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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    • 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
    • 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.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Utopia
    The bit of dead weight here [the album's excessive duration] is especially frustrating, since Björk seems to have reconjured the elements that made her music so exceptional, and consistently enough that one can imagine a shorter, more curated iteration of Utopia that could stand with her very best albums.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cousin
    Though these tracks are perfectly adequate, even pretty (especially the vocal melodies on “Evicted”), it’s disappointing to see the band play it safe on an album that aims to be their most adventurous in years. Of course, the band proves that they can still write pensive ballads without succumbing to the clichés of contemporary indie music.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crack The Skye
    Crack the Skye presents a stunningly original fusion of sounds.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Electric Lady
    These two discs capture, in far more disciplined fashion than her debut, the motley delights of this singer and self-styled savant, whose delivery is as impressive and singular as her dance moves.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper
    Grim Reaper is consistently engaging, often catchy, and sometimes disarmingly pretty.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    how i'm feeling now
    Though she recorded the album in a home studio, Charli didn’t limit her ambition and, as a result, manages to surprise both musically and lyrically throughout.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Freetown Sound
    Freetown Sound certainly has the sprawl, hyperactivity, and potential of a personal masterwork, but its master is more conduit and conductor than confessor.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Singles
    Though rock has always been the ideal genre for artists to explore entropy, Herring and his bandmates have somehow found a way to inject what is arguably the safest kind of music, adult pop, with their own weird brand of controlled chaos.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I Made a Place
    Oldham’s albums as Bonnie “Prince” Billy always achieve a cohesiveness that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts, and I Made a Place is no exception.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Collapse [EP]
    For a once-hermetic artist, James's recent output has trended toward greater accessibility, but even by that measure, Collapse's biggest surprise lies in how warm and inviting it all is.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Follow the Cyborg
    Unfortunately, the album’s avoidance of conventional pop structures means these songs fail to lodge in your mind, but Miss Grit sings with a plainspoken, almost whispery intimacy that’s hard to shake.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Underdressed at the Symphony
    Not content to be tied to a single genre, location, or mood, Webster finds pleasure in the discomfort of feeling like she doesn’t belong.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love Streams
    Simply enough, Love Streams is a discomforting listen, and the addition of voices to Hecker's repertoire adds an additional tool of disorientation to his web of repurposed crackles and spurts, not the warmth one might expect.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Illusory Walls
    When the album’s key thematic line appears toward the end of the song—“The objects we’re locked in, immobile and violent/Just fewer like that, fewer afraid”—it feels like the awakening that the band has been building toward all along.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In the End It Always Does
    Initially, the musician’s sophomore effort, In the End It Always Does, seems to follow suit, with a summery ambience, songs about emotional distance, and her unmistakable voice. As the album unfolds, though, her approach feels like it’s been flipped, with vocal hooks taking a backseat to highly textured folktronica instrumentation and a more impressionistic rendering of desire.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Warm Chris
    Harding continues to exercise her versatility and restraint, delivering an album that invites close attention and rewards it with understated surprises.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Weather
    She's always been an insightful and empathetic observer of the human condition, but Weather is such a heady album because of how unflinchingly Ndegeocello has turned her keen observational eyes toward herself.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Demon Days
    Demon Days is decidedly bleaker than its predecessor.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town
    Williams made some pretty great records during his tenure at Curb, but Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town suggests that he's only just begun to showcase his apparently boundless creativity and breadth of his artistic vision.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mirrored Aztec
    Not all of Mirrored Aztec is as great as “Thank You Jane” or any of the previously mentioned highlights.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Anak Ko
    While it might lack a rave-up pop number like Everybody Works’s infectious “1 Billion Dogs,” Anak Ko offers plenty of reasons to follow Duterte down whatever road may lay ahead.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Monitor
    The Monitor is an album about perpetual rebellion, and whether that strikes you as exciting or wearying will have a great bearing on how much you get out of it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wide Awake!
    With Danger Mouse's help, the band has crafted a diverse and intrepid album, stepping out of their comfort zone musically while also exuding a trenchant political posture.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Renaissance
    The Renaissance Q-Tip reaffirms his stature as one of the hip-hop greats by waxing unassuming, cool-headed and wise.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
    Consistently literate and full of the comfortable resonance of his unique voice, Eagle once again proves Callahan to be as ageless as the forest.
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