Slant Magazine's Scores

Select another publication »
For 3,120 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 35% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 62% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Who Kill
Lowest review score: 0 Fireflies
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,690 out of 3120
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3120
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3120
3120 music reviews
view
per page
    • 78 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Happy Hollow
    Happy Hollow is far too grouchy to be taken seriously.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Parc Avenue
    It is their failure to do little beyond noodle energetically and evoke the work of others that dooms Parc Avenue to mediocrity.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP
    The collaborative efforts of tracks like "Bitch Please II" and "Under the Influence" make Eminem seem like an ornamental prop in Dr. Dre's ever-growing hip-hop dynasty.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Shall Noise Upon
    Their new album, Shall Noise Upon, is intellectually thinner, more musically pedantic, and not quite as tongue-in-cheek.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    In Stormy Nights
    Maybe pastiche is inevitable, even in the Japanese avant garde scene, but can't it at least be a little more fun?
    • 75 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves
    The album is filled with garage-sale synths flooded with reverb and nary a hook to be found, sounding, at best, like an unfinished video-game score ("Hey Moon") and, at worst, like a Human League track played backward in a Walkman taped to the skull of a drowning man ("Head for the Country").
    • 75 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Preteen Weaponry
    Presumably the climax of the whole stumbling, stoned expedition arrives about halfway through the latter half, when some synthy Gregorian chant-style vocals trudge into the mix for a few seconds, but by the time the album reaches its dingy conclusion and fades back into feedback loops and distant alien static noises, Oneida seems to have inadvertently demonstrated only one thing: that, dude, having, like, rad conceptual ideas and high aspirations does not a good album make.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Versions
    With Versions, Jesus achieves something her previous albums hadn't: She's created art so unobjectionable that it attains a kind of beige obscenity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Brightest Blue
    For the most part, she doesn’t have the chops or soul of contemporaries like Florence Welch, who sings of similar subject matter with a real torch, and who shares a collaborator in Joseph Kearns, who produced almost every song on Brightest Blue. At Kearns’s behest, the album takes a relatively new tack for Goulding, trading the garish for the palatable, but it’s no less grating as a result.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Getting Somewhere
    Getting Somewhere is the first of her albums that not even her vocals can save.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Ventriloquizzing
    Monahan is a fine producer when working within the framework of progressive folk and Americana, but his work on Ventriloquizzing is just a complete misfire.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Love, Pain & the whole crazy thing
    As a country album, a pop album, or something in between, Love, Pain, & The Whole Thing is simply bad.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Free At Last
    It's what Freeway says that continues to disappoint, and it's not for lack of subject matter.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    You're Always on My Mind
    For an album about "fun under the summer sun," You're Always on My Mind is singularly joyless.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Realism
    Here there are few bright spots and barely any prevailing concept to blame that fact on, leaving Realism as a bad album with nothing but the band behind it to blame.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Working On A Dream
    Yet despite O'Brien's anemic production, much of the blame for Working On a Dream undoubtedly lies with Springsteen himself; drained of his angry energy, he dribbles out material that's for the most part goofy and painfully bloodless.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Born to Sing: No Plan B
    Fans of the old stuff who long ago wrote Morrison off will find their gripes sadly confirmed on Born to Sing: No Plan B, a recession album that's four years too late.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    All of You
    For the most part, All of You is virtually indistinguishable from Caillat's previous work, though the appearance of Common on "Favorite Song" does threaten to disrupt business as usual.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Taking The Long Way
    It's not just Rubin's production choices that fail, though--it's the songwriting.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    It'll Be Better
    It's short, boring, and occasionally aggravating, recalling the flatness of acts like Maroon 5 and John Mayer while never coming close to their likeability, and when you're being rocked off the stage by Adam Levine, it's not a good sign.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Kindred
    Unfortunately, Kindred only loses the plot further, entrenching itself in a sonically limited pop vocabulary (starchy synth lines; bristling, reverb-doused percussion; and huge, multi-tracked choruses) that's even further away from the chaotic chemistry of his debut.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Year Of The Black Rainbow
    There's no trace of Coheed's oddball eclecticism here, or of their dynamic pop sensibilities; instead the emotionally and tonally monochrome Black Rainbow gives the impression of a typically humorless metal act.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Planet Pit
    A little bit of charisma probably wouldn't have saved Planet Pit from disaster, but it might have helped.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    All Jacked Up
    What All Jacked Up ultimately confirms... is that Wilson is a one-trick pony whose trick will only impress those with exceedingly low expectations.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Boy Who Knew Too Much
    Too much of Boy is the bad kind of theatrical, less an album than an aural assault.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Back to Me
    She makes a genuine effort here, but not even the legendary R&B singers to whom she has been compared could elevate this material.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bitter Tea
    Less a rebound from the indulgent for-friends-and-family-only nightmare of Rehearsing My Choir than a lateral side-step, Bitter Tea sounds like a desperate plea to be labeled as "clever."
    • 69 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    True
    No one demonstrates the artist-as-cash-machine ethos better, as the mechanical churn of commerce rings loudly on each and every track.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Quilt
    Even a guest verse from Busta Rhymes can't breathe any life into this copy-and-paste mess.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ukulele Songs
    The slapdash nature of these 16 (!) songs doesn't make them feel visceral or honest (which was clearly the artist's intention), but haphazard and disposable.
prev
Page: