Slant Magazine's Scores

Select another publication »
For 3,122 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: 1,692 out of 3122
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3122
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3122
3122 music reviews
view
per page
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Underneath the Pine
    Despite the oversaturated warmth of Beneath the Pine's production, this is a cold record, an archetype of technical mastery and genre-worship prevailing over the artistry of an individual voice. As a result, Bundick often sounds not like one artist, but the amalgamation of a whole movement's worth of ideas and styles, borrowed and rearranged into a faceless, forgettable whole.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Red Letter Year
    There's nothing close to shitty about Red Letter Year; it's DiFranco's third redemptive studio album in a row (starting with 2005's "Knuckle Down") and that's certainly something worth celebrating.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Last Rider
    In the end, The Last Rider isn't quite as memorable as Retriever, on which Sexsmith hit his stride as a pop songwriter, or Blue Boy, which boasted a charmingly ragged production courtesy of Steve Earle. But the album has its pleasures.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Entering Heaven Alive
    It’s at this blurry intersection of inscrutability and openness, of pure persona and slavish authenticity, that White has often done his best work. Much of Entering Heaven Alive exists too far to one side of that spectrum.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    COW / Chill Out, World!
    COW‘s inward-looking is often gray and formless, and suggests that Paterson and Fehlmann are indeed best understood when exploring the concepts they can’t understand.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Convivial
    while Convivial sometimes sounds urgent (as on album standouts like the soaring, gothic 'Love You All' and the bright and twitchy 'Gets Along Fine'), virtually nothing about it sounds truly fresh.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pick A Bigger Weapon
    [Riley's] lyrics are simultaneously clever and uninteresting: he rarely transcends an ABAB or AABB rhyme scheme, practically never rhymes within the lines, and his meter and diction lack intricacy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wasting Light
    Wasting Light appears to be just another good, if forgettable, entry in the Foo Fighters catalogue.
    • 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
    • 50 Critic Score
    (Watch My Moves)
    He doesn’t bring his roguish charm to his latest. Though this album will satisfy those nostalgic for the mellower side of ‘70s and ‘90s rock, it doesn’t chart new terrain for Vile.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's All True
    It's All True takes a sullen half-back step into the Junior Boys' mood-lit comfort zone, sounding not so much like capitulation than the chastened partying that follows an especially bad hangover: Last night things got a little out of hand, so tonight they're just having a few friends over to drink and play old dance records.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oxymoron
    He has the instincts of a good storyteller, and maybe even the potential to be a standard bearer for his art form, but when he falls back on tired "pimps and hoes" narratives, he sounds firmly, frustratingly rooted in the past.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Away
    Despite some conceptual shakiness and a few instances of turgid sentimentality, Sheff is doing fine on his own, continuing to detail unsteady emotional ground with a characteristic mixture of self-assurance and existential dread.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Neon
    When Neon provides him with a song that's actually worthy of his considerable chops, Young really shines. It's a shame, then, that most of the set finds Young fighting an uphill battle against some lackluster material.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Demolished Thoughts
    After a decade of pensive chamber-pop lullabies from a number of artists, it feels like there's no new ground to break in this particular subgenre.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Getting Into Knives
    Their work manages to feel simultaneously overproduced and under-thought.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cannibal Sea
    Cannibal Sea is a mellow concoction well-suited to fans of cerebral indie pop.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Singing Mailman Delivers
    With a stable of effective songs and a healthy dose of good humor, The Singing Mailman Delivers remains a likable, if not terribly compelling, effort.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wrecking Ball
    Written from the perspective of a demolished stadium, it's broad and disappointingly simple, wallowing in cheap nostalgia and chummy good feelings.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Go-Go Boots
    Go-Go Boots aims for a soulful, introspective vibe, but it ends up as the dullest album in the Truckers's catalogue.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Heretofore
    Heretofore highlights the technical skill and genre-blurring vision that makes Megafaun one of the most captivating acts in Americana. But when their ideas run too far out of bounds, the album also makes it clear that Megafaun hasn't quite figured themselves out yet.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Boy King
    By blatantly exposing a core of raw sexuality, previously presented only indirectly in their music, the group ends up removing any possible release valve while stripping the songs of nuance.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    To Willie
    The fact that the album works may speak most to the strength of Nelson's original material, but To Willie certainly has a creaky, good-natured charm, is light on frills, and puts a clear focus on the songwriting.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anxiety
    Despite all its plasticized production and cartoon antics, however, what makes Anxiety so endearing is that it's the candid expression of an artist with nothing left to hide, and something real to share.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night
    In the end, the album's real failing is not its individual flaws but a dry, rote feeling that descends halfway through the album, where you realize you're listening to little more than a reheated punk snarl that has been cleaned up and shipped back to the U.S. from overseas more than 30 years after the fact.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bless This Mess
    Meghan Remy seems to want it both ways, as she flips between sincerity and irony across her eighth album as U.S. Girls. These conflicting approaches end up negating one another and result in a work that sign-posts its themes and musical choices but lacks a coherent overall vision.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Long Island Shores
    With so little substance, Long Island Shores is simply pretty for the sake of being pretty.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sus Dog
    Chris Clark’s Sus Dog tries on a number of stylistic tics—from stuttering electronics to eerie vocals—that recall those of its executive producer, Thom Yorke, but rarely finds a means of organically incorporating them into the IDM veteran’s bass-heavy sound.
Page: