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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    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Only Built for Infinity Links
    In the absence of Offset, Quavo and Takeoff still adhere to a strict hierarchy of talent: Predictably, the former remains at the top, singing the vast majority of the album’s hooks and leading nearly every song.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dirt Femme
    As a collection of slightly melancholic, occasionally catchy dance-floor filler, it would be hard to quibble with Dirt Femme’s simple pleasures. But it’s burdened with a concept that’s under-explored, weighing down an album that promises to be so much more than what it is.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Suckerpunch
    Too often, the album’s songwriting seems to be in service of odd aural components that overburden its 13 succinct tracks.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    $oul $old $eparately
    Even with all of its guest spots and expensive-sounding beats, $oul $old $eparately is a frustratingly unambitious effort.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fossora
    “Ancestress” is one of the most accessible songs on Fossora, not just for its mortality-confronting emotional narrative, but its more recognizable song structure. The album’s other highlights get mileage out of their heavily multi-tracked and harmonized vocals. ... Where Fossora missteps is in how it pulls all of its disparate musical influences together.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Demons Protected by Angels
    Nav struggles to stick out from his contemporaries, and when he’s paired with one of them, that problem is exacerbated.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    DRILLMATIC Heart vs. Mind
    Unlike his arch rival, 50 Cent, the Game has always been an impressive rapper but a substandard songwriter. The trend continues on Drillmatic, with equally frictionless results.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freakout/Release
    The band’s tendencies to go through tonal permutations throughout the not-unaptly titled Freakout/Release often feels more disjointed than it does dynamic. Ultimately, neither their desire to create irresistible dance numbers nor their expressions of disenchantment are ever allowed to fully take shape.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Funk Wav Bounces, Vol. 2
    Outside of a few standouts—like “Obsessed,” where breakout dancehall sensation Shenseea’s deft wordplay and bouncy timbre strike a nice contrast with Charlie Puth’s gravely tenor—there’s zero discernable identity to the album on a track-by-track basis.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Reset
    Reset revels in the whimsical sounds of ‘50s and ‘60s pop and rock but lacks the memorable songwriting that made much of the best music from that era so indelible.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hold On Baby
    An album that might have had greater impact if it didn’t feel so literally and figuratively pre-programmed.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Entering Heaven Alive
    It’s at this blurry intersection of inscrutability and openness, of pure persona and slavish authenticity, that White has often done his best work. Much of Entering Heaven Alive exists too far to one side of that spectrum.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    World Wide Pop
    Ultimately, World Wide Pop succumbs to sameiness, with several songs in a row set to a similarly frantic tempo and overly compressed, treble-heavy sound mix. Rather than allowing individual sounds to stand out, the chaotic placement of samples makes them all run together.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Other Side of Make-Believe
    A half-baked pastiche of previous releases. Even the album’s highlights can’t compete with the best cuts on later albums like 2014’s El Pintor. In an attempt to move forward, the band has simply disassembled and repackaged the stylistic traits that made them special in the first place.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Closure/Continuation
    Its weaker moments suggest a group that’s struggling to find something new to say, both thematically and musically. But when the band stretches out and explores their full dynamic range, capturing the dystopian overtones wafting through Wilson’s lyrics, they’re still capable of reaching cathartic heights.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sometimes, Forever
    Though Sometimes, Forever is more sonically diverse and lyrically cohesive than Soccer Mommy’s previous albums, its lyrical themes and melodies aren’t nearly as indelible.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Farm to Table
    In casting off the lo-fi chaos of Live Forever and, thankfully, most of its flirtations with hip-hop, Bartees strikes a somewhat anonymous note with this album’s well-executed but rather straightforward rock, replete with several showy guitar solos.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harry's House
    The album both sees Styles cementing his status as music’s premier sensitive, shy guy and growing comfortable enough within the pop idiom that he inhabits to push against it—but only ever so slightly. Styles may be a fashion trendsetter, but with Harry’s House, he continues trying on different styles in an effort to discover his own.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Serpentina
    Though she once again flashes her talent for delivering emotionally wrought tales of heartbreak, Serpentina asserts its uniqueness in paradoxically conventional and unsurprising ways.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    (Watch My Moves)
    He doesn’t bring his roguish charm to his latest. Though this album will satisfy those nostalgic for the mellower side of ‘70s and ‘90s rock, it doesn’t chart new terrain for Vile.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chloe and the Next 20th Century
    The album doesn’t possess the observational heft of 2017’s Pure Comedy, a post-apocalyptic survey of America’s anxieties and lamentable cultural habits. Rather, the narratives and wordplay found on Chloë and the Next 20th Century, while at times evocative given Tillman’s way with language, are comparatively toothless and too clever by half.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gifted
    Koffee is charming and winningly wholesome in the first mode [expressing her gratitude to be alive], but her attempts to meld tributes to family and life’s simplicities with designer name drops and empty boasts can feel awkward and misplaced. ... An album that doesn’t always play to its young creator’s strengths.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lucifer on the Sofa
    Spoon has hit something of a dead end with Lucifer on the Sofa. The album gestures toward breaking free of old habits, but it doesn’t present any new ones, musically or otherwise.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Laurel Hell
    ["Should’ve Been Me" is] a fascinating, fresh take on relationship dynamics that makes much of the rest of Laurel Hell sound boilerplate by comparison.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Motordrome
    When Ørsted ramps up the bombast, Motordrome reaches a serviceable level of pop pageantry. But most of the singer’s cooed melodies feel comparatively half-hearted. Ultimately, the album has a way of getting your attention and failing to keep it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ocean to Ocean
    With Ocean to Ocean, it seems as if Amos has all but given up on pushing the limits of her instrument. Which would be more forgivable if the songs themselves didn’t play it quite so safely.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dawn of Chromatica
    If the original album favored pop hooks over musical invention, many of the versions on Dawn of Chromatica are noisy or just plain tuneless.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Certified Lover Boy
    Drake comes across as an artist who’s bought into his mythos and persona a bit too ardently. ... The production on Certified Lover Boy is svelte yet airless, filled with lots of solemn piano lines and muted snares but absent of big flourishes or attempts at pop crossover. It’s an approach that’s likely aiming for tasteful restraint, but the effect is languid and rather directionless.
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