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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    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Canterbury Girls
    Canterbury Girls still succeeds at being Lily & Madeleine’s most personal and cohesive work to date, but the siblings too often seem as if they’re reluctant to let loose and lean into the music.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Why You So Crazy
    Unfortunately, neither Why You So Crazy’s eclecticism nor its polish can make up for its lack of memorable songs. For all their stylistic diversity, most of the tracks here ride a single musical hook.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fool
    If Fool doesn’t quite measure up to Jackson’s sterling early work, it’s still more concise and punchy than 2015’s Fast Forward and less self-consciously arty than his late-‘80s and ‘90s work.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Outer Peace
    The album’s title represents the remarkable possibility of finding freedom from the outside world by letting loose on the dance floor and experiencing liberation in a crowd of strangers. Bear certainly takes the album there at several points, but in the limited scope and cerebral slant of these too-brief songs, he loses that outer peace.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Icarus Falls
    Across 27 tracks, he tries on so many guises--melancholic balladeer, unabashed chart-chaser, avant-pop visionary--that he fails to ever separate himself from his peers, rendering Icarus Falls a forgettable, albeit expertly produced, travelogue of R&B trends.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1: No Past. No Future. No Sun
    As revived as the classic Pumpkins sound is on Shiny and Oh So Bright, though, the album can’t quite shake the sense of superfluity endemic to reunion projects: There isn’t anything here that the band hasn’t already done before--and better.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Star Is Born [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    There’s undoubtedly a strong 10-song album lodged at the core of A Star Is Born, but unlike the film, wherein an outsized sense of sentimentality is rendered affecting by the more grounded performances, there’s not nearly enough substance here to justify all the bombast.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bottle It In
    This affinity for aimless trains of thought applies to the whole of Bottle It In, an album where Vile is quick to conjure up a bevy of interesting images or ideas but struggles to find a compelling way to contain them.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dancing Queen
    Faithful to a fault, the tracklist sticks safely to ABBA’s most well-known hits, among them “SOS,” “Mamma Mia,” and, of course, the title track. There are scant re-imaginings here, and no obscure disco gems.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Raise Vibration
    Raise Vibration's more serious shortcoming is its lyrics, which stumble whenever they reach for grand proclamations on the state of the world.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Egypt Station
    While the loping acoustic guitar figure that drives “Happy With You” isn't nearly as compositionally compelling, it's one of the only other songs here in which it sounds like McCartney is actually singing about something real. ... There are a few other tonally comparable songs on the 16-track Egypt Station, but the rest are largely bogged down in some eye-rolling cliché of one kind or another.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Monsters Exist
    This contrast, however, between bouncy or turbulent beats and contemplative or cosmic ambience, which recurs throughout Monsters Exist, is so dissonant that it effectively gets in the way of the album making a cohesive statement.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Indigo
    More complex ruminations are few and far between, with Tatum too often getting bogged down in generic binaries, from the fire and rain dichotomy on “Canyon on Fire” to a fickle romantic partner always “pulling me close” and “pushing me back” on “Oscillation.” Delivered with Tatum's vocals so prominent in the mix, these trite lyrical moments blemish Indigo's otherwise pristine musicality.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Woman Worldwide
    At 16 tracks, Woman Worldwide at times feels like an inexplicable rehash of existing material--a time-filler while Justice plots their next studio reinvention.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Queen
    Minaj is obviously capable of backing up all the posturing. ... But Queen also finds Minaj falling back on some frustratingly familiar shortcomings. The album loses its momentum whenever it aims for the pop charts.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stay Dangerous
    The rigid codes of masculinity governing hardcore rap, though, keep YG's lyrics from showing as much range as Mustard's beats.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sculptor
    Sculptor's Achilles' heel lies in its skeletal song structures, which feel too flimsy next to the enormity of the album's message of eschewing complacency.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jellies
    77:78 sees Fletcher and Parkin opting to merely dip their toes into such heterogeneity, yielding music with a far narrower scope and failing to break fresh ground.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    High As Hope
    Welch widens the song's [Hunger's] scope from a specific personal battle with an eating disorder to a broader emphasis on universal craving for love and acceptance, but trite statements about the destructive nature of fame and drugs are emblematic of the album's overall tendency to retreat into sweeping, generalized sentiments. Welch strikes a more effective balance between the personal and the universal on “Big God.”
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Head Over Heels
    Chromeo's formula is well-suited to producing unpretentious, likeable pop-funk; it's just too bad that it's never felt more like a formula than ever before.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Liberation
    “Accelerate” never takes off like one might expect, content to bustle along on a perpetually shifting beat, rumbling electro bassline, and skittering trap effects, fading out while the singer sensually vamps over a minimal backing track. Unfortunately, the rest of Liberation plays it frustratingly safe, with smooth, competent R&B like “Deserve” and “Pipe.”
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lost & Found
    At times, it's as if Smith's sheer vocal talent becomes a crutch that restrains her from treading into riskier musical terrain. A large part of the singer's allure derives from her vocal prowess, but she sacrifices invention here, letting the album fizzle out too quietly. Smith is at her best when she reinterprets classic R&B sounds and experiments with the color of her voice.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    so sad so sexy
    So Sad So Sexy is a sleek, homogenous pop-oriented album that feels both conceptually half-formed and technically fussed-over.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ye
    Ye‘s emotional claustrophobia is at times effective: As a chronicle of living with mental illness, this is Kanye’s most unsparing work to date. ... But Ye just feels unfinished, as if he wanted to avoid another debacle like the rollout of the also-unfinished The Life of Pablo and turned in a rough draft to make deadline. Unlike Pusha’s Daytona, which is all muscle and sinew, Ye feels like a mix of the weakest moments from The Life of Pablo.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    God's Favorite Customer
    The singer-songwriter is more sympathetic when tackling his struggles with mental health. Indeed, God's Favorite Customer hits its stride with its most emotionally naked pair of songs.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love is Dead
    The handful of songs produced by the band themselves—“My Enemy,” the brooding new wave track “God's Plan,” and the gentle ballad “Really Gone”—stand out in their deviation from the glossy, monolithic tracks helmed by producer Greg Kurstin.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Good Thing
    The album falters when Bridges strays from his retro-soul wheelhouse.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Caer
    Though much of the rest of Caer is mopey and monochromatic, these songs ["Too Many Colors" and "Little Woman"] suggest new possibilities for Twin Shadow's next phase.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In the Rainbow Rain
    With the exception of “Famous Tracheotomies,” Sheff often struggles to find compelling metaphors on this album.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beautiful Thing
    While there's certainly no shortage of sonic experimentation woven into this relatively more adventurous album, the British singer-songwriter struggles to find an effective balance between the added electronic accoutrements and the minimalist core that informs his solo work.
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