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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    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Process
    He’s separated from some of his R&B peers, fellows who douse themselves with sorrow and express their angst through detached, self-centered screeds obsessed with how things should be. Sampha, meanwhile, has an uncanny ability to eloquently express the painful facts of life that we learn to internalize. ... What makes Process exceptional is its delicate focus on relationships corroded and fissured by time and unintentional neglect.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die (world war)
    A collection that is arguably a candidate for jazz album of the year: Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)). Branch likely would argue that this is both punk and jazz — or neither.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Father, Son, Holy Ghost
    With Father, Son, Holy Ghost's exquisite, beyond-indie melodies, arrangements, and musicianship (the playful "Magic," the elegant "Just a Song," the fiery "Die"), he [Christopher Owens] and bassist-producer JR White flirt with perfection.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Watch Me Fall
    Watch Me Fall is even more melodic. Reatard classes up the joint a bit, smearing organ, hard-strummed acoustic guitar, and strings on the unrequited-love epic 'I’m Watching You.'
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Women As Lovers
    Gratuitously avant saxophone squawking mars some of the disc's best moments, but Xiu Xiu's knack for grafting lush hooks onto noisy post-rock remains seductive.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Red (Taylor's Version)
    Red (Taylor’s Version) is a highly rewarding listen for fans both casual and manic, bolstered by its excellent source material and Swift’s steady hand in rewriting her own looping history, with a few thrilling footnotes tacked on. ... Red 2.0 is another towering victory, which should be coveted by fans as Swift is surely already onto the next re-recording, furthering the worthwhile fight.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I, I
    An ambitious but interior new sound. On i,i, Bon Iver’s expanding universe feels at once new and familiar. ... Vernon is still the dominant creative force, but on i,i, he steps confidently into the role of curator and conductor (an approach he may have adopted from his work with Kanye West). The result of this collective energy is an album that’s both frank and easygoing, reveling in the magic of close personal relationships.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hearts Of Oak
    The songs are flat-out rollicking, like what Fugazi might come up with if their tour-van radio got stuck on the classic-rock station. [Feb 2003, p.98]
    • Spin
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Third
    As punk's dumbing down has proven, anyone can make abrasive music, but few can do something new and compelling with apocalyptic heaviness. That Portishead manage to do both 14 years into their recorded career is an unexpected triumph over the darkest clouds that have shaped their art and soul. [May 2008, p.93]
    • Spin
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Same Trailer Different Park
    She’s got a superb knack for melodies, even if it means swiping them from Radiohead (“I Miss You” is a blatant “Creep” rip, probably another country first) and maybe Jimmy Eat World (“Silver Lining”). “Dandelion” is so gorgeous that anything other than teenage notebook poetry would wreck its mood.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Negro Swan
    Hynes impeccably orchestrates his jazzy art-funk, resulting in the best sounding music of his solo career.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    What's Going On [40th Anniversary Edition]
    An indelible quiet-storm jeremiad.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Up to Anything
    Sweetly alienated knockouts like “Ice Cream (On My Own)” and “Sometimes Accidentally” lend a gravitas to twee as shruggily out of place in 2016 as Tallulah was in 1987--and every bit as necessary.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Deeper Understanding
    A Deeper Understanding feels like the ideal War on Drugs album--the one where the songs are the strongest and the instruments the most uniquely cathartic, and with a mist that gives it all an alluringly blinding sheen.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Untrue
    Untrue deepens and expands his emotional range. [Feb 2008, p.92]
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Currents
    The real magic of Currents, though, is in how Parker so effectively (and genuinely, for the most part) manipulates the listener’s emotions without necessarily revealing any himself.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    No Home of the Mind
    A conduit for sound at its most expressive potential, No Home of the Mind squeezes all it can from the five-person form into something warm and full and unprecedented.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Guitar Song
    Yet if Johnson seems uninterested in Nashville's warm-and-cuddly act, he agrees with its insistence on crackerjack songcraft, and that keeps The Guitar Song from hardening into tough-guy drudgery.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Impossible Truth
    Although he's stretching traditional, time-tested folk templates culled from around the world and back again, Tyler's vision is both distinctly American and deeply modern.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Near to the Wild Heart of Life
    Japandroids fans will be happy to know that Near to the Wild Heart of Life is a Japandroids album, pushed to 11 even in the quiet moments: towering riffs played on maxed-out amps, drums hit with due diligence, big whoa-oh harmonies, passionate, evocative rock n’ roll songwriting about girls and alcohol.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Summertime '06
    Virtually every song slaps like crazy.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Grinderman 2
    Throughout Grinderman 2, the guitars and violins pant and howl with a visceral, veteran's swagger. Late middle age has never sounded so thrilling.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Utopia
    Utopia is full-on music-theater unlike anything Björk has yet attempted, and the rare tenth album by such an established artist to genuinely surprise with unforced and meaningful reinvention.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    False Priest
    Although False Priest, Of Montreal's tenth album, is easily Barnes' most accessible, you can still hear his estrangement in the unpredictable chord progressions, the anxiously whimsical rhythms, and the distancing effects in the melodies that counter easy consumption.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wasting Light
    Wasting Light is much more than a salad-days nostalgia trip -- it's Grohl's most memorable set of songs since 1997's The Colour and the Shape.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Crack-Up
    Though they may take several listens to reveal their beauty, the payoff for your patience and attention is substantial.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Leaves Turn Inside You
    Rounding off the edges of its tried and true punk-rock grind with the melodic and rhythmic tropes of '60s psychedelia, Unwound has perfectly re-imagined a sound that most art-students wouldn't even spit on the first time around.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Glass Bead Game
    At the piano bench for the poignant ballad 'Fix' and the stunning, assured finale 'Arc,' Blackshaw makes you forget all about his guitar and your earthly cares.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Gloss Drop
    Braxton's clever, found-sound loops are missed, but the remaining members' rampant ideas and inexorable groove keep Battles engrossing.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kiss Each Other Clean
    Kiss delivers plenty of unexpected layers, employed judiciously in service of Beam's usual ruminative ideas about good and evil, love and death.
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