Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,119 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: 1,689 out of 3119
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3119
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3119
3119 music reviews
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    • 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Feed the Beast
    While it’s admirable that Petras is willing to show her vulnerable side on the midtempo 808 ballad “Thousand Pieces” and the bubbly “Minute,” Feed the Beast plays it safe compared to Petras’s audacious Slut Pop EP.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Gift & a Curse
    Considering that many of Gunna’s past projects have been largely defined by their star power, their total absence here results in a back-to-basics album with a healthy amount of breathing room, one that’s able to showcase Gunna’s own talents with an unusual amount of clarity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life Under the Gun
    While their emotional palette may feel rooted in anger, unlike Regional Justice Center, the band’s more melodic passages strive to express it without becoming trapped by it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Beggar
    It proceeds in the same white-knuckle way as the group’s last four releases. It is, though, defined by the quality and craftsmanship that’s expected of Swans.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Michael
    Almost every other song on Michael relies on a similar arrangement of choirs, pianos, and organs, which risks becoming tiresome, though its sonic divergence from most mainstream American hip-hop today is refreshing. In that sense, the album is a kindred spirit to the prolific British collective Sault, who incorporate lush R&B and gospel into their eclectic sound.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In Times New Roman...
    The best moments on In Times New Roman… prove that Queens of the Stone Age can still reliably deliver left-of-center alt-rock thrills, and Homme’s take-it-or-leave-it charisma is as tangible as it ever was. But after almost three decades of taking on every strand of rock music and embracing both the analog and the digital, it’s disheartening, if perhaps understandable, that the band seems unsure of where to go next.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Joy'All
    Joy’All’s tone is light, even flippant at times. After a scant 10 tracks and barely 30 minutes, you might be left wanting a deeper exploration of some of Lewis’s more complicated feelings about this new phase of her life.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paranoïa, Angels, True Love
    What follows is a collection of wiry, introspective songs that break from pop conventions while asserting the life-affirming power of love.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Age of Pleasure
    While Monáe specializes in sprawling, ambitious concept albums, she’s often strongest in distilled form. And The Age of Pleasure sustains its energy in a way that her other, sometimes wildly variable albums have never quite managed.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Girl With Fish
    Girl with Fish, then, is an economical calling card and the sound of a band coming into their own.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Space Heavy
    Each instrument stands out because the individual parts are so austere. On Space Heavy, King Krule proves that power sometimes comes with restraint.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Weathervanes
    Ultimately, then, Weathervanes showcases both the Isbell who can bring the entire world into focus with just a few lines and an acoustic guitar, and the Gibson-toting Isbell with the hot-shit backing band. But he continues to come so close yet so far from reconciling the two.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Formal Growth in the Desert
    There’s long been a political edge to Protomartyr’s doom-and-gloom art rock, and it’s heartening that the band continues to avoid sloganeering and boring moralism.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Matters Most
    Unfortunately, the song [“Clouds with Ellipses”], like so much of What Matters Most, lacks the snark and self-aggrandizing pity that made the singer-songwriter’s early albums, like Rockin’ the Suburbs, so relatable.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Almost Healed
    Considering that he does seem willing to experiment—primarily on the cerebral “B12,” whose beat is composed of shuttering snares, rapid bass distortions, and what sounds like a squeaky bed spring—it only amplifies the overall humdrum nature of Almost Healed.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sus Dog
    Chris Clark’s Sus Dog tries on a number of stylistic tics—from stuttering electronics to eerie vocals—that recall those of its executive producer, Thom Yorke, but rarely finds a means of organically incorporating them into the IDM veteran’s bass-heavy sound.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Brandy Clark
    Brandy Clark mostly pulls back on the spirited provocativeness of Clark’s earlier work, with lyrics about loss accented by a musical motif of heartfelt strings, but its standout tracks deploy the traditional themes and sounds of country in inventive ways.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Animals
    Rather than cutting and pasting samples and calling it a day, he skillfully weaves them together with improvisational live instrumentation. With Animals, analog and electronic, and past and present, are placed in an engaging dialogue.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gag Order
    Despite some slipshod sequencing and periodic bouts of pretension, the album manages to articulate a working thesis for Kesha’s artistry that exists independently from the apparatus of purely commercial exhibitionism.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Legacy, Vol. 2
    Boo turns footwork’s roots—hip-hop, house, IDM, and drum ‘n’ bass—and spins them into something that sounds like a totally new language.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Album
    While the album’s sheer eclecticism is admirable in theory, each foray stops short of reaching its full potential, leaving listeners stranded in a musical no man’s land of half-baked ideas and missed opportunities.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    - (Subtract)
    No matter how much aesthetic cosplay Sheeran is willing to engage in, though, he’s still pumping out the same cheese-filled anthems that have plagued his previous albums.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Love Invention
    Lyrically, Goldfrapp occasionally leans too far into pop simplicity. ... Later in the album, though, when Goldfrapp gets more experimental—or at least dispenses with conventional pop structures—things begin to feel more immersive.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Chicago Sessions
    Even if it isn’t necessarily a pivotal effort, [The Chicago Sessions] is marked by an endearing lack of affectation that only one of the greatest country songwriters can achieve.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Jackman
    For the most part, Harlow operates in two contradictory modes: pedaling universal surface-level platitudes about relatable matters such as “the grind” or going for easy humble brags about receiving Sunday Service FaceTime calls from Justin Bieber.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blómi
    Relative to the musician’s entire body of work, the album’s unflagging optimism and embrace of new age ambience are joyously therapeutic.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    That! Feels Good!
    What’s Your Pleasure? boasts a more sophisticated, diverse palette—including Italo, house, and funk—but its follow-up’s fluffier philosophy reflects Ware’s obvious elation at finally being able to bring her music to life in a club setting.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    First Two Pages of Frankenstein
    Occasionally, such stylings verge on the generically anthemic on First Two Pages of Frankenstein. ... The songs here are otherwise richly stacked with detail and sonic shadings.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All of This Will End
    The album’s greatest asset is its immediacy, with its best songs seemingly allowing De Souza to get things off of her chest after years of holding it all in. It’s a shame, then, that All of This Will End often also indulges indie-twee clichés.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dreamer
    Although Iqbal demonstrates a profound understanding of genre and influences, Dreamer occasionally only dabbles in these styles rather than fully immerses itself in them. ... Nevertheless, Iqbal’s prowess as a singer and songwriter shines through with richness and depth.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    72 Seasons
    While the grooves are solid, there are few truly memorable riffs or solos to speak of on 72 Seasons. Even when the band does manage to recall the trappings of their early days, as on the thrillingly breakneck “Lux Æterna” or the Iron Maiden-style “Room of Mirrors,” the arrangements generally lack the intricacy and dynamics of their classic albums. ... This is more than made up for, though, by James Hetfield’s vocal performances.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fuse
    Even when Fuse is firing on all cylinders, it feels risk-averse, leaving one longing for an album that mines its gloomy outlook and ambiance for greater impact. As far as proverbial “comebacks” go, though, an exercise in pared-down style, where the music is a little darker, slower, and a bit more mature than what’s come before, is far from the end of the world.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    ...So Unknown
    Most of Jesus Piece’s experimental tendencies are confined to intros and outros on …So Unknown. The album feels more defined by genre than the band’s past work. But there’s no denying that the anger running through it is contagious, and creates a stark contrast to the majority of recent pop-rock, which carries a mood of depressed resignation.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Multitudes
    The album eschews the extroversion of the singer’s best work, like her 2007 breakthrough, The Reminder, and ultimately struggles to fully elucidate her multifaceted talents.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sremm 4 Life
    Perhaps the album could have felt a tad more engaging if it attempted to do a little more both sonically and lyrically, but Slim and Swae, as well as longtime producer Mike-Will-Made-It, know exactly what they excel at and they do an excellent job at doing just that.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Highs
    The album serves as a continued refinement of the talents that he displayed on 2006’s immense Harmony in Ultraviolet and 2016’s confrontational Love Streams, even if it’s ultimately not as consistent. Its atmosphere is so suffocating that “Anxiety” may accurately sum up most listeners’ emotional states after listening to the album in full—and considering No Highs’s ambitions, that’s perhaps the highest possible praise one could bestow upon it.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    1982
    Compared to some of their iconic contemporaries, A Certain Ratio never quite got their due, but the niche they’ve settled into in recent years serves their legacy well.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rat Saw God
    All of the wobbling between tempos and styles might sound haphazard, but it’s executed with precision. And Hartzman’s snatches of Americana imagery—rain-rotted houses, parking lots, “piss-colored bright yellow Fanta”—ultimately cohere into an evocative portrait of the fringes of American life.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    With a Hammer
    But for each jagged, dissonant song that Yaeji hurls into the mix, there’s a smoother, more melodic counterpart, showcasing the artist’s intuitive sense of balance. The album’s more straightforward tracks, like “For Granted” and “Done (Let’s Get It),” serve as a testament to Yaeji’s ability to craft infectious hooks without sacrificing her distinctive experimental edge.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stereo Mind Game
    Even as the album’s lyrics shift focus to the normalcy of life after loss, the production remains varied. “Future Lover” is swathed in distorted electric guitars, while “Isolation” embodies its title by stripping back the album’s emergent indietronica style in favor of a lone acoustic guitar. These shifts, however subtle, keep Stereo Mind Game from stagnating.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Price of Progress
    The Price of Progress proves that they haven’t forgotten what made them great.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    the record
    Throughout The Record, Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker frequently return to the idea of an elusive search for identity. But they don’t seem to have found clarification just yet, failing to land on a collective identity or collaborative creative method that complements their myriad talents.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Continue as a Guest
    At the stage in their career when most bands are content to just repeat themselves, the unfamiliar palette of Continue As a Guest is a revelation, and certainly doesn’t preclude the other members of the New Pornographers from making their presence felt. Most notably, Zach Djanikian contributes tenor and alto sax on several tracks, expanding the album’s timbre in new and unexpected directions.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
    Ocean Blvd traffics in some nimble, effervescent melodies, a few memorable vocal passages, and the occasional tuneful duet (Father John Misty proves to be an exceptional bedfellow on “Let the Light In”). But the album feels more like a placeholder in Del Rey’s discography than a truly audacious chapter in the singer’s blossoming late-period reawakening.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Good Luck
    Good Luck fits roughly into similar experiments by Backxwash or JPEGMAFIA, but it’s even harder to pin down to a single genre. It’s an album that testifies to the liberating potential of making a racket.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    10,000 Gecs
    While the twosome’s rambunctious revelry may appear wholly flippant upon first listen, their music, and 10,000 gecs as a whole, is far more sophisticated than it seems.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
    Not every song on Praise a Lord, though, is as fully developed as “Parody” and “Operator.” ... Still, these moments further highlight Tumor’s idiosyncratic approach to experimental indie-pop.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fantasy
    Gonzalez’s tendency for self-indulgence and penchant for repetition keep Fantasy from reaching the previously attained heights of albums like Saturdays=Youth. Yet, even as M83’s throwback sound has lost some of its novelty due, in part, to pop culture becoming saturated with (comparatively vapid) ’80s nostalgia, Gonzalez’s non-ironic sensibilities and bright-eyed ambition effortlessly outshine even his most reverent copycats.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Endless Summer Vacation
    The lyrical clichés that occupy much of Endless Summer Vacation do little to scratch away at the album’s blithe veneer, though at the very least they deliver on its promise of fun.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Radical Romantics
    Fever Ray circa 2023 feels admittedly a little quainter than they used to.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    UGLY
    Despite its allusions to seeking therapy, listening to the album feels like accompanying a friend on a disastrous Saturday night bender.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One Thing at a Time
    A wildly uneven follow-up to 2021’s already overburdened Dangerous: The Double Album. Listening to the album in one sitting is akin to binging a seven-course meal: While there are some memorable bits, it all blurs into a comatose-inducing fog.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    WOW
    There’s also a strong sense of unity in how each song eventually comes together, and the album as a whole cohesively flows from one impressive moment to the next, ebbing and flowing between states of serenity and chaos.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bless This Mess
    Meghan Remy seems to want it both ways, as she flips between sincerity and irony across her eighth album as U.S. Girls. These conflicting approaches end up negating one another and result in a work that sign-posts its themes and musical choices but lacks a coherent overall vision.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cracker Island
    Much like 2017’s overstuffed Humanz, Cracker Island is, more times than not, overly indebted to its impressive list of guest stars, foregrounding their talents instead of employing them as natural extensions of Albarn’s musicianship.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quest For Fire
    Tonal contradictions, while at points jarring and a tad distracting with how little they ultimately coalesce, provide the album with a punchy sense of dynamism across its 15 tracks.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Food for Worms
    Aside from one or two cuts, though, nothing here is as satisfying as previous Shame highlights like the nervy, ominous “Snow Day” or “Nigel Hitter,” whose splintered dance-rock managed to be both hooky and weird. For the most part, Food for Worms manages to be neither.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shook
    TThe group consistently proves their mettle as musicians throughout Shook. But the sequencing of both the songs’ individual elements and the tracklist as a whole is less than the sum of the parts.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All Fiction
    Their unwillingness to resort to cheap pop gestures stands out in an era where few acts even bother to cloak their crass commercialism. But above all stands the music, and All Fiction—the title of which is a reference to our culture’s increasingly fractured ideas of what constitutes truth—marks yet another extraordinary entry in the band’s discography.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Optical Delusion
    They’ve explored spacey atmospheres and grim, political content before, but Optical Delusion feels more like a document of the times than a sci-fi fantasy: a rave just before the end of the world.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pollen
    The common thread connecting the album’s real and imagined romantic scenarios across its 10 tracks is escapism, whether it be the isolation of the open sea or the insular behind-the-scenes goings on of a hotel.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Raven
    No matter the tempo or setting, though, Raven is fully aware of how the body can both entrap and liberate. It’s an innovative use of music as a vessel to capture both.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New York City
    New York City sees the Men attacking their no-frills rock with a raw passion that they haven’t displayed this plainly in some time.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Queen of Me
    Ignoring how incohesive Queen of Me’s track list proves to be—the schmaltzy “Last Day of Summer,” for example, is a pedestrian reflection of young love that feels entirely out of place on an album filled with tracks related to embracing one’s present image—the songs themselves are frivolous and lack both sonic character and catchy hooks.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Mansion Musik
    Trippie Redd’s Mansion Musik is repetitive, shoddily produced, and lacks any real structure.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Compositions
    But even as he eschews evocative song titles and instrumentation, Compositions nonetheless makes for a haunting, gloomy, and often challenging experience. And when the repetitive throbs finally subside after 41 minutes, the silence left in their wake feels nothing short of monumental.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gloria
    For as much as Smith tries to step out of the box, they still sound most comfortable playing to their previously established strengths.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    AudioLust & HigherLove
    An assemblage of enjoyable ingredients that doesn’t coalesce.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    One Day
    Although it has some thematic overlap with Glass Boys, One Day amalgamates its disparate lyrical and musical ideas, as well as the confidence of its performances and compositions, into a novel, thrilling 40 minutes.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Furling
    While country and roots music inform many of the arrangements here, slide and steel guitars are employed mostly as texture, creating a blur of sound. This is very much “vibes” music, emanating from a wide swath of influences, blending English folk, American roots music, and dubby trip-hop in ways that are both heady and nebulous.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    La La Land
    Not only does the band’s output remain as inexhaustible and freewheeling as ever, the album stands as some of their best late-career work.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    12
    Unlike albums such as David Bowie’s Blackstar or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’s Skeleton Tree, both of which confront death head-on, 12 is decidedly more reserved in its reckoning with human impermanence. Yet, even if it’s less forceful in its execution, Sakamoto’s poetic, metaphysical approach—a paradoxically delicate yet fearless plunge into the unknown—is equally as daunting and devastating.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Strays
    Strays continues in the classic rock-inspired direction of 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started, breaking from the neo-traditional country music that put Price on the map. The arrangements employ slide guitar and keyboards—even xylophone on “Time Machine”—with a punchy yet spacious mix, but the album flaunts its influences a bit too transparently.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Every Loser
    Despite a few clumsy moments, Every Loser proves that Pop not only has more to say, but continues to find exciting ways to say them.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Me vs. Myself
    In the end, A Boogie plays it too safe, and in the process, ultimately proves how accurate the album’s title really is.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    S.O.S.
    SOS’s playful approach to genre-swapping carries a defined sense of artistic freedom across its varied tracklist. Not every experiment is a success—the wispy alternative elements of “Ghost in the Machine,” chiefly its indietronica instrumentation and unnecessary Pheobe Bridgers guest spot, never really cohere—but the album doesn’t linger on any one specific style or mood for too long.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heroes & Villains
    As a concept album about good and evil, Heroes & Villains mostly delivers. It’s not very ambitious as far as subject matter goes, but the majority of the guests, whose appearances never feel obligatory, at least cursorily touch on the central theme. ... To this end, Metro seems more like an orchestrator or curator. Unlike Khaled, however, Metro aims for a unified sound, and damned if he doesn’t achieve it.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Love You Jennifer B
    I Love You Jennifer B is filled with freewheeling musical pivots that confidently cover an ambitious amount of territory and find Ellery and Skye coming into their own as decisive talents.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    World Record
    What’s left is Young’s preternatural gift for melody (most of this album’s songs started as hummable tunes that popped into his head on his daily walks), Crazy Horse’s enduring chemistry, Rubin’s less-is-more studio hand, and, of course, the most important subject there is: this old planet.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Premonition
    Once again, they infuse their brand of punk with a hefty dose of pop songcraft and meticulous production, courtesy of producer Jesse Gander, Premonition conjures a dark, enticing dynamism unparalleled even by their own extraordinary output.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is What I Mean
    Far too often, Stormzy sounds crushed under the weight of his own unrelenting seriousness.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Profound Mysteries III
    Despite several standout moments that are worthy additions to Röyksopp’s illustrious catalog, Profound Mysteries III can, like its two predecessors, sometimes feel too indulgent for its own good.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Family
    The album is so fragmented and so determined to forsake easy pleasures, with most of the songs hovering near the 90-second mark, that it comes to suggest a hip-hop version of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention releases from the 1960s. ... For better or worse, The Family may, paradoxically, be Brockhampton’s most honest and adventurous effort since their debut.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    King's Disease III
    By adhering to a creative formula typically associated with many foundational Golden Era classics, King’s Disease III often feels like a spartan exercise in pure technical ability. ... We get 100% pure, raw, unfiltered Nas spitting over a variety of velvety soul samples and invigorating instrumentation, which is, more often than not, a pretty good thing.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow
    Though rose-colored, its sentiments don’t feel cheap because Mering’s buttery vibrato and earnest vocal performance ably convey the necessity of accepting a lack of assurance about the future while embracing temporary comfort.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Only the Strong Survive
    Only the Strong Survive is an expertly crafted collection, but a rougher hewn approach, with a sound closer in style to Stax Records than Dionne Warwick and Phil Spector, would have better honored the spirit of its source material.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Work
    It’s a shame that his first album in over half a decade doesn’t push his musical ideas a little further, and in some moments, The Work feels almost like an addendum to 2016’s Good Luck and Do Your Best, but the results are still undeniably affecting.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Her Loss
    Uneven. ... There’s simply too little give and take between this pairing to justify calling this a mutually beneficial partnership.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ultra Truth
    While the almost hour-long album does suffer the occasional lull, at his best Avery effortlessly pushes the sounds that influenced him into new territory.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Alpha Zulu
    Both the title track, with its exclamation of “Woo-ha! Singing hallelujah!,” and “All Eyes on Me,” with its whip cracks and anxious synths, attempt to strike a more dastardly and vaguely dangerous vibe that they don’t really pull off. But for the most part, Alpha Zulu delivers the kind of deceptively simple, fleet pop for which Phoenix is best known.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Svengali
    Even the most dance-oriented songs on Bradshaw’s second studio album, Svengali, are mellower than his past efforts, especially his two Muvaland EPs. The album also brings a new conceptual focus to his work.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Got Issues
    Whenever he’s feeling especially vicious toward his adversaries, YG can seem like a schoolyard bully. ... Even when YG is effectively able to place his misogyny within a more acceptable context, like cussing out the supposedly negligent mother of his child on “Baby Mama,” his venom lacks creativity.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Midnights
    Folklore and Evermore felt innovative in how they rebuilt Swift’s sound from the ground up, but despite its own idiosyncratic delights, Midnights ultimately feels too indebted to her past efforts to truly push her forward. If nothing else, the album proves she’s unwilling to operate on anyone’s terms other than her own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Car
    The direction they’ve taken here finds them flexing their muscles in a way that sheds the cheeky irony of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino in favor of a more plaintive earnestness, while at the same time building on that album’s sense of adventure.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Loneliest Time
    With The Loneliest Time, Jepsen strikes a delicate balance.
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