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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    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Demon City
    By seamlessly incorporating disparate collaborations into the fabric of this City, Crampton summons a greater collective strength than they’ve exhibited on their own--and implies that, going forward, her muse could lead her anywhere, with anyone.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    32 Levels
    It can be strikingly narrow, to impressive ends--not many producers would be able to wring so much emotion from stoned, spacey, minor-key arrangements year after year. ... But in other ways, the results can be mixed.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    IV
    From the moment that crystalline keyboard riff and sparse drum machine open the first track, “And That, Too,” it’s clear the band has raised the stakes to match the talent they’ve been hanging out with.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Psychopomp
    Psychopomp is a 25-minute-long dream-pop album that feels like much more: a sharp-edged exploration of how loneliness and longing form into brittle personal shields.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I, Gemini
    Not everything works, and the second side maybe gets bathed in one too many foggy organ dirges, but I, Gemini is like the chorus subject in weirdo-pop single of the year “Eat Shiitake Mushrooms”: Never invincible, but never predictable.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Man Alive
    [A] crop of relatively cheerful-sounding — not to mention industrious, and never dull--tracks.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    case/lang/veirs
    It’s not at all certain that this lovely, gentle record will ever get a follow-up--fortunately, it already sounds damn-near timeless.
    • 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
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blank Face LP
    It’s not easy to homogenize the opposing forces at play, but everything here feels like a genuine rumble through a mind scarred and inebriated by the reality of gang life and chasing the American dream while the room spins.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Youth Authority
    Both the album’s most grating and gratifying moments sound like they could’ve emanated from a Hot Topic 15 years ago. There’s danger in that nostalgia, but when it’s good, it’s great. It’s a decidedly uncool record from a band that’s long since stopped caring about these things.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nice as F**k
    Nice as F**k are not a “girl group”; they’re a Spoon that owes two dozen quarters to a washing machine.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wildflower
    Wildflower is a shaggy document, to be sure. Not everything’s a stunner like “Because I’m Me” or “Harmony”--sometimes there’s moldering AM Gold like “Light Up.” But now it’s not about the journey into paradise, more like a rush to the finish line. They’re out of time, but they still made it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Red Flag
    A mature but still totally floor-ready return.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wild Things
    Ladyhawke’s long-awaited Wild Things is both a Tegan and Sara-worthy fever dream and a Little Boots-ian collection of expertly rendered synthesized-rock.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    New English [Mixtape]
    Most of the energy of New English is poured into his (trademark?) ad-libs. The staccato yeahs and machine-gun sound effects do a good job of convincing you that you’re listening to an exciting project. But after a while, it just starts to make your head hurt.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hit Reset
    The Julie Ruin’s second full-band album, Hit Reset, slides with similar grace [as “Rebel Girl”] between the personal and political--between funny (or sad) polemic, and sad (or funny) pop romance.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    California
    The main problem with California isn’t that the songs are bad--it’s just that there are too many (16 for some reason), and not enough ideas to fill them.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bride
    She’s flipped the script on us, and in doing so has created her most cohesive work--and maybe even her happiest ending yet.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    blackSUMMERS'night (2016)
    So assured of its luxuriance that it clocks in at a trim 46 minutes, blackSUMMERS’night nonetheless leaves one sated. This distillation is purest Maxwell.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Freetown Sound
    This isn’t just glassy-eyed ambition--Hynes seems to have deliberately made this his blurriest effort to date, a blending of his chosen genres and ideas in a disorienting collage.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Mountain Will Fall
    The Mountain Will Fall is only somewhat transcendent in its quiet moments, and the highs are too few and ephemeral. It’s quaint--a step away from the zeitgeist, but not quite future enough.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Johannesburg [EP]
    Mercifully, there’s no banjo--the Sons of Johannesburg are the less folksy, more decidedly middle-of-the-road band that recorded last year’s tedious Wilder Mind. That doesn’t save them from falling into 100 percent of all their other tropes, like substituting frenzied, overlong crescendos with truly grandiose stadium rock.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Glowing Man
    Even though The Glowing Man offers a satisfying, substantial conclusion to the Swans discography, listeners shouldn’t expect a now-or-never, paradigm-shifting opus.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Getaway
    The Getaway is about as good as you can hope for from a band who will, without reservation, hang out in a car with late-night-TV cornball James Corden with lavalier mics forcibly affixed to their naked torsos (a bit of movie magic I’d be okay never having properly explained, frankly).
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Last Year Was Complicated
    This is Jonas’ complication: talking his way into, and then through, sexual minefields. The theme suits his peculiar pipes--the jutted-jaw pout, the texture he scratches into his more insistent notes--which, in turn, take the burden from the compositions.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strange Little Birds
    It successfully excavates old and gorgeous Garbage: digs it up, dusts it off, reassembles it, and lovingly crafts replacements, piece by vivid piece, for the strange little sounds that have rotted away.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Magma
    On the leaner, extraordinarily concise Magma, you hear Gojira becoming even more fully realized.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Still Brazy
    YG has gone and done himself one better, creating a record that stands tall alongside the full-lengths he once mined.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Turn to Gold
    Turn to Gold will undoubtedly translate better blasting out of stage speakers, the medium most ideal for unfettered solos and melting six-strings--their riotous late-night debut could barely be contained behind a screen. On record thus far, though, Diarrhea Planet’s instrumental split-personality excess could use a dose of Imodium.
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