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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An Invitation
    Although the daughter of Little Feat's late leader Lowell George charms with a crisp, vibrato-less chirp that suits her airy tunes, the star here is Parks, Brian Wilson's SMiLE collaborator, who surrounds George in a florid orchestral fantasia that flickers like a luscious, precisely gardened flower bed teeming with hidden fauna.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Astrological Straits
    The first album under his own name is stranger and more varied, a psychedlic/psychotic kaleidoscope worthy of early Animal Collective. [Oct 2008, p.114]
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fasciinatiion
    The latest from these Nebraska dance rockers doesn't instantly charm like the '80s flashbacks found on 2001's breakthrough, "Danse Macabre." But its fixation on the present pays off with repeated plays as clashing guitar and keyboard hooks hammer home the Faint's central theme--the chaos of a world in conflict.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Conor Oberst
    The album does an admirable job of living up to its low- key title (with spare acoustic tracks) and its situation (with loosey-goosey, classic-rock-indebted numbers).
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Harps And Angels
    He's still way too fond of show-tune orchestration, and then there's the tossed-off corny stuff, but the orneriness of Newman's now-64-year-old wit makes George Carlin seem like Dane Cook. [Sep 2008, p.120]
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Girls And Weather
    The Rumble Strips are so contagiously charged up that it's tempting to overlook their pathetic mind-set.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New York City
    these increasingly experimental Girls remain an appealingly peculiar party band. [Sept 2008, p.112]
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Clipse Presents Re-Up Gang
    Re-Up's wordplay outstrips their production. [Sep 2008, p.122]
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    That Lonesome Song
    By the end, when Johnson stakes a place vocally, geographically, and alphabetically "somewhere between [Waylon] Jennings and [George] Jones," you're relieved he still has his wits about him.
    • 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.'
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Waiting In Vain
    Well, pray the restaurant and lounge crowd is ready for a scruffy fellow traveler who can sing about "Cocaine and bourbon / Pinball and pool" without prompting any check requests.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Slip
    The Slip is primo death funk, with Reznor seething seductively about skies fading to black over grinding soundscapes that perfectly split the difference between computer-music clarity and live-band grit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    22 Dreams
    Craft can be a cage, and come the eleventeenth pleasant chord progression and workmanlike melody, the album's title may portend the listener's immediate future.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Life Processes
    This deceptively named British band's second album revisits the terrific uproar of its debut only briefly before jumping headlong into more expansive, proggier territory.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Partie Traumatic
    Kissing goodbye to the obsolete racial and gender roles that pop, hip-hop, or indie rock still demand, Youngblood and pals throw a thrillingly subversive victory party to lift the country out of eight years of anguish.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Donkey
    The quintet mostly stays on message, doling out unpretentious poolside jams that recall ESG, Liquid Liquid, and the Human League.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fate
    Though Fate's sepia sweetness and the band's ever-improving instrumental ingenuity (see 'em live!) can't mask a vaguely troubling lack of original ideas, Dr. Dog wears the vintage look amiably well.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Something For All Of Us...
    Canning's murmuring vocals are more intriguing than engaging, so the album's most memorable qualities are hidden in songs that just tend to drift off.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mothertongue
    Connecting blue-haired symphony subscribers to indie-rock bedheads, the twentysomething New York composer is all over the place with his second disc. [Aug 2008, p.106]
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Love Extreme
    His murmuring voice brings a believable everydude quality to witty tales of landlord troubles and great evenings out, but above all he's a love junkie.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beautiful Future
    Though singer Bobby Gillespie's lyrics are still rife with anti-establishment paranoia, songs such as 'The Glory of Love' and the title track are colorful, catchy, and informed by a cautious optimism born of hard-earned perspective and a surprising maturity.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stay Positive
    The Hold Steady are mellowing, and it doesn't really suit them.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Object 47
    Scuffed-up and brainy, Object 47 finds Wire still beguiling after all these years.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In The 7th Moon, The Chief Turned Into A Swimming Fish And Ate The Head Of His Enemy By Magic
    Buoyant voices erupt in urgent chants, while xylophones, thumb pianos, and percussion create a swirling, hallucinatory web of sound equal to the freakiest psychedelia. [Oct 2008, p.114]
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Melodia
    Back from the brink of a long-promised implosion, the Vines sound like a band renewed on their first album since being booted from Capitol following dismal sales of 2006's muddled "Vision Valley."
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Modern Guilt
    In a scant 30-plus minutes, Modern Guilt modestly proves that it's still restlessness, both artistic and personal, that drives the only living boy in Los Angeles.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Como te Llama
    It's another solid collection that echoes his day job from an artful distance.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    LP3
    LP3 is as wildly organic as instrumental electronica gets without becoming another genre (or five) altogether.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nude With Boots
    Bassist Jared Warren and second drummer Coady Willis (a.k.a. Big Business) return as the perfect-fit rhythm section for lifers Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover, who are still communicating in their own avant-boogie metal language like twins separated at birth.
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