Spin's Scores

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For 4,305 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surf's Up Sessions 1969-1971
Lowest review score: 0 They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,099 out of 4305
  2. Mixed: 1,151 out of 4305
  3. Negative: 55 out of 4305
4305 music reviews
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per page
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rated R
    Rated R, Rihanna's first album since her brutal confrontation with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, wants to recast her as a searing woman scorned. It doesn't quite take.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Another One
    Another One is a collection of a few of DeMarco’s best songs to date, all in a day’s work for this normal guy who just so happens to get a little wild on stage.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    100th Window
    100th Window is a masterpiece of haunted sonics. But the spirit of community that once warmed this band's angsty soul is missing. [March 2003, p.117]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    lovehatetragedy
    It's the perfect summer record--if your summer begins with your dad running off with his secretary and your girlfriend dumping you for that asshole lifeguard at the water-slide park. [Jul 2002, p.107]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Invisible Man
    His finest album since American Music Club split. [June 2001, p.145]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Photo Album
    Ten tracks of heart-baring guitar-doodles by and for people who'd rather talk about feelings than have them. [Nov 2001, p.138]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Black Holes & Revelations
    Muse used to sound like a Radiohead tribute band; now they sound like a Muse knockoff. [Aug 2006, p.81]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Phantom Punch
    Though the hooks and melodies are spread a little thin... Lerche still has a convincing charm in his lighter, acoustic moments. [Feb 2007, p.84]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hats Off To The Buskers
    These young Scotsmen have grime to spare, along with a belief in rock's power to rescue them from it. [Mar 2007, p.99]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Wake Up Screaming
    The Kid's voice has tarnished, but his wit-intensive, cross-genre revisionism still grooves like a multiculti Mensa disco party.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heartthrob
    Liberated from the stylistic baggage of their previous albums, the Quins deliver something close to pure intoxicating emotion, granting themselves the freedom to go anywhere they want next time.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt
    Despite these fine individual performances, Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt overall is an interminable slog.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This
    [A] striking return to form. [Aug 2006, p.82]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Four Stars
    Apparently, [Craig Fox's] been stockpiling solid songs: From the slinky "Go Tell Henry" to the stinging snarl of "Underestimator," everything here is taut and lively. The lone drawback: It all sounds terribly familiar.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hotel Valentine
    Ostensibly a supernatural tale, Hotel Valentine challenges the listener to reflect on life, death, and nothingness. Whether that inspires joy or terror depends on you, but it'll inspire something.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mountain Battles
    The Breeders can still crank out straightforward rock songs, but iy's the creepier stuff that gets under your skin and stays there. [Apr 2008, p.104]
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Era Vulgaris
    It sounds awesome. [Jul 2007, p.102]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mo'Mega
    His furious, frantic monotone dramatically collides with producer El-P's postindustrial beats. [Jul 2006, p.86]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Skit I Allt
    These adventuresome Swedes, led by instrumental virtuoso Gustav Ejstes, might be inspired by psychedelics, but they never leave anything to chemical-enhanced chance on their moody, lovely fourth album.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ancient Romans
    This double album (complete with lush art booklet) is styled like a toga party, but some tracks ("Fit for Caesar," "Lucretius") are closer to the 'shroom-chewing highlights of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Feel It Break
    her band's seedy synth pop more often recalls Kate Bush's dramatic art songs and the Knife's ghostly techno-pop (and more specifically, the soured vowels of frontwoman Karin Andersson).
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hawk
    Overall, Hawk faithfully follows its predecessors' dusty Americana blueprint, trading a standout Hank Williams cover for two by Townes Van Zandt.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever
    Men's Needs isn't nearly as unique as Jarman thinks, but his tunecraft is often as sharp as his wit. [Aug 2007, p.100]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Garden Ruin
    Calexico have abandoned much of the jazzy, mariachi-infused Americana pulses that characterized their former sound.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    PL3DGE
    ATL kingpins Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane, and T.I. pay their respects, and Mike mimics their strip-club homilies, but he shines brightest as the trap's "book reader" and "gang leader."
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bits
    So, about 25 minutes into their fourth album, when Dan Fetherston's martial drums and Adam Rizer and Michael Pace's choral vocals begin the slow rumble of 'Children's Crusade,' the moment feels as revelatory as it is cathartic--Arcade Fire–size elation, without the uniforms and all the friggin' people.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grown Unknown
    Ices' lush melodies and dreamy voice will convert skeptics and mesmerize supporters of Kate Bush and Joanna Newsom.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dodge and Burn
    Where the strong Horehound and Cowards sounded interchangeably enough like other White projects, Dodge mostly does not.... Dodge and Burn is one of their greatest.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Red Thread
    They're still tilling the same murky patch, but they're pulling up prettier weeds each time out. [5/2001, p.147]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rockin' The Suburbs
    In many ways, this is his 'Nylon Curtain.' [Sep 2001, p.160]
    • Spin
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Medicine at Midnight
    Medicine is a barrel of tailgating, beer-guzzling monkey bros; the band’s loosest and most dance-able record in a decade or more.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Safe Trip Home
    Dido's third solo album reveals an unyielding fear of intimacy, her mellow trip-pop (coproduced by Jon Brion) buckling underneath sadness and alienation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Not the Actual Events [EP]
    Not the Actual Events is probably the grimiest Nine Inch Nails release since The Fragile. Rather than running the gamut between overdriven steamrolling and receding, glitchy ambience as on most of the work Reznor loosed between 1994 and 2008, the EP realizes a specific, portentous mood from several equivalent angles.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Don't Mess With The Dragon
    [They] downplay the hip-hop boom-bap... in favor of busy pop jams that mirror the overstimulation of 21st-century life. [Apr 2007, p.93]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Bring It Back
    [They] spruce up their cutesy indie pop with grander melodies, gigglier choruses, and a wider variety of sounds. [Apr 2006, p.91]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Silver
    This Virginia duo's debut could double as a hypercompressed essay on post-punk's shift into indie.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yes, I'm a Witch Too
    She follows up 2007’s covers and remixes album Yes, I’m a Witch with another collection that’s just as strong and intriguing, mainly because of the smorgasbord of indie and electro-pop oddballs and A-lister names attached to it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love And Other Planets
    Never succumbing to mere cleverness, Adem achieves a singularly intimate expansiveness. [Nov 2006, p.96]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Reprieve
    Milky keyboard washes and found-sound accents... give the music a darker, dreamier depth. [Sep 2006, p.100]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Black Forest
    Packed with sparse, whirring, and danceable noise-rock refinements. [Apr 2005, p.108]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Versions
    This sort of alternate-universe intimacy with songs we've already come to love makes Versions a wild success, proving that something wemusic once coveted for its desolate nature can be just as warm and familiar when flipped into something else entirely.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Teeth Dreams
    Beneath the arena-friendly sonics and the streamlined storytelling of Teeth Dreams lies the same old band that kicked off their very first number with a little bit of Mott The Hoople self-mythology, that fist-pumping Hold! Steady! chant within "Positive Jam."
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Warpaint
    The growth is immense, occasionally breathtaking, and always immediate.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    See You In Magic
    The Night Marchers follow Rocket From The Crypt's tried-and-true strategy, intertwining punk, hard rock, and rockabilly, with lively if unsurprising results. [May 2008, p.104]
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lunglight
    The arresting second album from this five-piece trades the jangly folk rock of their only-pleasant debut for a harsher, more jittery approach.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Happenstance
    Her songs are feeling like Jason Mraz's leftovers. [Jul 2004, p.110]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Where You Want To Be
    Their bread and butter is still exuberantly juvenile pessimism. [Aug 2004, p.107]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eating Us
    Woozy, smoked-out hooks are strewn like cigarette butts--a Black Moth specialty that Fridmann dials up throughout this consistently twisted half-hour and change.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sunset/Sunrise
    Its finest moments ('Let It Die,' 'Sunrise/Sunset,' and the beautifully tortured opener 'Hands')--featuring the duo's heartaching harmonizing--capture a uniquely tender gloom amid the droning atmospherics.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mature Themes
    The pink-slime pop of Mature Themes is made to epoxy itself to your ears for days on end.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Wrestlers
    Ultimately, the most appealing thing about American Wrestlers is its lack of obvious guile or pretension.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Only in Dreams
    Gundred's richer-than-you-expect voice is the key to these jagged little pillows.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Surfing Strange
    "Indie rock" has long since ceased to be either "indie" or "rock," of course, but Surfing Strange signifies on both counts, just when we desperately needed a refresher on the fundamentals.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Touch Down 2 Cause Hell
    A pleasant surprise.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Silent Shout
    A freaky, moving masterpiece. [Aug 2006, p.80]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lifeline
    Lifeline is a commanding, unjammy take on gospel-influenced rock, featuring his most spiritual singing since 2004's Grammy-winning collaboration with the Blind Boys of Alabama.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Yourself: Tear
    Their most relaxed to date. ... Whereas the first installment of the series seemed uneasy and disjointed in its span of styles, Love Yourself: Tear’s genre-hopping sounds like the group is simply having a good time.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Exotic Creatures Of The Deep
    As before, the least substantial choruses often repeat the longest, but it's a shortcoming offset by archly charming verses flaunting byzantine puns and rhymes that prove the Maels are as ambitiously eccentric as ever.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Utilitarian
    Death-metal firebrands still blaze.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beware
    Oldham remains mostly untroubled on Beware, accompanied by an array of instruments--marimba, cornet, banjo, and flute swirl around placid country-tinged ruminations.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cheetah [EP]
    Cheetah is warm, rudimentary (lotsa 808s), and demurely catchy--making it the poppiest record of this career phase by default.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Dream of Delphi
    The Dream of Delphi paints boldly at times, but the overall picture is uneven.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Elvis Perkins In Dearland
    A ponderous chain-gang stomp and some misty lyrics outline his limitations, but once again, Perkins' loss is our gain.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Guilty Office
    The Guilty Office recalls its predecessors, with better engineering focusing the details.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    But You Cain't Use My Phone [Mixtape]
    What’s most charming about But You Caint Use My Phone is how unpretentiously Badu comports herself, ever-mindful that one of her most special qualities as a vocalist remains her ability to entwine the resilient with the goofy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Awoo
    Gibb... is the seamy, sex-fueled yang to the ascetic yin of the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt. [Oct 2006, p.98]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crush
    Singer Michael Vidal owns his gloominess and the band delivers arrangements that are plenty tricky, but their arty '80s excavation rarely finds the gooey, glittering choruses that would truly elevate their stylistic shift.
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Hundred in the Hands
    The detached aesthetic can turn anesthetic when the tunes occasionally falter or the overdubbed grooves fail to generate frisson, but the sweetly twitchy one-two punch of "Dressed in Dresden" and "Last City" brings this studiously chic debut to a sweaty climax.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    EVENIFUDONTBELIEVE
    Rustie’s new album doesn’t signal a reclamation of maximalism as much as it’s a return to form, even if it’s likely that many of its themes were inspired by an acid trip more eye-opening for Whyte than necessarily for the rest of us. But what a trip.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Pretty In Black
    Uneven, overly reverential. [May 2005, p.110]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heretic Pride
    This batch of tunes is still suffused with the confessional vibe that made "The Sunset Tree" and "Get Lonely" unlikely emo-folk touchstones. [Mar 2008, p.98]
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Discovery
    It feels like a concept album -- in this case, the story of how wine-flow disco circumnavigated intellectual pretensions on all sides en route to a temporary utopia that may finally believe in nothing but the boogie but still has the infinite on its mind every minute. [June 2001, p.145]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Charlene
    One of the pleasures of Charlene is how we can now enjoy Tweet--years removed from the burden of carrying Aaliyah’s legacy--as a startlingly unique voice in her own right.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everybody
    Prekop's crew have mastered a more intricate approach, seasoning their gently introspective tales of "distracted and lazy" lovers with stronger ingredients. [Jun 2007, p.95]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Again into Eyes
    Again Into Eyes only truly perks up near the end when they call up their inner Psychedelic Furs on more straightforwardly swooning ballads like "Faith Unfolds."
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Atlantic Ocean
    The sad sacks who populate such bitterly funny songs as 'Already Gone' and 'R.I.P.' linger in the mind long after the toe-tapping grooves have faded.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Make Up The Breakdown
    One long indie/new-wave rave-up, all spring-loaded guitars, stabbing organs, and footloose drums. [Dec 2002, p.138]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Feels Like Home
    A better record than Come Away--less piano bar, more honkey-tonk. [Apr 2004, p.93]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Soft Spot
    Sound wimpy? Well, if you could write a song half as good as "Close The Door," we guarantee that your girlfriend would like you twice as much. [Sep 2003, p.115]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Deftones
    This is less an 11-song album than a single long-form mope. [Jul 2003, p.105]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Thirteenth Step
    It's more cerebral than aggressive.... A derivative effort that makes Keenan sound less talented than he actually is. [Oct 2003, p.105]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let's Get Ready
    With such a steady-rocking formula, the record loses from repetition (and occasional knuckleheadedness) but gains mightily from shaking the groove with rhythm switches and guest voices. [Nov. 2000, p.203]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Challengers
    The melodic sense of Newman and cowriter Dan Bejar keep things from stalling out. [Sep. 2007, p.136]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Devil, You + Me
    On their sixth album, these ever-evolving German indie rockers stick with the electronic-tinged direction of 2003’s Neon Golden, but with a little less emotional heft.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Where All Is Fled
    It demands attentive listening, only because it can so easily slip into the delirious wonders of foreign realms.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Master of My Make-Believe
    Amid all the fight songs, Santigold's sensitive interludes only bolster her power, her harmonies rendered more invincible for their vulnerability.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lost In Space
    [Producer] Michael Lockwood lets her coast along over bland accompaniment. [Oct 2002, p.114]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rave On Buddy Holly
    Rock'n'roll pioneer Buddy Holly was no stodgy purist, an idea the best of this all-star tribute adopts gracefully.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Automato
    Mellow rhymes and chunky beats. [Aug 2004, p.108]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This Harness Can't Ride Anything
    Refreshing, breezy rhythms propel densely intermeshed guitars and Jeremy Bolen's incantatory vocals. [Dec 2006, p.96]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Thing Of The Past
    Thing of the Past contains no original songs (although it's unlikely that anyone without a nasty crate-digging habit will recognize most of these tracks), but Vetiver are awfully well suited to the material, and Cabic's vocals--sweet, smooth, and golden--shine.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Back to Reality
    Compiled by Stones Throw's Peanut Butter Wolf, this set features singles, club mixes, and unreleased tracks, including the George Clinton-esque electro of "On the Floor," plus mid-'80s synth-dance tracks that recall Prince and DeBarge.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pearl Jam
    They seem to be having fun. [Jun 2006, p.79]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life of Pause
    Confident, intimate, and weirdly glammy, Life of Pause is worth taking five for.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fortress Around My Heart
    Ida Maria throws herself into every song as if it's all a big finale, which makes for an auspicious beginning.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wild Young Hearts
    Shoniwa is both impulsive and precise: Every string-swept disco flourish or arena-rock guitar break heightens an unflappable poise that bypasses rote R&B melisma for soul-shaking celebration.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Murs For President
    Murs for President has a cumulative bang that's impossible to deny.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strength & Loyalty
    The veteran group's dizzying flows remain flawless. [Jun 2007, p.90]
    • Spin
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Further Complications
    Neither Cocker's chewy structures nor his voice's subtle shadings are particularly well suited to Albini's you-are-there engineering. Fortunately, this collection of surging and reeling tunes is the former Pulp frontman's strongest since "Different Class."
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Revival
    The album frequently slips back into forgettable genericism, and its back half is mediocre--but it’s also a strength. At its high points, Revival is marked by this lush, sphinx-like readinessss: as if, after a decade and a half of being nonstop front and center, Gomez has finally figured out what it means to center herself.
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