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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per page
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    One Day
    Although it has some thematic overlap with Glass Boys, One Day amalgamates its disparate lyrical and musical ideas, as well as the confidence of its performances and compositions, into a novel, thrilling 40 minutes.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wake Up The Nation
    Wake Up certainly stands as a collection of top-notch material, representing the second part of a late-term renaissance for an artist who already had a reputation as an innovator.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wondervisions
    Delicate Steve uses their African-inspired rhythms as a foundation for more forward-thinking experimentation. That their experiments manage to be successful without sacrificing basic tunefulness makes Wondervisions a winning debut record.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Young Heart
    While Birdy meets the warmth of the album’s production with vocal skill and sensitivity, the overall effect is a very beautiful album littered with clichés that muddle its emotional impact. Still, there are seeds of great ideas here.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alpha Zulu
    Both the title track, with its exclamation of “Woo-ha! Singing hallelujah!,” and “All Eyes on Me,” with its whip cracks and anxious synths, attempt to strike a more dastardly and vaguely dangerous vibe that they don’t really pull off. But for the most part, Alpha Zulu delivers the kind of deceptively simple, fleet pop for which Phoenix is best known.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Strays
    Strays continues in the classic rock-inspired direction of 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started, breaking from the neo-traditional country music that put Price on the map. The arrangements employ slide guitar and keyboards—even xylophone on “Time Machine”—with a punchy yet spacious mix, but the album flaunts its influences a bit too transparently.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Legacy, Vol. 2
    Boo turns footwork’s roots—hip-hop, house, IDM, and drum ‘n’ bass—and spins them into something that sounds like a totally new language.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Integrated Tech Solutions
    So while the album may play it a little safe, it also smartly plays to its creator’s strengths.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Two Dancers
    Two Dancers is a striking, dynamic album, and will deservedly land on many year-end lists.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Celebration Rock
    Celebration Rock is a tipsy toast to the very best moments in life.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Furling
    While country and roots music inform many of the arrangements here, slide and steel guitars are employed mostly as texture, creating a blur of sound. This is very much “vibes” music, emanating from a wide swath of influences, blending English folk, American roots music, and dubby trip-hop in ways that are both heady and nebulous.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
    The freeform Return of the Ankh is what it would sound like if 4th World War drank three whole jars of holy water. It doesn't sound one bit like her debut (as early reports indicated), but it does bear the mark of its creator having rolled through the full cipher.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Us
    The smart tracks build up the complexity of Ali's persona, while the dumb ones diminish it. The juxtaposition of these two different modes creates a fuller exposition than what you'll find on most hip-hop albums.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky
    My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky submits to no such relaxed idleness. It earns the right to avoid the term reunion, picking up right where the band left off.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bright Mississippi
    Toussaint gives each of the instruments room to explore, breaking free of the structure of the song and marking it with his own distinctive stamp. It's this loose, spirited mood that makes the album's interpretations so smooth and effective.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harry's House
    The album both sees Styles cementing his status as music’s premier sensitive, shy guy and growing comfortable enough within the pop idiom that he inhabits to push against it—but only ever so slightly. Styles may be a fashion trendsetter, but with Harry’s House, he continues trying on different styles in an effort to discover his own.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Food & Liquor
    Food & Liquor is one of the year's fresher efforts and future classics.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Look Now
    With its mix of rock and balladry, Look Now strikes a fine balance between the lively and the pensive, nodding to previous eras of Costello’s career.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Navigator
    The Navigator evocatively captures the essence of the streets of New York's increasingly gentrified outer boroughs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Real Animal
    The production choices are well-matched to the individual songs on both structural and thematic levels--Real Animal works as a testament to the diversity of Escovedo's career and the breadth of his talents--but those individual choices don't necessarily make for a cohesive album.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prima Donna [EP]
    Prima Donna's standout title track encapsulates Staples's appeal as a lyricist—and the appeal of the EP as a whole.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Hate Music
    What amazes most, and there's much to marvel at here, is the childlike wonder and sprightly sense of play that still remains after all these years.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Color of the Sky
    A Color of the Sky is an enchanting cache of guitar pop with echoes of Talk Talk, Cocteau Twins, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, and Emmylou Harris.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tempest
    This crustily hammy, crowd-pleasing side of Dylan is one of his most satisfying.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Playing Favorites
    Playing Favorites proves that Sheer Mag can show off their softer underbelly just as skillfully as they do their fangs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Piano & A Microphone 1983
    The first half of Piano & a Microphone 1983 unfolds as a kind of stream-of-consciousness medley. ... The album’s three previously unreleased songs are also of note, even if they’re just rough drafts.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blunderbuss
    Blunderbuss feel satisfying, but not astoundingly progressive. It's a solo debut that can be interpreted in two ways, with White either easing his way into a new template or putting window dressing on the same old ideas.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Love
    It's a dazzling, expansive experience that ranks among the year's best.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Open Your Heart
    Open Your Heart shows off a hugely expanded range of influences and an unerring sense of pacing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Attack On Memory
    Cloud Nothings have never sounded so sure of their abilities, and with such a stunning step forward in their cohesiveness and vision, it's easier than ever to imagine them becoming a genuinely great rock band.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Like Red On A Rose
    What surprises most about Like Red On A Rose is how well this departure suits Jackson.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    case/lang/veirs
    case/lang/veirs flows like a conversation and negotiation between three women who've done the same thing, but in different ways, now learning the world through each other's eyes.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mommy
    The scuzzy guitars, driving rhythms, and yelled vocals are all here, but Mommy fails to recapture the lightning in a bottle that made their initial run so magnetic.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Still Brazy
    Make no mistake--musically and lyrically, this is an expansion.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wildflower
    For those fascinated by the Avalanches's process, as opposed to merely impressed by its most endearing results, Wildflower is a rewarding and challenging listen.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2
    With Hot Sauce Committee, it's advisable to always expect the unexpected.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sour
    Like Eilish and Lorde before her, Rodrigo possesses both a knack for stealthy pop hooks and a vocal control beyond her years. And even if Sour doesn’t quite transcend its myriad influences, it might at least inspire her fans to Google the Piano Man.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skying
    While in some sense these tracks are truer to the band's past than Skying's more formally ambitious cuts, that only convinces me that the Horror's biggest leaps forward are the ones in which they follow other musician's great ideas to new places.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Apocalypse
    Here Bruner again shows that he has the tools for crafting tuneful compositions, but presents little that's dynamic enough to anchor an entire album, resulting in innocuous background burbles that never come off as especially attention-grabbing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Ghosts of Highway 20
    The Ghosts of Highway 20 is otherwise characterized by its consistency, but what really sets it apart from Williams's previous album is its sense of emotional balance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rival Dealer [EP]
    Wintry sonic atmospheres, a motley chorus of voices, and a life-affirming message of salvation--intentionally or not, Burial might have just released the best Christmas album of the year.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wrangled
    A brave album from a country singer who's still finding herself, suggests that it's never too late to lift yourself up.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's Almost Dry
    The intricately constructed It’s Almost Dry is still part of a now decades-long roll-out attesting to his bravado—and we’re not complaining.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Eye Contact
    That's not to say Gang Gang Dance has watered down its style; rather than some strategic reach toward mass appeal, Eye Contact represents a pruning of the superfluous.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War)
    Badu's spare, pointillist lyrics are almost constantly folded deep within dense, heavy arrangements
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Special Affections
    O'Regan's voice is the centerpiece. Unlike seemingly every other bedroom music maker these days, there's a real power and discernable confidence to his croon.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wounded Rhymes
    Wounded Rhymes is filled with gorgeously spiteful moments such as these, adding an obstinate wrinkle to the album's already-rich, shadowy mystique.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fear Fun
    These are songs about trying to find onself, realizing how cliché that quest is, and then further realizing that there's no choice but to push through anyway.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mountain Soul II
    It's still a beautifully crafted, expertly performed record (and certainly a standout in what has been a pretty wretched year for country music), but the scope and thoughtfulness that made "Mountain Soul" such a treasure are absent.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Be
    Each neo-soul nod to the R&B sound of Detroit, immediately post-Holland-Dozier-Holland, sounds more claustrophobic and limited than the last.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Megafaun
    Though they challenge genre convention with their choices of instruments and ambitious arrangements, Megafaun have made careful, spot-on assessments of what actually works within the framework of traditional roots music.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Centralia
    Centralia is the most sophisticated and cultivated Mountains album to date.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Laurel Hell
    ["Should’ve Been Me" is] a fascinating, fresh take on relationship dynamics that makes much of the rest of Laurel Hell sound boilerplate by comparison.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Brighter Than Creation's Dark
    As is, it's a sporadically brilliant effort by an exceptional band whose reach still sometimes exceeds their grasp.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Hunter
    As a first stab in the direction of avant-garde pop-metal, The Hunter is pretty damn compelling.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    softscars
    The album’s consistent layer of distortion and commitment to brooding unify the songs and solidify Yeule’s unique, and grim, musical style. With Softscars, Yeule expands, refines, and masters their creative vision.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wild Flag
    Beyond comparisons to Sleater-Kinney's past work, the album functions as an intriguing first effort, jagged but routinely promising.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Swim
    Other songs exploit vocals more overtly, but the words still never quite feel like the point, oblique and fuzzy, couched in landscapes that have far too much else going on.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Harlem River Blues
    Given Earle's often morose and sardonic bent as a lyricist, the shift toward blues suits him well, making for his strongest album to date.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love vs Money
    Instead of begging to be repeated, the rest of the album's songs are best savored as a whole--a weird assessment of an R&B album, which usually sink or swim on their ability to capture you right away.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone
    Williams has assembled many guest musicians this time around, but despite all the disparate talent, the album is a tight, coherent work that never devolves into self-indulgent jamming, even at an epic 103 minutes.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blackbirds
    Blackbirds [is] just a hair less successful than Peters's last album, 2012's Hello Cruel World, a self-described "manifesto" that cultivated a level of consistency not quite matched here. But the strength of the new album is less that of its constituent parts than the sum of their focus, and that's by design.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Expert in a Dying Field
    The group’s third album, Expert in Dying Field, is an exhilarating power-pop tour de force, replete with bristling guitar riffs and bright, infectious harmonies. It’s also a devastating exploration of anxiety, insecurity, and regret—a reflection of how, in life, there can be no true joy without sadness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Noise
    However precious his choice of sounds might be, Black Noise nonetheless impresses for its forward-thinking and even robust approach to contemporary dance music.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Visiter
    And speaking of nervous systems, if Visiter doesn't make you tap, nod, shake, or just plain move, then you don't have one.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love On The Inside
    What gives the duo character and what salvages the album, then, are frontwoman Jennifer Nettles's performances and a handful of cuts that rise above the middlebrow songwriting and production.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Haram
    In many ways a critique of the legacy of slavery and colonialism, Haram possesses a manic, catastrophic atmosphere.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    God's Favorite Customer
    The singer-songwriter is more sympathetic when tackling his struggles with mental health. Indeed, God's Favorite Customer hits its stride with its most emotionally naked pair of songs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Boy Named If
    The tail-end of The Boy Named If finds Costello suddenly back in crooner mode with the soft-shoe swing of “Trick Out the Truth” and the moonstruck “Mr. Crescent.” Both tracks are quietly exquisite and provide a comedown from the adrenaline-fueled highs of the album’s first half. They underscore the ways in which The Boy Named If is as complete and often thrilling as anything Costello has recorded in years.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Soused
    Another album which, if not exactly pleasant to listen to, is at least experimentally interesting, continuing Walker's aggressive program of abrasive sonic assaults.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Four the Record
    Without a thematic through line or recurring lyrical motifs or meaningful efforts at myth-building or any of the other sophisticated flourishes that have made her albums so rich, Four the Record is left as a solid collection of better-than-average songs cast in arrangements that offer a progressive take on modern country.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Farm to Table
    In casting off the lo-fi chaos of Live Forever and, thankfully, most of its flirtations with hip-hop, Bartees strikes a somewhat anonymous note with this album’s well-executed but rather straightforward rock, replete with several showy guitar solos.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wall of Eyes
    Whether Wall of Eyes is a last stop for the Smile or merely a layover to some yet-undefined place, it’s an undeniably mesmerizing trip.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lianne La Havas
    The album instantly feels more purposeful than its predecessor: Where Blood can feel labored over, perhaps too hungry for hits, Lianne La Havas isn’t seemingly beholden to such expectations.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Star Wars
    Turns out Wilco are still full of surprises.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    American Gangster
    He's not a real gangster, but he is a real poet. And like the greatest of American poets, he admits that, very well then, he contradicts himself. American Gangster contains multitudes.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Slave Vows
    It is hardcore, a visceral distillation of fury that aims to wound.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life Will See You Now
    It once again finds Lekman employing striking sensory imagery in his acutely detailed recollections about friends and lovers.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Up
    Black Up reveals Shabazz Palaces as an artist much more in line with the future, voicing his dissatisfaction by carving his own path.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hive Mind
    The result is the Internet’s most musically diverse and synergetic album to date.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    B'lieve I'm Goin' Down
    Perhaps a bit too reticent for its own good, B'lieve I'm Goin Down still rewards close listening, steadily developing into an album that's as multifaceted and profound as its mysterious creator.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Whole Love
    The Whole Love easily represents the Wilco's most adventurous and fully realized work in years.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Weathervanes
    Ultimately, then, Weathervanes showcases both the Isbell who can bring the entire world into focus with just a few lines and an acoustic guitar, and the Gibson-toting Isbell with the hot-shit backing band. But he continues to come so close yet so far from reconciling the two.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blue and Lonesome
    hough the Stones are firing on all cylinders throughout Blue & Lonesome, and to a greater extent than they have in decades, they’re hamstrung by the inherent limitations of only playing Chicago blues covers; there are only so many 12- and 16-bar blues tunes you can string together in a row.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Teen Dream
    Beach House makes it easy on Teen Dream, supplying an intense but transparent sheen of iridescent sound, marking an album whose quality is almost instantly evident. Better than anything in recent memory, the album typifies the difference between sonic interference as an instrumental tool and a blanket to hide beneath.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Option Paralysis
    It's clear that Option Paralysis is difficult by design, but the upshot is that anyone who can make it through the first two tracks will probably find one of their favorite albums of the year.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sebenza
    The expertly produced Sebenza creates a flowing, carnival atmosphere packed with ideas and stripped of the pomposity often associated with world music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nine Types of Light
    Nine Types of Light may fall somewhat short in comparison with TV on the Radio's other albums, but it's a strong, smart effort from a band that continues to push resolutely forward.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Is Country Music
    Even when the album isn't up to Paisley's typical standards, This Is Country Music is still an interesting, ambitious project from a man who need not apologize for the things he does awfully well.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Reset
    Reset revels in the whimsical sounds of ‘50s and ‘60s pop and rock but lacks the memorable songwriting that made much of the best music from that era so indelible.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Years
    Her music boasts the building blocks of potential crossover success: impeccable compositional construction; a distinctive songwriting voice; superb musicianship. For now, Shook is content to wallow in country's grimy underbelly, embracing the genre's traditional tropes while pushing them to unexpected places.
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