Slant Magazine's Scores

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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
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per page
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Great Escape Artist
    The overwhelming impression given by The Great Escape Artist is that they never actually tried.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rapprocher
    Underneath the litany of angular instrumentation, Rapprocher is, both musically and narratively, conventional glam-pop fare, but it's difficult not to admire how well the bedazzled glove fits.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
    Ultimately Hurry Up, We're Dreaming sounds much more like an M83 wannabe's poor imitation than the real deal.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ashes & Fire
    Adams's songwriting may be as sharp as ever and better edited than it ever has been, but Ashes & Fire makes some terrific songs sound impossibly bland.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How Do You Do
    Hawthorne just doesn't have the vocal chops to pull off an otherwise solid album.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Devil's Rain
    The Devil's Rain is the work of a band that aspires to give the genre little more than its answer to "The Monster Mash."
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams
    That the album is so wildly uneven perhaps speaks to the underlying quandaries its concept presents.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Metals
    However gorgeous and warm Feist's voice may be, Metals is just too dull for her to overcome.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Music Is Better Than Words
    Sincerity marks a refreshing change of pace for MacFarlane, but it never transcends the gimmick of hearing the guy who created Family Guy sing like the Rat Pack.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sweetheart of the Sun
    While it may not be as perfect a pop album as All Over the Place or Different Light, the Bangles get an awful lot right on Sweetheart of the Sun.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Neighborhoods
    It's admirable that Blink-182 tries to challenge themselves over the course of Neighborhoods, but their growing pains don't make for a particularly good album or a welcome comeback.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cole World: The Sideline Story
    Amply stocked with warmth and charisma, the only thing Cole World really wants for is the kind of out-of-the-park highlight that would pull the whole album together; as is, it shows off the scattered but considerable strengths of a talented rookie whose potential for long-term success is palpable.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Minnesota
    It's the handful of tracks on which Jennings stretches beyond familiar troubadour conventions that are Minnesota's best.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Night of Hunters
    Night of Hunters is a beautiful, smart record, but it's also, by design, an obtuse and insular album by an artist who already skews pretty far in those directions.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    World Wide Rebel Songs
    His voice here, a husky and burly drawl not too far removed from Johnny Cash's, is a constant delight throughout and is seemingly tailor-made for launching his volleys of criticism and cries for activism.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gravity the Seducer
    Gravity the Seducer is by some measure more focused than Ladytron's previous efforts. Or a little more fatigued. It's sometimes a little hard to tell when the music is so resolutely detached and android-vague.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Never Trust a Happy Song
    The Californian quintet returns with a full-length release that quite literally recycles the acmes of their EP: "Colours" and "Naked Kids" return untouched and unchanged, while the remaining 10 tracks suggest the band may be a one-trick pony.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Celestial Electric
    Celestial Electric settles into its midtempo shuffle early on and rarely strays from it and doesn't do enough to command attention when it does.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beautiful Imperfection
    The compartmentalization of its exotic elements confirms Beautiful Imperfection as a ploy launched at a specific target market, listeners who want to be gently and non-confrontationally challenged, able to enjoy Asa's spongy neo-soul with the stranger portions served on the side.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tripper
    There's a certain threshold for this kind of demanding material before it gets tiring. It's one that Tripper, staunchly dominated by an old-school style of wanky craftsmanship, crosses pretty quickly.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Golden Age of Apocalypse
    A little muscle, and maybe even a little heavy-metal menace, would have balanced the album out nicely.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tha Carter IV
    For the last four years there's been no greater force in hip-hop, but this isn't the way President Carter should be launching his campaign for a second term.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'm with You
    The arrangements have a tendency to rely on Flea's basslines to compensate for Frusciante's absence, but there's still enough zip and zeal in the stronger tracks to affirm the Chili Peppers' relevance in the modern musical climate.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The R.E.D. Album
    The profusion of guests and mania for exhibiting street hardness sometimes makes The R.E.D. Album feel unfocused and exhausting.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    La Liberacion
    Never as smartly entertaining as Peaches or amusingly stupid as Ke$ha, CSS is caught in the middling center, and so is La Liberacion.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jeff Bridges
    The ghostly "Slow Boat," which Bridges co-wrote with Burnett and Thomas Cobb, shares its title with a song referenced in Cobb's Crazy Heart, but which was unused in the film adaptation. These underplayed self-referential moments add character to the album and allow Bridges to make it a more definitive personal statement.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slave Ambient
    With a little more time to perfect their style, the War on Drugs would be well-positioned to win converts for both camps, and also their own.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tailgates & Tanlines
    Had Bryan taken more risks of that sort with his song selection and writing, Tailgates & Tanlines might have been an interesting album. But there's no appreciable ambition here.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sky Full of Holes
    The juvenile wordplays, ironic pop-culture references, and narratives about sad-sack folks undone by mundane, everyday minutia that are among the band's trademarks remain fully intact: The content of the songs on Sky Full of Holes is, by and large, as wry and idiosyncratic as their songs have ever been.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Legendary Weapons
    Legendary Weapons respects the Wu-Tang ethos and legacy without doing anything to enhance it, constantly regurgitating buzz words and vintage Wu signifiers in an attempt to achieve authenticity.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Here I Am
    The inherent blandness of Rowland's persona makes for too much roundly mediocre material.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    King of Hearts
    When he's on his game, he poses a less rigorously focus-grouped alternative to Bruno Mars's tween-friendly pop-R&B, but every moment of genius on King of Hearts comes saddled with something less palatable.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    LP1
    This a wholly acceptable effort, but it makes it clear that Stone is stalling out a mere decade into what looked at first like a promising career. It's time for her to throw the throwback shtick aside and really figure out what kind music she'd like to make.
    • 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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Red River Blue
    Red River Blue may be a significant step forward for Shelton, but he's going to have to be far more consistent in his song choices and steer clear of reductive "I'm so country" shtick like "Good Ole Boys" if he hopes to keep pace with the quality of his wife's albums.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Casablanca Nights
    There's a hell of a lot of air amid Casablanca Nights's piecemeal, electronically transferred elements. Just not much oxygen.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    If Not Now, When?
    If Not Now, When? is frustrating in many ways, chiefly because it feels like a step in the wrong direction for a band that can still pen enthralling tunes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mount Moriah
    When they keep their songs focused and kick up the tempo a bit, Mount Moriah is far more compelling.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Rave On Buddy Holly
    Holly's music might be simple, but it's not simplistic, and it should be handled with far more poise than what is managed here.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Love You, Dude
    Digitalism is at their best when immersing themselves in the trappings and embellishments of full-blown electronica, and they tend to suffer when trying to escape them.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shangri-La
    The result is an ill-conceived concept album, one that, though characteristically sharp musically, feels flat and overwrought.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Horses and High Heels
    As with most of her material, Horses and High Heels often sounds overblown and showy, but it identifies Faithfull's persistent ability to merge individual personality and musical connoisseurship.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Whatever's On Your Mind
    The five-strong troupe play fast and loose with the same elements that have served them so well across the last decade.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wild and Free
    For his latest release, Wild and Free, he rarely feels the need to stray outside this tried and tested outline: Each track bounces along with a carefree groove and exudes blissful vibes without really offering anything fresh or innovative, but is there really any new ground to break in a genre that reached its creative zenith over 30 years ago?
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Light the Horizon
    This is a solid album with a truly woeful centerpiece.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Errant Charm
    Vetiver weren't particularly freakish purveyors of freak folk to begin with, but in becoming so deliberately inoffensive, The Errant Charm makes them sound more like a Shins cover band than an act with its own distinct identity.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It's a Corporate World
    Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.'s dedication to branding has earned them plenty of attention, but on It's a Corporate World, their music too often feels like an afterthought.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Codes and Keys
    Thanks in no small part to Death Cab, there's now a permanent niche for indie pop that's smart, sad, and refined, and Codes and Keys fills it nicely.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bury Me in My Rings
    While the band's previous record, Sun, Sun, Sun, was a pleasant and occasionally inspired set of summer pop, Bury Me in My Rings plays too fast and loose with its genre pastiches and is a scattershot affair as a result.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Street of the Love of Days
    It's hard to get excited about any of the music on Street of the Love of Days-not because it isn't well made, but because there's no real hook to it.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Brilliant! Tragic!
    With fewer memorable songs than superior efforts like Art Brut vs. Satan or Bang Bang Rock & Roll!, Brilliant! Tragic! is neither as good nor as bad as its title suggests. In the interest of accurate advertising, I propose that the band renames the album Decent! Enough!
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Director's Cut
    The reinterpretations offer interesting what-if scenarios, tweaking and altering familiar material, but inevitably reveal more about Bush's fussiness over her own legacy than anything else.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Disc-Overy
    The consistent issue with Disc-Overy is the pairing of Tempah with people who fail to elevate him.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Matthew Morrison
    having a nice singing voice isn't enough to make the album memorable. For better or worse, the duets tend to draw more attention.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rome
    While it's difficult to imagine there being a large demand for this kind of music, it's impressive how little the producers and performers behind Rome seem to care. Like a lot of love letters, it exists as much for the sender as for the recipient.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Start and Complete
    Somehow, with an expansive medley of guitar licks and swirling organ solos, everything clicks into place here and the band settles into an irresistible groove. Unfortunately, though, that isn't enough to stop one from hoping Taylor returns to his day job sooner rather than later.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Did You Expect from the Vaccines?
    "Post Break-Up Sex" feels like the album's centerpiece, and is certainly its most complete track, playing like a compromise between the saccharine punk and the sullen balladry that often polarizes the collection of songs.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love?
    The real problem, then, is that Love? isn't the all-out dance album it could-and should-have been.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Moment Bends
    After several listens, it's still not entirely clear what Moment Bends is striving to be, or, for that matter, what its creators are trying to say with it.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Holy Ghost!
    Hat-tips and insider references abound on Holy Ghost!, but what's communicated most strongly isn't, ultimately, the duo's abiding love for new wave and disco, or even the timelessness of the style, but rather the poverty of nostalgia as an aesthetic principle.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hanna
    None of the tracks on Hanna do more than they have to, but at least they do that much.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
    In the end, the Texas band can't help but eventually indulge their desire to produce epic, guitar-driven film-score material, and after some initial feints into other territory, Take Care is business as usual.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lollipop
    While the band maintains a glimmer of their former selves, writing sturdy, comfortable songs with a minimal capacity to surprise, Lollipop still sounds a little tired.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Countrypolitan Duets
    When the album is less successful, it's generally because her collaborators let her down or because she's played it too safe and too deliberately tasteful.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tomboy
    While Person Pitch rippled with punctuated sound, Tomboy is a cyclic plateau, a triumph of building algorithms that gradually add plushness and sonic density, but very little movement.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    In Love With Oblivion
    Crystal Stilts differentiate themselves from the herd with scuzzy, garage-rock charm and dissonant cool.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wasting Light
    Wasting Light appears to be just another good, if forgettable, entry in the Foo Fighters catalogue.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Too Young to Be in Love
    Between the camping, the re-contextualizing, the endless musical cut-n'-paste, Hunx and His Punx throw up a lot of barriers between their listener and any kind of un-self-conscious appreciation of their songs.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Family Sign
    Eschewing the dynamic pop and soul flourishes that made Lemons something of a crossover vehicle, The Family Sign is simply flat.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Who You Are
    Unfortunately, the songs on Who You Are that allow Jessie J's ugly, born-that-way vocals to cut loose are in the distinct minority. In the quest to find herself, she seems to have gotten sidetracked.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Here We Rest
    It's on the songs that bring in the R&B influences that made Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit sing that Here We Rest finally showcases what it is that makes Isbell a distinctive talent.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paper Airplane
    Krauss and Union Station are extraordinary musicians, and it's their impeccable skills that are the main selling point of Paper Airplane.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bloodless Coup
    Were Kirwan's production a bit meatier, Bloodless Coup might be able to overcome the lapses in the band's songwriting.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Doggumentary
    There are moments here that hint at brilliance of the West Coast veteran's early G-funk staples, which only underlines the fact that a more faithful sequel to his magnum opus would best serve his fans and his legacy. Doggumentary is far from that, its major player distracted by his desire to replicate modish hood-bangers and experiment in areas too far from his comfort zone.
    • 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."
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blood Pressures
    Blood Pressures works mostly because of how fully the duo believes in the junk they're spitting out.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hold on Tight
    Pitched decidedly near the middle of the road, Burke's final album is a generally pleasing endeavor that might have benefited from a little more effort.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Return of Mr. Zone 6
    The Return of Mr. Zone 6 proves to be not just a return to making music, but to the same damning patterns that have left him content with his own mediocrity.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rolling Papers
    As a whole, the verses on Rolling Papers are so boring that I'm not convinced that even Khalifa finds them interesting. They seem to exist solely to fill space between the hooks, which are sung, tolerably, by Khalifa himself
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gimme Some
    This might be a more natural and relaxed PB&J having the time of their lives, but it certainly doesn't find the band at their most creative.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    F.A.M.E.
    Sadly but predictably, it really isn't until the bonus tracks on the deluxe edition, when he drops a Bomb with Wiz Khalifa, that you ponder how Mr. Black and Yellow has hooked up with Mr. Black and Blue, and then you remember what's been hiding in plain sight throughout the entire album.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Remember Me
    The sense that Hudson's singularity was lost on the I Remember Me team is reinforced by the fact that we've heard almost all of these songs before.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Losing Sleep
    Rather than making Collins sound as though he's trying to play catch-up to what the current generation of indie-rock kids are doing, the co-writes and duets on the album simply come across as a logical progression of the kind of retro-minded, catchy rock that Collins has been writing and performing over the course of his career.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    101
    It's partially because Keren Ann has made such a resource of restraint that the cooing, gritty femme-fatale act pursued here seems contrary to her strengths.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Angles
    Angles is a document of the Strokes operating more as a task force than a real band; even though the album's allegedly fractured recording sessions resulted in the first Strokes LP to feature writing credits from every member of the band, this is more of a show of individuals tinkering with each track rather than any true cooperative effort.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Femme Fatale
    The success of a Britney song rests almost entirely on the quality of other people's songwriting and production, and almost every track on Femme Fatale succeeds or fails on that basis. Longtime collaborator Max Martin and his partner in auricle-crime, Dr. Luke, produced the bulk of Femme Fatale, and their contributions are mixed-to-shoddy.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cervantine
    Ultimately, for all its globalized interest in mixing world cultures, Cervantine is about noodling, fooling around with different styles via extended jams, which the band at least has the good sense to spice that up with a worldly palette. Yet too often the songs seem drained of any feeling.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Skins
    It's admirable that the band has committed to a second act of their career and have challenged themselves by tackling more grown-up issues in their songwriting, but Skins doesn't offer much more than a doggedly likable set of straightforward rock songs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Daydreams & Nightmares
    Daydreams & Nightmares may be pleasant enough for an afternoon diversion, but it's essentially nondescript, generic indie-pop, of which no amount of charisma from Jonsson can possibly mask.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Own Side Now
    Though the album sounds like the work of what film critic Nathan Rabin has dubbed the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" (and the album's stylized cover art only adds to that impression), it's clear that Rose is a talent worth following.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lasers
    Lupe's half-assed, club-ready radicalism is ultimately the most frustrating thing about Lasers, and not just because it provides numerous and obvious examples of rap's self-styled emancipator consorting with his avowed enemies.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Long Player Late Bloomer
    On his previous albums, Sexsmith's choices of producers haven't always played to his strengths, but Rock's light hand makes Long Player Late Bloomer the best sounding record in Sexsmith's extensive catalogue.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Collapse into Now
    Considering how the album's style draws from each era of R.E.M.'s evolution, Collapse Into Now plays as something of a greatest-hits package.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goodbye Lullaby
    Since her production team more or less comes through for her, it's ultimately on Lavigne's slight shoulders that Goodbye Lullaby is such a strident, ineffectual attempt at a serious pop record.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    II
    It's their densest and most detailed work to date, but without the cathartic spirit of their live shows (Gamelan was written largely in a live setting), II sounds stripped of the music's previous rapture.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Different Gear, Still Speeding
    Judging this Beady Eye debut without any preconceptions based on their polarizing frontman-be they positive or negative-will be difficult, but the vocal performances and songwriting should go some way to endearing even the staunchest detractors to the all-swaggering, piquant Mancunian.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    100 Lovers
    Devotchka has at least found a way to continue making tuneful, relatively entertaining music, as their contemporaries either verge on self-parody or have given up altogether. But nothing about 100 Lovers suggests anything more than another attempt to break even.
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