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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    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The 2nd Law
    Each new album (arriving as it does with the requisitely pompous title: Absolution, Black Holes and Revelations, The Resistance) finds Muse attempting to out-blitz OK Computer and Kid A in terms of overly serious Englishmen weeping for modern civilization and its myriad alienations. Which simply makes The 2nd Law's 50-plus minutes of 21st-century-art-rock-meets-sappy-popera business as usual.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I Bet on Sky
    I Bet on Sky is the sound of a great, influential band that, yes, picked up where they left off, but instead of luxuriating in the sentimental hue of the moment, got back to work and kept moving forward.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Push and Shove
    This isn't a great album, but it is a good one, in a year quietly blessed with a small crop of good records (Metric, Gossip) with dreamy synths and girls up front.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Babel
    Consciously or not, U2-style evangelism is all over the Mumfords' bland but biblically titled second album, Babel.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Uno!
    There aren't any plinking pianos or Hollywood strings, but the music still goes big the way we've grown to expect from Green Day.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Total Loss
    Total Loss is a beautiful album, all ambient longing and sadness and spectral pop, rising and falling without warning - no other artist gets more emotional effect out of leaving things not quite finished. But it still feels not quite finished.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bend Beyond
    They deepen their sound past lo-fi into something redolent of actual studio polish.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mirage Rock
    It's a drag that so many of Mirage Rock's most transcendent moments--the stuff suggesting real maturity--are so quickly undone by such nonsensical toss-offs.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sebenza
    Sebenza, though, is less a showcase for younger SA talent than a genuine international collaboration of equals.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kill My Blues
    At its worst, Kill My Blues indulges in too much Townshend-esque noodling, but at its best, it proves that one of alt-rock's greatest howlers can operate at full power even without pushing herself to detonation.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shields
    [A] beautiful if vague fourth studio album.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cruel Summer
    So no, this is not a cohesive crew album, but has there really been one since Marley Marl's In Control, Vol. 1 came out 24 years ago?
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Sound of the Life of the Mind
    Very little here could be accused of being twee; Folds sounds invigorated to have a rock band behind him again, making him play harder, sing harder, be harder.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Battle Born
    For the first time, the ballads are as memorable as the dance cuts.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love This Giant
    Byrne and Clark rarely interact vocally, sometimes suggesting two solo outings spliced together; and the grooves have an anonymous vibe.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tempest
    As a sonic experience, Tempest kicks most Dylan albums in the cojones.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ill Manors
    Obviously, hip-hop loves its thugs, too, especially if they're the antiheroes of a relatively nuanced piece like this one.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Midsummer Station
    They [Adam Young's fans] deserve better. We deserve better. Come to think of it, Adam Young deserves better.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Coexist
    What makes this music special is what Smith does with all that stylized sparseness, transforming it into something alive and dynamic instead of merely sleepy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Devotion
    Here, on record, buttressed by her own diaphanous back-up vocals, she's fading deliciously into the background even as she's finally stepping into the spotlight.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Welcome To: Our House
    Despite this abundance of raps about the unadulterated greatness of rapping, the Slaughterhouse four pull it off with extraordinary sincerity, and Our House avoids devolving into some tired treatise about how these guys make "real hip-hop" and other rappers don't.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Thing Called Divine Fits
    When they get the balance right (yes, that reference is from '83) and filter those desires through their own distinct sensibilities, Divine Fits stands with their best work.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Centipede Hz
    If it's not yet clear, Centipede does retain much of the band's earnest, knowing naiveté.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sun
    Sun is hardly sloganeering, but its Power to the People ruminations are more potent and topical than you'd expect from a pop record--and certainly one made by Cat Power.
    • 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.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Based on a T.R.U. Story
    T.R.U. Story contains few surprises, and one less once you realize that its own opening line--"Cut the top off, call it Amber Rose"--isn't threatening decapitation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    II
    An exciting, impassioned, fuzzed-up, and smartly sticky album that plants a flag for some great forgotten sounds and practically screams promise for better glory days to come.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Four
    As defiant as this gang of four wants to be, they can't help but humbly return to their strengths.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Seer
    It's all willfully abrasive, unflinchingly depressing, occasionally tedious, and intermittently triumphant.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tracer
    The result is a patchwork approach to nostalgia, cherry-picking sounds from dance music's collective memory and rearranging them into something that's more than the sum of its parts.
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