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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    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Evil Spirits
    While Evil Spirits isn't a late-career masterpiece, Visconti's production chops have at least ensured a warm and rich listening experience.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Deconstruction
    Pensive stabs of orchestration add tension to the title track, on which Everett can only muster generic musings on the need to break oneself apart in order to be rebuilt into something new. ... A number of brief, half-formed interludes make the album feel more fragmented than connected.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Snoop Dogg Presents Bible of Love
    A stultifying two discs of competent but generic Christian platitudes.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    August Greene
    The album is admirable and at times rewarding for its sense of experimentation, but only for those willing to meet it on its own terms.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Boarding House Reach
    A postmodern assault of freaked-out sonic ataxia, it's messy, wildly uneven, and at times even close to unlistenable, but its sheer audacity makes it utterly intriguing.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Both Sides of the Sky
    While none of it is of the caliber of the music he released in his lifetime, the album includes material from some of the last studio sessions by the Experience and the earliest by Hendrix's final outfit, Band of Gypsys, offering a glimpse at a transitional phase in his work.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    I'll Be Your Girl
    The eight-minute, two-part “Rusalka, Rusalka/Wild Rushes” stands in stark contrast to the rest of the album in almost every way. ... By comparison, the rest of I'll Be Your Girl feels painfully half-baked.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American Utopia
    While American Utopia isn't as vital a statement as it wants to be, it's the sound of one of pop music's most idiosyncratic voices continuing to follow his wayward muse.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Onion
    Onion mostly attempts to wring earnest feeling from platitudes.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Knew You When
    When Seger sticks to growling out his lyrics over jagged riffs and a relentless beat, as he does on the driving “Runaway Train” and the synth-driven “The Highway,” he proves that craft can be rewarding in its own right, and that he still excels at creating emotional investment in something as tried and true as barreling, locomotive rock.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man of the Woods
    The majority of the highlights on Man of the Woods, from the faux-Stevie Wonder groove of “Higher, Higher” to the smooth dance-floor glide of “Breeze Off the Pond,” could have appeared on any Timberlake album, give or take a few pointedly rural references to roadside billboards and canoes. The songs that hew more closely to the Americana vibe, meanwhile, are mostly embarrassing.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Revival
    Eminem can still dazzle with his wordplay--“Adversity, if at first you don't succeed/Put your temper to more use/'Cause being broke's a poor excuse” is an early highlight on “Believe”--yet his delivery, listless torrents of language, makes him seem noncommittal to the songs he's performing. He's not quite on autopilot throughout, but he does sound distracted. Eminem is more engaged on Revival when his focus turns to his family.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Versatile
    It's disappointing to hear one of the all-time great vocalists turn in such mundane performances.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everyday Is Christmas
    Sia too often sounds like she's singing with a mouthful of Christmas candy.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Low in High School
    Too often, though, Morrissey sticks with sturdy, stomping rock, its workmanlike construction bogged down by turgid lyrics.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kid Kruschev
    Seven years after their debut, they remain both confined and defined by their early novelty as the twee pop group with the loud guitars.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Red Pill Blues
    Listening to Red Pill Blues makes one yearn for an era when there at least seemed to be more room for genuinely ambitious, artful Top 40 pop. In other words, I'll take the blue pill.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All American Made
    These songs are littered with allusions to Price's difficult past as a broke, troubled magnet of misfortune with a late-blooming career, but they're by and large so vague that they don't have much of an emotional impact.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pacific Daydream
    His oddball pop-culture references and fondness for clichés can be charming amid wailing electric guitars, but taking center stage, they too often fall flat.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fantastic Plastic
    Plastic Fantastic isn’t essential or especially relevant--though the aforementioned “What the Hell’s Goin’ On” does capture a certain familiar sense of aging-liberal bewilderment. It is, though, a utilitarian product, offering up 12 newly recorded songs that will allow the band to get back on the road.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Saga Continues
    Enjoying this album will depend on your tolerance for Wu-Tang at its most generic.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beautiful Trauma
    Beautiful Trauma's neat construction renders the album less than the sum of its parts, but individual songs work well enough, thanks in no small part to Pink's personality and charisma.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Colors
    At times, it seems as though Beck is grasping at something, anything, to add conflict and tension to this effusive album. But all he comes up with are the most well-worn of sentimental platitudes.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Younger Now
    It's the sound of a promising young singer who tried and failed to produce compelling music on the margins, turning back and self-consciously striking a more conservative pose. It's not as interesting a story, maybe, but it's also not as problematic.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Double Dutchess
    Fergie struggles to balance the new with the old throughout the album. Where Stefani’s raw confessionals helped distinguish This Is What the Truth Feels Like, though, Double Dutchess is stuck in the past.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tell Me You Love Me
    Unfortunately, an excess of downtempo tracks mires Tell Me You Love Me's momentum in its second half, concluding with a pair of refreshing but nearly identical back-to-back acoustic-driven R&B songs that might as well be a medley.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Native Invader
    When Amos eschews her band in favor of barer piano-and-vocal arrangements—as on the contemplative “Breakaway,” the surprisingly reverent “Climb,” and the lush “Mary's Eyes,” a mournful plea to the gods to reverse Amos's mother's aphasia--Native Invader fulfills the promise of its stunning opener.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beast Epic
    The sneaky-sounding arpeggios and the hushed, fragile vocal performances that defined albums like Our Endless Numbered Days are eschewed in favor of bright strumming and unbridled joyousness, rendering most of Beast Epic undeniably pretty but ultimately toothless. That's not to say Beast Epic doesn't sometimes explore hefty themes.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Deeper Understanding
    The album's lyrics, however, can't match this same level of musical precision, and Granduciel too often repeats the same vague sentiments using threadbare imagery.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    TFCF
    TFCF lacks the forceful unity of the best Liars albums, particularly the thoughtful avant-garde theatrics of They Were Wrong So We Drowned and Drum's Not Dead. The songs here function more like a series of half-developed sketches, often invigorating but a tad shambolic, the lyrics' cryptic nature failing to connect with any coherent central thesis.
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