Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 2,974 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 7.8 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: 1,590 out of 2974
  2. Mixed: 1,276 out of 2974
  3. Negative: 108 out of 2974
2974 music reviews
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    • 89 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Continue as a Guest
    At the stage in their career when most bands are content to just repeat themselves, the unfamiliar palette of Continue As a Guest is a revelation, and certainly doesn’t preclude the other members of the New Pornographers from making their presence felt. Most notably, Zach Djanikian contributes tenor and alto sax on several tracks, expanding the album’s timbre in new and unexpected directions.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
    Ocean Blvd traffics in some nimble, effervescent melodies, a few memorable vocal passages, and the occasional tuneful duet (Father John Misty proves to be an exceptional bedfellow on “Let the Light In”). But the album feels more like a placeholder in Del Rey’s discography than a truly audacious chapter in the singer’s blossoming late-period reawakening.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Good Luck
    Good Luck fits roughly into similar experiments by Backxwash or JPEGMAFIA, but it’s even harder to pin down to a single genre. It’s an album that testifies to the liberating potential of making a racket.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    10,000 Gecs
    While the twosome’s rambunctious revelry may appear wholly flippant upon first listen, their music, and 10,000 gecs as a whole, is far more sophisticated than it seems.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Praise a Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
    Not every song on Praise a Lord, though, is as fully developed as “Parody” and “Operator.” ... Still, these moments further highlight Tumor’s idiosyncratic approach to experimental indie-pop.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fantasy
    Gonzalez’s tendency for self-indulgence and penchant for repetition keep Fantasy from reaching the previously attained heights of albums like Saturdays=Youth. Yet, even as M83’s throwback sound has lost some of its novelty due, in part, to pop culture becoming saturated with (comparatively vapid) ’80s nostalgia, Gonzalez’s non-ironic sensibilities and bright-eyed ambition effortlessly outshine even his most reverent copycats.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Endless Summer Vacation
    The lyrical clichés that occupy much of Endless Summer Vacation do little to scratch away at the album’s blithe veneer, though at the very least they deliver on its promise of fun.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Radical Romantics
    Fever Ray circa 2023 feels admittedly a little quainter than they used to.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    UGLY
    Despite its allusions to seeking therapy, listening to the album feels like accompanying a friend on a disastrous Saturday night bender.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One Thing at a Time
    A wildly uneven follow-up to 2021’s already overburdened Dangerous: The Double Album. Listening to the album in one sitting is akin to binging a seven-course meal: While there are some memorable bits, it all blurs into a comatose-inducing fog.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    WOW
    There’s also a strong sense of unity in how each song eventually comes together, and the album as a whole cohesively flows from one impressive moment to the next, ebbing and flowing between states of serenity and chaos.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Follow the Cyborg
    Unfortunately, the album’s avoidance of conventional pop structures means these songs fail to lodge in your mind, but Miss Grit sings with a plainspoken, almost whispery intimacy that’s hard to shake.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cracker Island
    Much like 2017’s overstuffed Humanz, Cracker Island is, more times than not, overly indebted to its impressive list of guest stars, foregrounding their talents instead of employing them as natural extensions of Albarn’s musicianship.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Quest For Fire
    Tonal contradictions, while at points jarring and a tad distracting with how little they ultimately coalesce, provide the album with a punchy sense of dynamism across its 15 tracks.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Food for Worms
    Aside from one or two cuts, though, nothing here is as satisfying as previous Shame highlights like the nervy, ominous “Snow Day” or “Nigel Hitter,” whose splintered dance-rock managed to be both hooky and weird. For the most part, Food for Worms manages to be neither.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shook
    TThe group consistently proves their mettle as musicians throughout Shook. But the sequencing of both the songs’ individual elements and the tracklist as a whole is less than the sum of the parts.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    All Fiction
    Their unwillingness to resort to cheap pop gestures stands out in an era where few acts even bother to cloak their crass commercialism. But above all stands the music, and All Fiction—the title of which is a reference to our culture’s increasingly fractured ideas of what constitutes truth—marks yet another extraordinary entry in the band’s discography.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Optical Delusion
    They’ve explored spacey atmospheres and grim, political content before, but Optical Delusion feels more like a document of the times than a sci-fi fantasy: a rave just before the end of the world.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pollen
    The common thread connecting the album’s real and imagined romantic scenarios across its 10 tracks is escapism, whether it be the isolation of the open sea or the insular behind-the-scenes goings on of a hotel.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Raven
    No matter the tempo or setting, though, Raven is fully aware of how the body can both entrap and liberate. It’s an innovative use of music as a vessel to capture both.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New York City
    New York City sees the Men attacking their no-frills rock with a raw passion that they haven’t displayed this plainly in some time.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Queen of Me
    Ignoring how incohesive Queen of Me’s track list proves to be—the schmaltzy “Last Day of Summer,” for example, is a pedestrian reflection of young love that feels entirely out of place on an album filled with tracks related to embracing one’s present image—the songs themselves are frivolous and lack both sonic character and catchy hooks.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Mansion Musik
    Trippie Redd’s Mansion Musik is repetitive, shoddily produced, and lacks any real structure.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Compositions
    But even as he eschews evocative song titles and instrumentation, Compositions nonetheless makes for a haunting, gloomy, and often challenging experience. And when the repetitive throbs finally subside after 41 minutes, the silence left in their wake feels nothing short of monumental.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gloria
    For as much as Smith tries to step out of the box, they still sound most comfortable playing to their previously established strengths.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    AudioLust & HigherLove
    An assemblage of enjoyable ingredients that doesn’t coalesce.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    One Day
    Although it has some thematic overlap with Glass Boys, One Day amalgamates its disparate lyrical and musical ideas, as well as the confidence of its performances and compositions, into a novel, thrilling 40 minutes.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Furling
    While country and roots music inform many of the arrangements here, slide and steel guitars are employed mostly as texture, creating a blur of sound. This is very much “vibes” music, emanating from a wide swath of influences, blending English folk, American roots music, and dubby trip-hop in ways that are both heady and nebulous.
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