Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,121 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: 1,691 out of 3121
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3121
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3121
3121 music reviews
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    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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.
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