Spin's Scores

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For 4,254 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 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 To Pimp A Butterfly
Lowest review score: 0 They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,052 out of 4254
  2. Mixed: 1,147 out of 4254
  3. Negative: 55 out of 4254
4254 music reviews
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    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Black Origami
    There is no note out of place or sample used without careful thought. The album asks the listener to unpack each second, find thrills in its surprises and layers, or simply get lost in the rhythms that will make one’s body jerk and jut out in ways not yet defined. It is the work of an exacting mind, one that should challenge other producers and musicians in the future.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Yellow & Green
    On Yellow & Green, he [John Baizley] finds the confines of metal itself too limiting; so Baroness dive, dive, dive, dive into '90s commercial alternative harder than a sackful of Yucks and come out smarter and weirder and better than any metal band this year.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Harmonicraft
    Somehow they've upped their jubilation game without making too many sonic changes since 2005's self-titled debut.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Survivor
    Survivor is relentlessly inventive in its recombinations. [Jul 2001, p.126]
    • Spin
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fully Qualified Survivor
    This gorgeous 1970 folk-blues masterpiece teams a gnomic songwriter from Leeds with David Bowie's future guitarist (Mick Ronson), and Elton John's future producer (Gus Dudgeon) and string arranger (Paul Buckmaster).
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ys
    Throughout the album, Newsom's language is more colorful than on Mender; at its best, it works as music even on the page. [Dec 2006, p.95]
    • Spin
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Viva La Vida
    For all of Coldplay’s experimentation, though, there’s no doubting that Viva La Vida, with its sturdy melodies and universal themes--think love, war, and peace--is an album meant to connect with the masses.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I Love You, Honeybear
    If Tillman's this brilliantly pointed as a paramour, we're scared to hear the breakup album.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    RTJ4
    There’s no particular secret to what makes RTJ4 the best Run the Jewels album and one of 2020’s best by anyone. It’s shorter and more acute.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Robert Ellis
    A masterful intersection of emotion and musicianship, Robert Ellis is one of 2016’s finest.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Within and Without
    For his full-length debut, Greene teams with producer Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Gnarls Barkley) to revisit his '80s reveries, crafting Balearic bliss ("Eyes Be Closed") and refreshing New Romantic flounce ("Amor Fati"). He even invigorates '90s trip-hop's head-nod ("Before," the title track), making for an even better coast soundtrack.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    American Saturday Night
    On American Saturday Night, Paisley extends a hot streak began with 2003's "Mud on the Tires," singing about regular life in the USA wit and charm that make suburbs sound like heaven on earth.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The ArchAndroid
    Some songs fade out just as they're transforming into something else; others split into several movements, and poetic lyrics psychedelicize hefty topics like war and slavery. Even at 18 tracks, The ArchAndroid feels condensed.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Those The Brokes
    The real story of this breathtaking follow-up... is Romeo Stodart's transformation from merely a good songwritier to an outstanding one. [Feb 2007, p.85]
    • Spin
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ti Amo
    It’s hard to overstate how exceptional Ti Amo is: every song is complete in its own way, and while there’s perhaps the slightest softening of focus near the end, it never starts to coast on its sultry aesthetic.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Goodness
    Goodness is a spiritually rich listen, but none of it would matter much if it weren’t such a goddamn great rock album.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Moon Shaped Pool
    Somehow, Pool transmutes fatigue and anxiety into a hallucinatory magick that’s far more cathartic than a jacuzzi soak or a glass of wine. It’s Radiohead doing Radiohead on a molecular level, via controlled burns. Their weary indifference to us becomes our transcendence.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Master of My Make-Believe
    Amid all the fight songs, Santigold's sensitive interludes only bolster her power, her harmonies rendered more invincible for their vulnerability.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Beach Music
    Alex G has always found power in the broken and uncertain. He’s just gotten a lot braver about spinning that chaos into beauty.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A South Bronx Story
    ESG's DIY tracks have a raw, unfinished feel--echo-drenched vocals buried deep in the mix, jagged hen-scratch guitar, taut bass lines as infectious as mononucleosis, and reverberating layers of percussion... The group's 1981 debut single, "Moody"... is one of the funkiest songs ever recorded. [Sep 2000, p.181]
    • Spin
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The SMiLE Sessions
    The five-disc set breaks down the album to its building blocks, while the two-CD version provides outtakes and an edit of what the original final product might have been: part tribute, part cartoon, part dream.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Muna
    The most roundly captivating pop album released so far this year, indie or not. It’s a record to wear out through Labor Day, if not longer.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Old Ramon
    Old Ramon is sinuous and unhurried, a beautiful downer of a folk rock record that has the lithe and shadowy promise of the ocean.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Parallax
    A sci-fi tint shifts the perspective from Atlas Sound's usual layered introspection: Inner space now has become outer space.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    LP1
    In its menacing incandescence, LP1 sounds like nothing else in the world right now.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Neon Bible
    Neither a timid repeat nor a knee-jerk departure, the bigger, bolder Neon Bible better captures what Arcade Fire achieve live. [Mar 2007, p.85]
    • Spin
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    In These Silent Days
    The anticipated follow-up to her Grammy-winning masterstroke, 2018’s By The Way, I Forgive You, is once again magnificent — a triumphant patchwork of Americana, folk-rock, pop and soul anchored by yet another show-stopping centerpiece in “Right on Time,” the album’s towering lead single.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lese Majesty
    Like floating from level to placid level in Monument, listening to this record prompts your imagination and encourages discourse and reflection. Not the academic kind, but the kind of communal discovery people have been doing for ages.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Excavation
    Ultimately, what makes Excavation such an awesome and absorbing listen is precisely its indifference to the listener.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Live At Reading
    Nirvana's headlining gig at the 1992 Reading Festival looms infamously large because of (a) that amazingly creepy photo of Kurt getting wheeled onto the stage looking like Norman Bates' mother, and (b) the show was a mind-blower--sloppy indie rock as stadium-filling psychedelic punk.
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