Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,047 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 7.8 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: 1,640 out of 3047
  2. Mixed: 1,296 out of 3047
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3047
3047 music reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scarlet
    Doja’s patently irreverent musings on these topics are diverting and humorous, but they’re not served by being presented in such self-serious stylistic trappings. As a result, the album winds up being an uneven grab bag of tracks that aspire to high-brow West Coast rap and down-the-middle pop—the work of a talented MC in search of the right tonal balance.
    • 85 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.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tension
    Only Tension’s title track, with its digitally enhanced vocal hook, veers into territory that could be described as “experimental.” Which is to say, for better or worse, Tension is another Kylie Minogue album.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cottonwood 2
    “Thug It Out” and “Pretty Brown Eyes” find the wunderkind tempering his energy, modulating his tone without flattening it. Would that he applied that approach to the album’s sprawl and structure too.
    • 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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    How Do You Sleep at Night?
    The few tolerable moments across How Do You Sleep at Night? come from either outside voices, including a minute-long verse from Fousheé on “Sweet” that outclasses the bulk of Tezzo’s trite observations, or whenever Teezo is shamelessly copying from others, as he does on “Mood Swings” and the Steve Lacey-lite “Familiarity.”
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Guts
    Despite occasional missteps like that and “Pretty Isn’t Pretty,” which feels like a risk-averse treatise on an important issue, Guts is more consistent than Rodrigo’s debut. Her writing has gotten more precise, which makes both her self-criticism and frequent barbs hurled at others land all the better. She’s also writing with a knottier, less easily resolved perspective this time around.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
    The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We’s numerous emotional peaks, from “Star” to “My Love Mine All Mine,” are so moving that the listener may also be convinced that love is a light in a dark world, a pillar of fire in the wilderness. Indeed, Mitski’s ability to pack so many gut-punches and inspired ideas into half an hour remains uncannily impactful.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Clear Pond Road
    Like Hersh herself, the album resists convention and refuses to be pinned down.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hit Parade
    If Hit Parade isn’t Murphy’s best album, it’s certainly her wildest and weirdest.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything Is Alive
    Everything Is Alive may not boast the lo-fi grit of Slowdive’s earlier work, but the band’s skill for scrupulous melodies is undiminished here. The album evolves Slowdive’s well-established sound with more electronic textures, creating a conceptual sonic landscape that buzzes with life.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Spellling & the Mystery School
    Her lyrics have always been gut-wrenching, but what sets Spellling & the Mystery School apart from her past work is how seamlessly and vividly those words have been reinterpreted. With a vibrant kaleidoscope of sounds and ethereal ambiance, Cabral brings both her fantasy world and reality to life.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Perfect Saviors
    The 12 tracks here—which veer from pretty hooks and acoustic guitar to blast beats—linger in an in-between space that doesn’t fully embrace either noise or pop.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Utopia
    He seems less concerned with what he’s saying than with the emotion and feeling his music conveys. It’s a bit of a lopsided approach, but few in today’s hip-hop landscape can truly be considered an auteur the way Scott is. While his artistic vision may be a shaky one, there’s no denying that Utopia, bumps and all, is one hell of a ride.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Austin
    Yes, Malone is still able to whip out some sticky refrains, but the songs here all follow the same overly simplistic pop structure, to the point that their catchiness is less an affirmation of his songwriting talents and more of an inevitability of pop formula.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Loveliest Time
    Albums like The Loveliest Time are deliberately fragmentary, meant to fill in the pieces of her discography, and in that sense, this one is a wild success.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Euphoric
    The album’s second half leans too heavily on slow, subdued songs, and Georgia’s ostensibly personal lyrics rarely speak in anything but the most general terms. So while singles like “Give It Up for Love” and the title track make for rousing enough dance-pop, It’s Euphoric never quite rises to the promise of its title.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love Hallucination
    At nearly 38 minutes, the album stays around long enough to where its effervescent nature starts to serve as a hindrance rather than a strength, where the age-old idiom of “in one ear and out the other” begins to ring truer than ever before.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love's Holiday
    Love’s Holiday finds Oxbow operating in a slightly different, more restrained register, but that means the album doesn’t quite reach the heights of its towering predecessor.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cut Worms
    Despite music that can come off as overly precious, though, Cut Worms is a tight set of songs that display Clarke’s facility for songcraft.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Ballad of Darren
    While The Ballad of Darren may be an emotional journey, it lacks a proper conclusion—though that’s likely by design.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Songs
    Wall’s band approaches the tropes of western swing with a perfectly light touch, keeping the mood grounded and intimate, never hokey or ironic.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Care So Much That I Dont Care at All
    Initially lumped into the hyperpop scene by the likes of Billboard and Vice, Glaive has moved in a more emo direction, but the album struggles to retain the intimacy of his earlier releases as it delivers a more palatable sound.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pink Tape
    There simply isn’t much in the way of staying power to the bleary “Patience” or any of the three throwaway bonus tracks beyond some absurdist lines and a few neat vocal melodies. But taken as a whole—something that’s frequently overlooked in a singles genre such as rap—this unabashedly creative album showcases its creator’s ever-developing abilities.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Speak Now (Taylor's Version)
    If the original Speak Now highlighted what Swift needed to do to refine her artistry, Taylor’s Version proves that she’s actually done it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Inside the Old Year Dying
    The music throughout I Inside the Old Year Dying rattles and quakes in stark contrast with Harvey’s studiously composed intellectual exercises. Which is to say, this is an album that gives about as much as it asks in return, even if its medieval trappings and intentional obfuscation do risk letting listeners walk away feeling more bewildered than moved.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
    Anohni’s charting of various cycles of decay and change have the weight and import of a Greek tragedy. It’s a pity, then, that so much of the music on My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross underserves her anguished storytelling.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stories From a Rock 'n' Roll Heart
    Williams’s most lyrically conceptual album to date, centered around resilience, revival, and renewal.
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