Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,120 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: 1,690 out of 3120
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3120
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3120
3120 music reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    O
    The Tillys have managed to keep the tap alive by focusing on quality songwriting while at the same time preserving their youthful wonder and elegant sensibilities.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    19
    Critics have favorably compared Adele to Amy Winehouse, but most of 19 plays like the quieter moments on Kate Nash's "Made of Bricks;" the production is largely simple and organic, wisely showcasing Adele's voice, which is appropriately soulful and imperfect.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too
    I Know You're Married would be a solid effort, but based on her own output alone, it's a considerable disappointment.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flavors Of Entanglement
    "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie" was emotionally complex but never without a nerve; the new Alanis, it seems, has many things to say, but they're all half-formed and stuck inside her head.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All I Intended To Be
    From her choices of collaborators and material to her extraordinary singing, Intended proves that Harris's greatest gift is her dead-on instincts.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tha Carter III
    One could easily pick and choose from the songs here to make a more coherent 12-track album; such a record would likely have more immediate impact. But it'd also be kind of painful to cut anything.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Seeing Sounds
    To be fair, there aren't any real clunkers to be found on Seeing Sounds and lead single 'Everyone Nose (All the Girls Standing in Line for the Bathroom)' and album closer 'Laugh About It' are perfectly serviceable Neptunes tracks, but only two tunes, 'Spaz' and 'You Know What' are very visionary.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is Not The World
    Since the Futureheads are a talented bunch of lads (who will hopefully live to fight again), some nuances do manage to leak through.... Sadly, the rest of the record tends to blur together, an unmemorable mass of whoo-alright.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Weezer (Red Album)
    Weezer seems to have driven their old shtick into the ground so perfectly, it almost seems like they've purposely become tired and boring.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    @#%&*! Smilers
    Her wise, bitter lyrics never let her listeners off the hook; it'd be nice to hear her challenge herself as well.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Perfectly Clear
    Even if it doesn't sound more like a country album than any of her previous work, the best songs on Perfectly Clear do show an awareness of genre form that gives Jewel a more distinctive presence than many of her contemporaries on country radio.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Virgins
    Refreshingly unpretentious, especially by the standards of heavily hyped bands, and as simply entertaining as any recent major label debut, Virgins strikes a careful balance between fashionable and accessible, which makes the band a good candidate for a real commercial breakthrough.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rook
    While Shearwater has always been album-oriented (they've been known in the past, like Okkervil River, for their themed albums) Rook is by far their most successful to date.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Declaration
    Past releases have displayed an ostensible desire to follow in the melodramatic steps of Mary J. Blige and much of Declaration continues in that quest.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Here I Stand
    Usher always delivers musically, but his perpetual claims of excellence and of being on the "cutting edge" (though it's unclear by whose definition and compared to what), his music is almost always just one notch above mediocrity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Songs in A&E
    It runs a little long, and it doesn't break much new thematic ground, but the album's great depth of feeling and its sure-footed execution outshine such minor problems.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bring Ya To The Brink
    If still a bit too far from the mainstream to make for a full-fledged commercial comeback (which "The Body Acoustic" might have provided if not for Sony's "rootkit" debacle), Bring Ya to the Brink recaptures Lauper's artistic relevance and stands as a hipper alternative to Madonna's "Hard Candy."
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Sun & The Neon Light
    Fans can rest easy: Sun and the Neon Light is not perfect, but it's also no late-model Chemical Brothers album.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Anywhere I Lay My Head
    The album itself is kind of an afterthought; what its creation says metatextually about the artists responsible for it is more interesting than any of the music it contains.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Arm's Way
    As a fully realized, bombastically confident artistic statement, Arm's Way is Nick Thorburn's "69 Love Songs." Hereafter we will only seek to understand him according to his own pop- and violence-addled logic, mapped perfectly on this thrilling album.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crayons
    The music is harmlessly listenable, and the requisite nods to her dance-floor legacy, like the sweeping, dramatic house anthem 'I'm a Fire' and the lockstep 'Stamp Your Feet,' are (at the very least) no less opportunistic than the latest albums by Madonna and Janet Jackson.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lie Down In The Light
    The arrangements and production are all stunning--like with "Master and Everyone," the performances are so intimate and recorded so well you can hear floorboard creaking in spots--but the tunes are a touch uneven.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rockferry
    Rockferry is a pretty nifty party trick of a record, but it's not enough to justify Duffy's Next Big Thing billing.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Brain Thrust Mastery
    Brain Thrust Mastery eschews the scenester party-and-sex themes of the band's sorta-breakthrough "With Love and Squalor" for more grown-up subject matter.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Narrow Stairs
    Death Cab mostly abandons the full-sounding multi-tracked production they preferred during their rise to primetime soap stardom, and the effect is unflattering.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Thing Of The Past
    Vetiver, a band with loads of potential yet to be fully realized, can't help but come across on Thing of the Past like a well-orchestrated coffeehouse act with unusually exquisite taste.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nouns
    The band's live performances, politics, and loyalty to their fanbase are to be admired, but Nouns will leave you wanting more.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Home Before Dark
    The result is an album of the kind of sophisticated pop that proves that such exemplary songcraft should always be relevant.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shine
    Unfortunately, these effervescent uptempo tracks give way to same-y filler including 'Back In Love' and 'In the Rain,' but songs like 'Pretty Please (Love Me)' are sure to appeal to fans of retro-revisionists Amy Winehouse, Duffy, and even Gnarls Barkley.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Third
    There's enough on Third (spaghetti-western guitars, organs, barking effects) to sate those who pine for the late '90s, but gone is the turntable scratching, ostensibly deemed too much of a relic from that decade; in its place are more electronic flourishes, like the cyclic synth-bass loop that softens the second half of "The Rip," a song which is proof positive that Goldfrapp would never exist without Portishead.
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