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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    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Fabled City
    On his second agit-folk album under the Nightwatchman persona, Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello incorporates electric instrumentation and foregrounds his sonorously ponderous baritone, aspiring to, if not attaining, the gravity of Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, and Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Mean Business
    Despite some truly awful lyrics--"Don't make me get mad and Barack O-bomb-ya" is particularly wince-worthy--both Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith sound reenergized, boosted by spirited cameos from Redman, Method Man, and Keith Murray.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Carnival II: Memoirs Of An Immigrant
    The former Fugee throws hip-hop, reggae, synth pop, and heavy metal into his trademark melting pot with little worry that the results might not blend. [Jan 2008, p.98]
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    4 x 4 = 12
    Hipsters will hate it, but that's partly the point. Admitting he was "born and raised an Internet hate machine," Deadmau5 knows the power of provocation.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Atomic
    Aneurysm drumming and Offsprung power chords mimic the tiffs of teenage L-U-V. [Nov 2001, p.129]
    • Spin
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Super Collider
    One possible surprise is how little of Super Collider actually thrashes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute To Fleetwood Mac
    Fleetwood Mac connected with listeners because their perfect songs enclosed personal imperfections--they created an illusion of glossy best-coast living, then punctured that illusion with brutal truth. Hardly anyone on Just Tell Me That You Want Me summons that friction.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kicks
    The riffs have gotten sharper and more jagged as the punch lines have grown duller and less imaginative. Minus his smart-alecky cheek, it's increasingly difficult for McKeown to hold your interest.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    If Only You Were Lonely
    Hawthorne Heights shun nuance altogether. Quiet equals depth; loud equals catharsis. And never the twain shall meet. [Mar 2006, p.94]
    • Spin
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Careless World: Rise of the Last King
    As a whole, though, Careless World is simply mediocre.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sixes & Sevens
    The erstwhile Moldy Peaches wears out his welcome at 20 tracks, each one unrelated to the last and haphazardly abandoned around the one-and-a-half minute mark. [Apr 2008, p.98]
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Missiles
    When they stay focused and sweet (as on the sparingly orchestral 'Berlin Heart'), they soar. But when Lightburn adds spoken-word bits and überwanky guitar solos ('Lights Off'), ending with an 11-minute, church-inspired requiem ('Saviour'), you may be ready to follow his former band members out the door.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Situation
    It's never sonically engaging enough to stand out amid a rack of backpacks. [Dec 2007, p.112]
    • Spin
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Battle For The Sun
    Lacking lyrics as memorable as 2006's "Meds," Battle for the Sun is heavier but duller, with the gap between Molko's spindly melodies and the fatter, newly Americanized riffs widening.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    OK Bear
    That penchant for swollen, cathedral­size arrangements--particularly on Coldplay­like cuts 'Late of Camera' and 'In a Look'--is a weakness, but hopefully, Enigk will learn to shake it off in favor of leaner renditions of his winning, winsome tunes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gossamer
    You're being pulled close, but thoughtlessly, reflexively. And you only feel further away.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Modern Rituals
    Modern Rituals feels like an encouraging first draft, waiting for the distinctive touches that would complete it.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Outside Love
    Though McBean, who also leads Vancouver spliff-rockers Black Mountain, invites a slew of guests with diverse musical associations (Jackie-O Motherfucker, Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Whiskeytown), the album still yawns with homogeneous campfire acoustics.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beak 3
    >>> succeeds about half the time, but too often the band sounds conflicted between marching forward as the old Beak> and committing to a new direction.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Waiting For The Sunrise
    Sliding away from his Marc Bolan fixation, Vandervelde sounds more like a subpar Lindsey Buckingham (there's even a cocaine lyric on 'Someone Like You'), offering shlocky '70s AM pop rock on drifting, overlong tunes like 'Need for Now.'
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Secrets Are Sinister
    At his most excitable ('No Direction'), yearning frontman Steve Schiltz aims for the stadium's back row, Bono-style, though the dogged pursuit of spiritual uplift generates more fatigue than enlightenment.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Britney
    Amazingly enough, she does sound almost human. [Jan 2002, p.108]
    • Spin
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Stoop
    Only in the fire-hydrant-ready title cut, where an around-the-way girl reminisces about bodegas in Bed-Stuy, does Coppola seem like more than a confessional folkie playing funky dress-up.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Come With Me If You Want to Live
    Shards of Come With Me suggest Crow has more to offer the metal gods than the intermittently awesome sludgefests served up here.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Innocence Reaches
    Innocence Reaches is lighter than last year’s appropriately titled Aureate Gloom, but it’s less fun than it thinks it is, and in pursuing a more “current,” electronic-inspired sound, it’s lost the psychedelic charms of a better post-peak Of Montreal album like, say, 2013’s lousy with sylvianbriar.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Revelations
    Variety has never been Audioslave's strong suit. [Sep 2006, p.102]
    • Spin
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mixed Race
    But what that album [Knowle West Boy] had in abundance--loud guitars, noisy electronics, new ideas--this comparatively minimal one lacks.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Endgame
    Rise Against's strident anti-ignorance messages have coursed through several albums of tightly wound, good-intentions punk.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Weezer [Black Album]
    None of the songs on the Black Album are as garish, horrifying, or catchy as “Beverly Hills,” nor as totally committed to a one-dimensional concept as those of the White Album. By contrast, the Black Album sounds scattered, as if the comedy is beginning to lose definition.
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