Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,117 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: 1,687 out of 3117
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3117
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3117
3117 music reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Thirstier
    Some of her most nuanced, delightfully disparate songs to date.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Spiral
    Wwhile Jaar and Harrington assemble a worthy array of mesmerizing sounds on Spiral, a larger, more compelling vision eludes them.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sling
    While their jazzy arrangements channel the pleasant air of ‘70s AM folk, Sling’s 12 tracks tend to fuse into an unassuming whole that veers perilously close to easy-listening ennui.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vince Staples
    Vince Staples is another microcosmic release from the rapper, his leisurely approach suggesting a newfound confidence.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Get Up Sequences, Pt. 1
    The production is generally crisper and louder here than on the Go! Team’s earlier work, but it preserves their music’s signature noisy exuberance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Color of the Sky
    A Color of the Sky is an enchanting cache of guitar pop with echoes of Talk Talk, Cocteau Twins, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, and Emmylou Harris.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Haram
    In many ways a critique of the legacy of slavery and colonialism, Haram possesses a manic, catastrophic atmosphere.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bright Green Field
    Squid’s transformation into post-punk disruptors is indicative of a band that relentlessly bucks against their limits. To hear them ply their craft on Bright Green Field, the album represents a crystallization of that impulse.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Planet Her
    With the liveliest songs bookending the album, though, the middle stretch of Planet Her gets swallowed in a celestial soup of midtempo R&B and trap trends like the pitched-down vocals on the narcotic “Been Like This.”
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Golden Casket
    While The Golden Casket doesn’t match the heights attained by some of Modest Mouse’s earlier work, it’s their first album since 2000’s triumphant The Moon & Antarctica that doesn’t feel like it could benefit from some editing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Home Video
    Ultimately, it’s less the nuances of Dacus’s writing than her willingness to expose herself and her past so freely—even the most difficult parts—that make the strongest impression on Home Video.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Culture III
    In all the excess, one is nonetheless left wanting more—better fleshed-out personas or a glint of a new stylistic direction rather than a doubling down on committee-tested beats and a formulaic approach. The end result is more diminishing returns for Migos’s Culture series.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Peace or Love
    Informed by years of experience, growth, and collaboration, Kings of Convenience extend a comforting hand through the warm calm of their music.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Path of Wellness
    The album’s early singles “High in the Grass” and “Worry with You” both play off of Sleater-Kinney’s strengths, the former showing off the ever-expanding reach of Tucker’s voice and the latter sporting one of the band’s sneakily catchy hooks. On the other hand, songs like the dour “Tomorrow’s Grave” sound a little too familiar and fail to push the group beyond their previously established template.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No Gods No Masters
    No Gods No Masters suffers from a few too many ideas and stylistic excursions, but in a business where stasis means certain death, its eclectic approach is a testament to Garbage’s refusal to simply mine the same sonic ground over and over for an easy profit.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soberish
    For her part, Phair still has a knack for sharp melodies and bite-sized lyrical gems (“I tried to stay sober, but the bar is so inviting,” she quips on the album’s title track), and the technical simplicity of her voice is often its best feature.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jubilee
    While the emotions Zauner is sifting through across Jubilee’s 10 tracks are at once recognizable and powerfully vulnerable, they aren’t always easy to pin down. Zauner frequently crafts metaphors and imagines situations that are at times compellingly contradictory or unclear. ... The ambiguity gives the music a tantalizing quality, insistently throwing us off her trail.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Changephobia
    While Batmanglij has reduced the vast variety of sounds and distortion of his debut, the warmth of his vision remains.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cavalcade
    It’s an atmosphere-focused album that attempts to express the nastier side of being alive. The result is evocative but not necessarily satisfying.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sour
    Like Eilish and Lorde before her, Rodrigo possesses both a knack for stealthy pop hooks and a vocal control beyond her years. And even if Sour doesn’t quite transcend its myriad influences, it might at least inspire her fans to Google the Piano Man.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Delta Kream
    Picking up largely neglected threads from their early work, the album solidifies the Akron duo as one of the most vital and credible blues-rock bands active today.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Daddy's Home
    An impeccably produced album that deeply honors her arty influences and leaves room for complex and difficult lyrical themes that should please poptimists and indie kids alike.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Young Heart
    While Birdy meets the warmth of the album’s production with vocal skill and sensitivity, the overall effect is a very beautiful album littered with clichés that muddle its emotional impact. Still, there are seeds of great ideas here.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rosegold
    That lack of lyrical substance isn’t a problem just because we expect more from a songwriter with as compelling a discography as Monroe’s, but because the album’s production—crisp and bright but mostly two dimensional—isn’t interesting enough to carry the songs.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Million Masks of God
    When the band dabbles in more disruptive sounds that deviate from A Black Mile to the Surface, the effect is fresh and exciting. ... The remainder of the album, however, is composed mostly of midtempo songs that all similarly build to predictable climaxes.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nurture
    Nurture is at its best when it revels in Robinson’s dexterous instrumental tinkering. The album is occasionally too precious by half, as on the mawkish classical-guitar-based ballad “Blossom,” but bolstered by Robinson’s infectious sense of discovery and ear for experimentation, it boasts a prevailing spirit of optimism that’s hard to resist.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Endless Arcade
    If Teenage Fanclub’s songs are stylistically derivative, the melodies consistently stand up to those of the band’s progenitors.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sweep It Into Space
    The sprightly, exuberant Sweep It Into Space doesn’t just provide an especially good opportunity to look back on how far these three guys from Amherst have come since the early ‘90s, it also finds them making their most life-affirming music to date, exploring new tones and textures without betraying their monolithic, thundering signature sound.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Californian Soil
    Their third album, Californian Soil, is so “current,” filled with so many of-the-moment trends, that it winds up feeling anonymous.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fearless (Taylor's Version)
    While Swift did an admirable job of re-recording Fearless, tweaking the production in subtle ways that give the album a slightly different texture (note how much more prominently the banjo figures in the mix of “Love Story”), the songs themselves are largely unchanged. ... The album’s bonus tracks—all written during the original Fearless sessions—don’t move the needle much in terms of the project’s overall quality. They all showcase Swift’s preternatural gifts for song structure and melody, but again, the lyrics are a mixed bag
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