Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,115 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: 1,685 out of 3115
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3115
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3115
3115 music reviews
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    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All Born Screaming
    The album finds Clark at her most fragile and ferocious, seeking beauty among the waste and wreckage of 21st-century life. Itself a beautifully ugly thing, All Born Screaming is a visceral examination of art and nature when both are pushed to the brink.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
    The Tortured Poets Department plays out as a pop album that sounds fine enough but sure is long-winded.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Silence Is Loud
    Silence Is Loud tells a fairly coherent story, of a person trying to salvage a relationship but weighing skepticism about how worthy it is of being saved. Archives, though, is ultimately unable to wring enough pathos from the narrative she presents. She’s a skilled designer of breathless jungle soundscapes, stocked with immersive details like aquatic synths, endless breakbeats, and jagged basslines, but she hasn’t fully mastered the autobiographical soul-pop mode.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Don't Forget Me
    The album’s 10 brisk, lightly rocking songs evoke the radio-friendly pop-rock of early-2000s Sheryl Crow or Jewel while sometimes, as on the title track, looking further back to ’70s soft rock a la Carole King.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Exotic Birds Of Prey
    At just seven tracks, the album proves to be paradoxically sparse in its loose, leisurely construction but dense in its intense inscrutability. Exotic Birds of Prey’s resistance to form, accessibility, and interpretation will either draw you in or push you away—and that’s probably the point.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Only God Was Above Us
    Only God Was Above Us is ultimately just another (very good) Vampire Weekend album rather than a radical shift. It essentially sees the band dressing up their patented medium-paced, occasionally frantic, symphonic rock in see-through disguises.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A La Sala
    Apart from a few key songs that continue down the lyrical path charted on Mordechai, A La Sala is largely a retread of Khruangbin’s idiosyncratic brand of dubby psychedelia.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    COWBOY CARTER
    It’s an album of Americana not in the banal, produced-by-Dave Cobb sense, but in the truest senses of narrative and musical form.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ohio Players
    What’s frustrating is that Ohio Players boasts some great hooks beneath the mire.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    We Don't Trust You
    On We Don’t Trust You, though, Future seems content to be set dressing for Metro’s elaborate production.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Real Power
    Real Power stands as a testament to the Gossip’s unyielding dedication to their signature style. Admittedly, reminding fans and critics that the band helped pioneer pop-punk disco isn’t an unsmart way to stage a comeback. But for anyone hoping that the Gossip might have evolved in the years since 2012’s A Joyful Noise, Real Power is likely to be a real letdown.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything I Thought It Was
    With an abundance of material, one could never fault Everything I Thought I Was for being too conservative, but it’s an all too clear case of quantity over quality, resulting in quickly diminishing returns.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For Your Consideration
    Mixing R&B and electronica isn’t uncommon in pop music today, but For Your Consideration boasts an unusual combination of production polish and musical eccentricity, harking back to Björk’s early solo albums and Timbaland’s work with Aaliyah.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tigers Blood
    The way Crutchfield’s crystalline voice penetrates her music’s often beautiful, serene instrumentation on Tigers Blood dovetails with her gutting truth-telling.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bright Future
    With Bright Future, Lenker stands on the confidence of her talent, complemented by production choices that neither distract nor detract from the emotion of her songwriting.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    WORLD WIDE WHACK
    WWW may be a candid and sophisticated analysis of the dark side of fame, but it’s also eminently entertaining and occasionally funny, and it (re)establishes Whack as one of the most creative rappers in the game.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Deeper Well
    But if the album’s unwaveringly restrained instrumentation holds it back from ranking alongside Musgraves’s best work, it’s still a welcome shift away from the country pop of 2018’s Golden Hour.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eternal Sunshine
    If there’s a primary critique to be leveled at Eternal Sunshine, it’s that the midtempo R&B that defined Grande’s last two albums, Positions and Thank U, Next, is once again so prominent. The house-pop “Yes, And?” is a bit of a bait and switch, as only two other tracks on the album, the disco-infused “Bye” and the Robyn-esque “We Can’t Be Friends,” stray from Grande’s preferred musical mode. That’s not to say that the album’s R&B fare isn’t satisfying in its own right.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blue Lips
    Blue Lips epitomizes what a return to form should strive for: to serve as a reminder of past greatness, yes, but to also be a bold departure from what’s come before, embracing risks and pushing boundaries, even if it occasionally teeters on the edge of excess.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Playing Favorites
    Playing Favorites proves that Sheer Mag can show off their softer underbelly just as skillfully as they do their fangs.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    2093
    Repetition is a big one, and not just in the sense of saying the same word over and over again—which Yeat does on “Psychocainë,” whose chorus has him shuffling through several permutations of the phrase “I forgot”—but in songs that, though they’re certainly cutting edge when compared to what else is out there, begin to blur together over time. But while that prevents 2093 from sounding quite as forward-minded as its title suggests, Yeat is finally tapping into a style he can confidently call his own.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Got Heaven
    Mannequin Pussy offers an answer in their refusal to accept the status quo. Through a balance of firebrand punk and intoxicating power pop, I Got Heaven is a musical expression of self-governance and all the pain and pleasure that comes with it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Still
    Even as de Casier explores the experience of uncertainty, she exhibits confidence in her identity as a singularly detail-oriented artist.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Girl with No Face
    Almost every song on Girl with No Face was written and produced by Hughes, and this creative autonomy gives the album a personal touch that past releases like 2017’s CollXtion II lacked. The songs here are imbued with an obvious newfound strength and confidence.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Untame the Tiger
    With Untame the Tiger she’s left behind the world of magical animals and imaginary beings she once used to sing about, but her melodies and arrangements retain a touch of the timeless and otherworldly.
    • 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.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Past Is Still Alive
    Despite confronting such daunting themes as grief, addiction, and identity, The Past Is Still Alive rarely feels heavy. Much of this owes to Segarra’s reliably triumphant outlook in the face of adversity. .... Credit also goes to producer and co-engineer Brad Cook, who helps couch Segarra’s words in unfussy Americana that’s easy on the ear.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This is Me…Now
    To imbue that previous album with a timeless R&B quality, Lopez sought out veteran knob-twirler Bruce Swedien, who engineered and mixed classics like Michael Jackson’s Thriller. This Is Me…Now attempts to replicate that sound—and “Mad In Love” and “Not. Going. Anywhere.” both come close—but most of the album falls short of that lofty bar.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What Now
    Sonically, it’s a triumph, a delicately textured musical realm that begs to be luxuriated in. What’s missing is the same level of songwriting that elevated Howard’s previous work. There are a few standout tracks, but no burrowing hooks on the level of “Don’t Wanna Fight” or “Stay High.” The only time she comes close to those earlier songs is on the propulsive “Red Flags.”
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    TANGK
    Tangk underpins its more personal and emotional lyrics with rich, layered arrangements. It’s in this delicate balance of sound and sentiment that the album finds its groove—not always in the heights it occasionally struggles to reach, but in its earnest exploration of love.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Coming Home
    For every few colorless duds defined by their embrace of contemporary R&B, such as the overly smooth “Kissing Strangers” or the brassy “Big,” there’s a creative cut or two, like the suave “Margiela.”
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Critterland
    Challenging, startling, and deeply powerful, this rallying closer confirms what the previous nine songs already suggested: that Carlisle is a singular artist and that Critterland is a worthy addition to the canon of country-folk classics.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What an Enormous Room
    On her sixth studio album, What an Enormous Room, she pulls back on the eccentric, stadium-ready rock of 2021’s Thirstier in favor the kind of introspective dirges that characterized her early work. As a result, the album offers slightly less in the way of hooks but homes in further on themes of anxious attachment and personal growth.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    People Who Aren't There Anymore
    As on past albums like 2017’s The Far Field, the quieter passages here are projected with too much force to either serve as a contrast to the songs’ more bombastic sections or fully convey the import of the lyrics. This grows especially tiring on tracks like “The Fight” and “Corner of My Eye,” which are synth-pop equivalents of stadium power ballads. Were the music itself able to match the downbeat undertones of Herring’s words, it might pack a bigger punch.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Little Rope
    Tucker and Brownstein deserve credit for continuing to take risks and experiment with Sleater-Kinney’s established sound, resulting in another solid effort in an unexpectedly fruitful late period.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Saviors
    These songs may diverge from the ones that made Green Day a household name, but three decades later, they continue to strike a balance between teen spirit and maturity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Big Sigh
    While the lyrics offer a precious few glimmers of defiance, Hackman’s production choices, featuring mostly instruments played by the musician herself, have the verve to suggest not only an artistic resurgence, but a personal one.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sundial
    Tracks like “Balloons” and “Afro Futurism” feature some of the fiercest political critiques and nimbly performed rapping of Warner’s career. Her delivery is poised yet casual, her charmingly nasal voice full of weariness and vulnerability.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pink Friday 2
    Despite some catchy moments, there’s almost nothing about Pink Friday 2 that makes it stand out from the current slate of pop and rap music. Unlike its predecessor, the album doesn’t leave much of an impression, and certainly won’t reshape the hip-hop landscape.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Welcome 2 Collegrove
    In the end, this is a dramatically uneven project that demonstrates its creators’ unwillingness to grow up and, more damningly, their inability to conceive of a concept and see it through.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    THE FIRST TIME
    The First Time features some of his weakest hooks to date and a slew of songs that are so unsatisfyingly short so as to feel half-finished.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    i/o
    While the “Bright Side” mixes bring out the album’s more dynamic range, the lyrics lack the edge of Gabriel’s early music. The earnest perspectives of songs like “Love Can Heal” and “Live and Let Live” are apparent right from their titles, with the latter in particular succumbing to cliché. And the more subdued “Dark Side” mixes only highlight those flaws. i/o is heartfelt and meticulously crafted, but its impact is muted by its splintered presentation.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Quaranta
    Quaranta makes for an often frustrating experience, where tracks will circle around a topic with some level of pathos but seem incapable of ever reaching their full potential.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rockstar
    To her credit, Parton still manages to make Rockstar sound and feel like a Dolly Parton album, thanks in large part to her distinctive twang. She and producer Kent Wells make some subtle changes to these songs, like a richer and deeper piano tone on Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” and denser lead guitar on “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” though more inventive arrangements would have distinguished these versions from the originals.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heaven Knows
    The album’s satisfying and detail-rich production choices, courtesy of co-producers like Greg Kurstin and Mura Masa, achieve a tonal cohesion throughout.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Integrated Tech Solutions
    So while the album may play it a little safe, it also smartly plays to its creator’s strengths.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Higher
    Stapleton knows that his vocals don’t need to be forceful to make an impact, a point driven home on the beautiful closer “Mountains of My Mind,” on which his intimate voice is paired with just an acoustic guitar. But while tracks like that are evidence of Stapleton’s singing and storytelling abilities, more often than not, the songs on Higher struggle to take off.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Zig
    Aside from the disco-fied “Motorbike,” inspired by Jack Cardiff’s 1968 drama The Girl on a Motorcycle, most of Zig takes few such risks. As a result, Poppy has become what she’s successfully evaded up to this point: predictable.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Phone Orphans
    With Phone Orphans, Veirs exposes her creative process and, in doing so, maps out the rich topography of her psyche.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Robed in Rareness [EP]
    Despite the fact that Robed in Rareness runs about the length of an episode of your average sitcom, its songs are so vaporous that one may have a difficult time remembering them. Put bluntly, the album underscores just how much Shabazz Palaces is running on fumes.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    1989 (Taylor's Version)
    The album’s first half remains stronger overall, but it’s the latter half that more fully justifies the re-recording. The five new “From the Vault” tracks are all solid, though they don’t function as a true thematic and aesthetic extension of the album in the way that the additions to Red (Taylor’s Version) did.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Selvutsletter
    Songs like “Re-entering” and “World on Fire” in particular feel like nothing more than wandering sketches. Still, Hval and Volden’s modus operandi has been to push barriers, regularly tickling some pleasure point you didn’t know you needed, while perhaps neglecting the one you thought you did.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One More Time...
    It doesn’t exactly reinvent the pop-punk wheel—it also could’ve stood to lose about half a dozen songs—but its brightest, most exhilarating spots are a welcome reminder of what made the trio so iconic in the first place.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hackney Diamonds
    As high-energy and catchy as most of Hackney Diamonds is, though, the album also showcases a few tracks that suggest that the Stones might be better off embracing their age rather than asserting their eternal youthfulness (“I’m too old for dying and too young to lose,” Jagger declares on “Depending on You”).
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Something to Give Each Other
    What Something to Give Each Other lacks in poignancy, though, is made up for by the joy with which it embraces queer pleasure.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Water Made Us
    Water Made Us is an undeniably human album, authentic and sincere in its navigation and preservation of love, all told through the lens of Woods’s own experience.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    For All The Dogs
    But for the most part, For All the Dogs lives up to its title. In short: woof.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Perfect Picture
    Diamond’s critique of online culture and its effects on our self-perception aren’t new. The crucial difference here is that she locates herself inside the machine, without claiming she can escape the traps she sings about. Diamond constructs a world of exaggerated femininity without drowning in irony.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Javelin
    These contrasts—between the intimate and the grand, the divine and the natural—dovetails with what Stevens has always done best as a songwriter: bridging the universal and the personal. Javelin doesn’t just feel like a return to form—it feels resurgent.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Again
    “A Barely Lit Path” effectively locates the humane within the machine, the ghost in the shell, and further affirms Again as one of Lopitan’s most sincere and spellbinding statements yet.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yard
    Whereas the earlier album was full of light, poppy beats, there’s more nuance to be found in the saturated, driving hooks here.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Isn't It Now?
    The breathtakingly gorgeous “Stride Rite” is about as pensive as Animal Collective has ever been. Composed of a myriad of cascading piano chords, the song amounts to an eerie, ethereal experience about the many heartbreaks that come with maturation, one expressed with a level of clarity that’s sorely lacking from the rest of Isn’t It Now?
    • 70 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.
    • 83 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.
    • 86 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Business Is Business
    Even if one were to dismiss Business Is Business as nothing more than an anthology of loosies, Thug’s ostensible leftovers, like the brassy “Uncle M” and heart-wrenching ballads like “Jonesboro,” are still electric. In this sense, the album’s greatest strength is keeping things strictly business.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chemistry
    The tropical closing track, “That’s Right,” feels even more leftfield, a quirky but apt conclusion to an album that captures the fickle, out-of-body aftermath of heartbreak.
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