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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    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lush
    Jordan ultimately transcends much of the chaos, coming out stronger on the other side. Habit communicated the anguish of endings, but Lush offers hope for new beginnings, arriving at a liberating quietus.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Unraveling
    It’s perhaps their most confrontational, challenging effort to date, an intricate work that’s more a reflection of than an antidote to the darkness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
    There’s a tension in Wolfe’s music between a tendency to overdramatize or cloak her pain in gothic imagery and a genuine yearning to be heard and understood. While the former can feel facile, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She more often manages to arrive at the latter. Wolfe’s songs might avoid specific details about her actual life, but the sturm und drang coursing through them is potent and deeply felt.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bones of What You Believe
    While the album has its fair share of sweet spots, the handful of capable melodies never quite balances out its bizarre impulses or the utter lack of thematic unity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night
    But even weaker songs are still not a wasted trip, flickering with sharp moments and dazzling effects. In this way, the album asserts itself as a refreshingly pointed piece of chamber pop, a starkly serious work that plays as big but never portentous.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Twelfth
    “Confessional Boxing” offers mostly surface-level hints at the dark times of the past, as the song growls but doesn’t ever bite. Miller fares better when he’s in pure storytelling mode on the after-hours waltz “Belmont Hotel,” on which the titular hotel becomes a metaphor for romantic renewal.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    BE
    For better or worse, Be’s sights are trained on BTS fans, meaning the album is too insular for broader appeal.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything is Love
    At times an opulent spectacle and at others a full-bodied avowal of devotion, Everything Is Love stands as a monumental testament to keeping it real.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fuse
    Even when Fuse is firing on all cylinders, it feels risk-averse, leaving one longing for an album that mines its gloomy outlook and ambiance for greater impact. As far as proverbial “comebacks” go, though, an exercise in pared-down style, where the music is a little darker, slower, and a bit more mature than what’s come before, is far from the end of the world.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Con
    The Con is undoubtedly as sweet as it is short.
    • Slant Magazine
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I Like to Keep Myself in Pain
    A deeply rewarding album.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Manic
    It’s this refusal to pick a lane that’s precisely what makes Halsey’s third album, Manic, her most compelling effort to date.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I, I
    The album seems to suggest that Bon Iver is transitioning from a band in the traditional sense of the word into a looser collective. Despite the album’s intense pessimism and anxiety, Bon Iver’s organization speaks to the power of forging a community to battle back against darkness.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All a Man Should Do
    Even on an album full of obvious nods to music of the past, Lucero manages to surprise.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Beggar
    It proceeds in the same white-knuckle way as the group’s last four releases. It is, though, defined by the quality and craftsmanship that’s expected of Swans.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Give the People What They Want
    Give the People What They Want is a collection of songs that not only sees the Dap-Kings reveling in a variety of musical tones, from confident, strutting anthems of independence to slow-burning, intimate ballads, but also displays Jones at her most vocally ferocious, lending a self-assured voice to the down and out.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Exai
    Exai represents a career-spanning work, one that encapsulates almost every phase of their evolving aesthetic, and whether you're a fan of their early work or their recent output, it stands as a remarkable synthesis that coheres only through the deftness of its sonic architects.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Magic Numbers
    High, lovely harmonies notwithstanding, a good 15 minutes chopped could've meant the difference between merely being noticed and creating a minor masterpiece of nostalgia-infused pop.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ole! Tarantula
    Olé! Tarantula delivers the goods: jangly, addictive psychedelic pop of the type Hitchcock mastered with the Soft Boys and the Egyptians.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Progress
    At its best, with the apocalyptic stomp of "SOS" and the dreamy tones of "Pretty Things," it's clear Progress is by far the smartest record that Barlow and company have put their name to.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Before and After
    Without the distractions and clashing frequencies of a full band, one can better appreciate how the album has been cut together, with subtle musical segues, clever editing, and consideration for overlapping lyrical themes.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cracker Island
    Much like 2017’s overstuffed Humanz, Cracker Island is, more times than not, overly indebted to its impressive list of guest stars, foregrounding their talents instead of employing them as natural extensions of Albarn’s musicianship.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sweep It Into Space
    The sprightly, exuberant Sweep It Into Space doesn’t just provide an especially good opportunity to look back on how far these three guys from Amherst have come since the early ‘90s, it also finds them making their most life-affirming music to date, exploring new tones and textures without betraying their monolithic, thundering signature sound.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Take Off and Landing of Everything
    The Take Off and Landing of Everything gives us mostly familiar surroundings, but it makes for fine company.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Aquarius
    Interludes were employed on Janet's best albums to segue between an array of themes, genres, and tempos; here they're just used as atmosphere, to create the illusion of an album that's larger than the sum of its parts.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tournament Of Hearts
    There have been better albums released in 2005 than Tournament Of Hearts, but it's probably the album most ideally suited to be a left-field commercial success.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Charli
    The result is a collection of sad bops masquerading as bangers, just as perfect for the club as for a solo bedroom dance party. Like much of pop music, Charli’s lyrics favor broad strokes over more specific narratives, leaving her songs open to interpretation.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
    If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power is ultimately rather straightforward, reprising many of the themes—self-doubt, self-sabotage, self-empowerment—that have been central to Halsey’s past work.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Under The Skin
    Under The Skin... washes over you like a summer breeze.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not
    Not given over entirely to the atmospherics of Beyond, the heavy jamminess of Farm, or the poppiness of I Bet on Sky, Give a Glimpse instead combines all those stylistic elements into a package that may not feature as many lastingly memorable songs, but is replete with all the welcome signatures of the band's sound.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Monsters Of Folk
    With all four players clearly bringing out the best in each other, one hopes that Monsters of Folk makes for more than just a one-off side project.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    EP
    She is near pitch-perfect with every turn, and seems to relish the opportunity to flex her vocal cords in this electronic environment.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    C'est La Vie
    C’est La Vie doesn’t thrum with the roiling tension of Muchacho, but in finding a sense of serenity and calm in whatever life throws at him, Houck strikes a balance between happiness and longing that’s often nothing short of sublime.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Traumazine
    Megan displays more vulnerability on “Anxiety” than she ever has before, letting the person behind the swagger show. ... Megan’s attempts at pop and R&B crossover are less successful. Traumazine’s production, full of cavernous piano chords and punchy 808s, finds a sweet spot that’s mainstream enough to appeal to a wide audience while still threatening to blow out your woofers.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Center Won't Hold
    The Center Won’t Hold clocks in at just over a 30 minutes and lacks a certain spark—a song with the barn-burning intensity of “Entertain” or the heartrending emotion of “One More Hour.” In many places, these songs feel derivative in a way that the band’s music never has before.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The King of Limbs
    The King of Limbs finds Yorke and company preparing to forge a new path while taking a pensive look at what has gone before.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Arabia Mountain
    While like-minded bands fumble around with weighty concepts and overlong arrangements, the Black Lips remain purveyors of instant, unpretentious gratification.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life Under the Gun
    While their emotional palette may feel rooted in anger, unlike Regional Justice Center, the band’s more melodic passages strive to express it without becoming trapped by it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Highwomen
    The album’s opening track, “Highwomen,” is a powerful and succinct recalibration of Jimmy Webb’s “The Highwayman.” ... Other songs on The Highwomen give voice to women’s struggles in a more lighthearted manner, and with mixed results.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Last Days Of Wonder
    It's easy enough to listen to the album as a whole, but roughly a third of the songs are clunkers.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Twins
    Segall throws a lot of stuff against the wall to see what sticks, and not all of it does, but it's still impressive that he's capable of pumping out so much music in so many closely related veins without repeating himself.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Premonition
    Once again, they infuse their brand of punk with a hefty dose of pop songcraft and meticulous production, courtesy of producer Jesse Gander, Premonition conjures a dark, enticing dynamism unparalleled even by their own extraordinary output.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    100 Proof
    100 Proof proves that Pickler is capable of far more than she has previously let on.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Up [25th Anniversary Edition]
    The album presents a trio that’s getting back on their feet and figuring out how to be a unit again. It’s a feeling that’s echoed in the re-issue’s 11-song “warts-and-all rehearsal” recorded during a live taping of the television series Party of Five in 1999.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Ways Away
    From the title on down, O'Neil invokes space and silence, guiding you through more sonic and emotional emptiness than you might think possible in 37 minutes.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lazaretto
    Lazaretto pushes even further in its presentation of strange, misshapen song structures, coming off as kaleidoscopically fragmentary and incendiary.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Visions
    Visions is a flawed but intimate glimpse into the fantasies of its creator, and while it might not act as a springboard to greater fame for Grimes, it's just as satisfying to hear her take her bedroom music into a darkened basement, away from the prying world.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Emerald City
    Both on a song-for-song basis and as singular cohesive work, Emerald City demonstrates Vanderslice's masterful control of craft at every structural level and his unrivaled ability to make the political personal.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gather, Form & Fly
    With their masterful use of texture and loose regard for conventional structure, Megafaun is among the few modern folk acts capable of pulling off real surprises. That they also pull off genuine pathos and sincerity makes Gather all the more rare an achievement.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Swing Lo Magellan
    Wild, wooly, and willfully chaotic.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nightmare Vacation
    The album suggests that self-adulation can be just as therapeutic as unleashing rage, showing off Rico’s artistic range in the process.
    • 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
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Invisible Way
    Low has found what they do well and occasionally even exceed the standards they've set for themselves, but the stoicism and gradual build that comprises the band's best songs is at times defeated by their lyrical disinterest and repetition.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All of Us Flames
    While All of Us Flames peaks in energy early with the tremendous “Forever in Sunset,” one of Furman’s most climactic rock songs since 2018’s “Driving Down to L.A.,” the impact of the album’s latter half comes from its focus on autobiographical minutiae.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gigaton
    Pearl Jam has been locked in cruise control since the late ‘90s, and their latest, Gigaton, is largely more of the same.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Slow Focus
    Beyond constructing music marked by a consummate sense of craftsmanship, Fuck Buttons continue to toy with notions of what an album should be, a natural progression for a band whose only defining quality is their refusal to settle on a definitive sound.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rising Down
    Playing against typecast, Rising Down is not an appropriate soundtrack for your next fraternity party or bong load. It's more of a call to arms. Radio Raheem might well be proud.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Antifogmatic
    For all their peerless technical skill, it's the gutsiness they display throughout Antifogmatic that makes the album one of the year's finest, most ambitious records.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In Times New Roman...
    The best moments on In Times New Roman… prove that Queens of the Stone Age can still reliably deliver left-of-center alt-rock thrills, and Homme’s take-it-or-leave-it charisma is as tangible as it ever was. But after almost three decades of taking on every strand of rock music and embracing both the analog and the digital, it’s disheartening, if perhaps understandable, that the band seems unsure of where to go next.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Confessions On A Dance Floor
    One of the few pop singers whose albums are best appreciated in their entirety and not lopped off into "hit singles," Madonna... has succeeded at creating a dance-pop odyssey with an emotional, if not necessarily narrative, arc.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Furr
    Furr is country-chic posturing that works from a distance: as twangy background music for those elites who watch their politics on MSNBC.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black Sea
    Black Sea is a headphone album, packed with fragile, briefly presented sounds that seem in constant danger of escaping unheard.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Loss of Life
    After spending most of their career up to now signed to a major label, MGMT seems to have found space to make the kind of music they want without sacrifice here. The anxious tension of unmet expectations that used to hang over them is gone—and you can hear it in the songs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Animal Years
    Animal Years sounds unsettled: the arrangements are far too bombastic for this record's purposes.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quiet the Room
    Despite its often-startling beauty, Ballentine’s songwriting can’t help but feel derivative at times. ... Still, Quiet the Room isn’t without its unique charms—the ominous drones of “Lullaby in February” cast indie folk into the gloomy depths of dark ambient—and Ballentine offers copious moments of hushed self-reflection and aching sadness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Scene Of The Crime
    Scene of the Crime is as comprehensive and as thorough an artistic declaration of self as any in recent memory.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    True [EP]
    Even under a half hour, it still manages to wear itself out.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Geography
    Save for the wonky sequencing choice of front-loading the two most negligible songs ... No Geography could easily pass for a collection of epic B sides to some of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons’s signature classics.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Swanlights
    Swanlights reveals a portrait of the artist looking upward and onward beyond anguish.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    II
    It's their densest and most detailed work to date, but without the cathartic spirit of their live shows (Gamelan was written largely in a live setting), II sounds stripped of the music's previous rapture.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wavering Radiant
    Whether trading in power chords or atmospheric overlays, the band excels at transforming emotions into thrilling sounds, palpable awe, and tangible dread. This is metal played at its arresting best.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's Album Time
    It's Album Time is structured similarly, slowly building an argument that there's genuine talent behind the sheen of novelty, only to have Terje zigzag in the other direction, dodging the argument he would claim he wasn't even interested in making in the first place.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gang Of Losers
    One of the year's more understated and beautifully paranoid gems.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mordechai
    Mordechai finds Khruangbin coming into their own, thanks to the band’s lyrical development and the honing of their fusion of intercontinental influences. As the adage goes, there’s nothing new under the sun, but Mordechai makes a case that maybe there just might be.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Exister
    Like 2018’s Criminal, the album represents another step forward for the Soft Moon, as Vasquez processes his pain with a newfound level of honesty, and an uncanny ability to build on the well-established musical ideas he so enthusiastically draws from.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Ship
    The emotional focus sharpens as The Ship progresses.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lenses Alien
    All three of those bands masterfully juggle creative lyrics with equally inventive music, something Cymbals Eat Guitars comes very close to achieving on Lenses Alien.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Space Heavy
    Each instrument stands out because the individual parts are so austere. On Space Heavy, King Krule proves that power sometimes comes with restraint.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beyond
    It's in between the showboating, when Mascis demonstrates his folk and country-tinged melodies and subtle but elaborate leads that you realize what you're listening to is pretty fucking close to genius.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Price of Progress
    The Price of Progress proves that they haven’t forgotten what made them great.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Travels With Myself And Another
    Travels with Myself and Another expands the complexity, adding guitar solos and a more careful sense of composition to the pounding fray.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Noble Beast
    Similar to witnessing Bird's high-wire concert act, in which he deftly loops figures from guitar, violin, and vocals to create living sound colleges of pop songs, one comes away from Noble Beast feeling more impressed than moved.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brill Bruisers
    Like the band's best work, Brill Bruisers keeps you on your toes with its unrelenting minutiae.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chromatica
    Whether muddling the creation of the universe with both love and fame (“Sine from Above”) or teasing the theory of the world as a simulation (“Enigma”), these songs only scratch the surface of deeper ideas before falling back on the most basic of pop clichés.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sol Invictus
    Absent the lightning-in-a-bottle voltage of their heyday, Faith No More's Sol Invictus is shockingly no more than adequate.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Dinosaur Life
    Taking on the whole album without the aid of the skip button is likely to leave one feeling over-caffeinated and under-stimulated; you're better off going straight to the highlights, which are so generously hook-laden as to withstand any number of compulsive replays.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Biophilia
    As much as the last four or so tracks do to redeem what is too often a failed and overly formal experiment in hyper-theoretical songcraft, the insoluble problem of Biophilia is that Björk has chosen to inflate what is ultimately one of her least essential musical statements to such spectacular proportions.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ugly Season
    The album serves as a beautiful dissection of dance as action and concept. Beyond that, it’s the most experimental Perfume Genius effort to date, and a bold addition to an already impeccable discography.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sorry I Haven't Called
    Here [on “Can I Talk My Shit”] and on “You Know How,” her vocals feel devoid of any distinctive characteristics and are needlessly Auto-Tuned. .... Fortunately, the album’s second half—its sterling middle section in particular, from “Autobahn” through “Don’t Know How”—is vastly more rewarding. These tracks don’t strain as hard to fit into contemporary Spotify playlist formulas and allow Tamko to get back to the more the intimate, sophisticated sound of 2019’s Vagabon.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Runner
    This striving for variety, and the fact the Sea and Cake run with every idea regardless of how soon it tires, is also one of their charms.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hold Time
    Another feather in his crowded cap, Hold Time is further proof that Ward provides a powerful jolt to what might otherwise be a tired genre.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories the World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away
    No More Stories becomes absorbing in its delight at the rehashed spectrum in which it operates. Mew is not as thoughtful or smart as they think they are, but the force of their conviction is inspiring.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dedicated Side B
    The dozen songs that comprise Dedicated Side B, all leftovers from the original recording sessions, are less musically adventurous than those particular tracks, but they double down on pillow talk, lending the album a uniformity that its predecessor lacked.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Glitter And Doom Live
    The usual thrill of a live album comes from slightly tweaked familiarity, but Waits treats his songs like old cars in need of new engines. It's a decision that's ultimately more rewarding, turning Glitter and Doom into an album that basically amounts to 80 minutes of new material.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Coexist
    Of the album's few standout tracks, only "Fiction" comes close to eclipsing the half-dozen or so uptempo gems that populated the band's debut. What's left is a collection of richly crafted but idling songs in desperate need of some muscle.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Clancy's Tavern
    Keith has always been predominantly a singles artist, but Clancy's Tavern has a surprisingly high percentage of songs that play as afterthoughts.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pressure Machine
    Pressure Machine, stands as the band’s most sonically restrained effort to date. The hooks are still there, and songs like “Quiet Town” and “In the Car Outside” nod to the group’s early synth-driven sound, but the album’s 11 songs take their sweet time unfurling, luxuriating in subtle details like the swooning strings of the title track.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Post Pop Depression
    A few songs, like “American Valhalla” and “In the Lobby,” are rather dreary, and feel like Homme and Pop just spinning their wheels; they could have used a bit of a Stooges-style kick in the ass. Even on the slower songs, though, Homme and the stripped-down lineup he assembled for the album--fellow Queen of the Stone Age Dean Fertita, and Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders--provide a heavy, rhythmic bedrock and stylistic versatility.
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