Napalm comes on in old-school fashion, with beats as mere vehicles for lyrics, and lyrics that work on a reassuring number of levels.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It's Only Me
    For the most part, though, the writing on It’s Only Me is rife with rich details.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Best Damn Thing
    The Best Damn Thing is a big step back for an artist who was just starting to grow up.
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