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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    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    the record
    Throughout The Record, Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker frequently return to the idea of an elusive search for identity. But they don’t seem to have found clarification just yet, failing to land on a collective identity or collaborative creative method that complements their myriad talents.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Run the Jewels 3
    The level of discourse on Run the Jewels 3 may be higher than your standard hip-hop grandstanding, and the references may be current and the beats may be more intense, but the album remains too entrenched in the grammar of the past to ever feel entirely fresh.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
    Anohni’s charting of various cycles of decay and change have the weight and import of a Greek tragedy. It’s a pity, then, that so much of the music on My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross underserves her anguished storytelling.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    i/o
    While the “Bright Side” mixes bring out the album’s more dynamic range, the lyrics lack the edge of Gabriel’s early music. The earnest perspectives of songs like “Love Can Heal” and “Live and Let Live” are apparent right from their titles, with the latter in particular succumbing to cliché. And the more subdued “Dark Side” mixes only highlight those flaws. i/o is heartfelt and meticulously crafted, but its impact is muted by its splintered presentation.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vulnicura
    When the singer finally begins to emote dynamically in the album's second half, that's also when Vulnicura's musical foundation comes apart.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sound Of Silver
    Murphy's willfully pretentious métier, his intentionally inadequate lyrics, and his monotonous sequencing expose a genuine fear of dance.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mirrored
    Elaborate time signatures and clever tape manipulations abound, and there's some fun trying to guess which instruments are synthesized and which are authentic, but Mirrored suffers from being too bright and spirited.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    How I Got Over
    They're driven, even though their latest venture is stylistically the most inert, contemplative, offputtingly soft music they've possibly ever released.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Book Burner
    Book Burner is defiantly hideous and if you love it, you love it for its ugliness or not at all.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shields
    Pretty but formless, Shields plays like a calculated retreat into something altogether indistinct and inconsequential.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stone Rollin'
    R&B's menu has never looked so diverse or enticing, but Stone Rollin' is overcooked comfort food dressed up as haute cuisine.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
    While the album undoubtedly brings more than a few great moments, what is most disappointing is that instead of celebrating the past two decades of Dylan's career, it calls the idea of such a celebration into question.
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Have One On Me
    The end result is a strange, and strangely pretentious mess: an album pitted deep in the psychic world of stories that nonetheless can't figure out when it should begin, when it should end, or which parts are even worth the audience's attention.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Old Ideas
    The voices that accompany him here are by turns syrupy and overwrought, and they work less to melt the icy tenor of the singer's voice than to soften the tracks into complete mush.
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Multitudes
    The album eschews the extroversion of the singer’s best work, like her 2007 breakthrough, The Reminder, and ultimately struggles to fully elucidate her multifaceted talents.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Emeritus
    If this is truly the end for Scarface then Emeritus is a backdoor exit, an unassuming, professional album that quietly gets the job done.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Silent Hour/Golden Mile [EP]
    No matter how sublime Rossen's voice may be, Silent Hour/Golden Mile simply can't transcend the limitations of its origin as a collection of incomplete Grizzly Bear B-sides.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Trouble Will Find Me
    So while Trouble Will Find Me remains well crafted and satisfying, there's something inherently stultifying about it as well.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fall Be Kind [EP]
    Thus, when not overextending the disappointing, unfinished musical projects on Fall Be Kind's, the Collective are busy beating their promising ideas into monotony.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Feels
    Feels fails to come together as a coherent whole.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Yeezus
    From a production perspective, it's a smash. The beats remain head-spinning. But 'Ye's lyrics feel lazy rather than merely drawled, and he's seeking social-commentary cred that he hasn't earned--a posture that can't help but grate.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A.H.A.T.H.H.A.F.T.C.T.T.C.O.T.E.
    Nothing on this album hooks quite like True Widow's darkly romantic highlights (check out "Duelist" or "Bleeder" if you want to hear True Widow's gothic revision of the '90s alt-rock template); instead, all but a few of the tracks here sound like variations on that album's "Sunday Driver."
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Our Love
    Snaith eventually does work his way out of the darkness, and while the consistent production value and a pair of vibrant, energetic closing tracks keep the album from feeling like a total wash, it's also an uncharacteristically uneven effort from a generally consistent artist.
    • 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
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Strays
    Strays continues in the classic rock-inspired direction of 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started, breaking from the neo-traditional country music that put Price on the map. The arrangements employ slide guitar and keyboards—even xylophone on “Time Machine”—with a punchy yet spacious mix, but the album flaunts its influences a bit too transparently.
    • 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.
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