Spin's Scores
- Music
For 4,260 reviews, this publication has graded:
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50% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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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: | To Pimp A Butterfly | |
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Lowest review score: | They Were Wrong, So We Drowned |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 3,058 out of 4260
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Mixed: 1,147 out of 4260
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Negative: 55 out of 4260
4260
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
In lesser hands, all this weight could feel leaden. But Miguel remains a craftsman, and leisure gets its due.- Spin
- Posted Jan 2, 2018
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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.- Spin
- Posted Nov 29, 2017
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- Critic Score
Rest’s intimacy contrasts Gainsbourg’s personal reticence, and softens a storytelling void that might doom a lesser stylist.- Spin
- Posted Nov 22, 2017
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Thanks to its polyrhythms and rich instrumental textures, The Animal Spirits is as likely to appeal to fans of experimental rock music (especially electro-tribal searchers like Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, Fuck Buttons, or Dan Deacon) as it is to those who regularly spend evenings at the club.- Spin
- Posted Nov 13, 2017
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Never has she sounded freer than she does here, a self-styled villain biting the forbidden fruit of gossip and letting its juices run down her neck.- Spin
- Posted Nov 10, 2017
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Plunge feel vibrant and more alive. There are crucial moments on the album where Dreijer slows things down a bit to let everything sink in. Even on the quieter moments, however, the mood of the album is deeply human.- Spin
- Posted Nov 2, 2017
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- Critic Score
The final result is a balm to soothe well-trodden emotional frequencies.- Spin
- Posted Oct 27, 2017
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Each song is immaculately crafted and sequenced, yet with this many ballads, they blur: a play continually in its eleventh hour.- Spin
- Posted Oct 23, 2017
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ken, Bejar’s sparest album in terms of lyrical density and length in some time, is an aggressive, well-chiseled shift.- Spin
- Posted Oct 20, 2017
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Lotta Sea Lice is strange, occasionally awkward, and easy to love. Like a good buddy movie, it’s a little sentimental, and possessed of a deeper wisdom than its goofy premise initially lets on.- Spin
- Posted Oct 19, 2017
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Clark has carved out a space as a guitar hero in an era where that sort of thing is supposed to be over. That is impressive, even if the theatrics occasionally wear me out, and begin to feel like preludes for a visually dynamic live show. I’m much more attracted to MASSEDUCTION’s humbler moments, when you can better imagine the songs without the heavy arrangements.- Spin
- Posted Oct 18, 2017
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It’s largely a plainspoken, cohesive work, closer in spirit to single-minded efforts like Morning Phases, Modern Guilt, or even Sea Change. And really, that’s fine.- Spin
- Posted Oct 13, 2017
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HEAVN is musically spry and spiritually hefty at 41 minutes, the questioning half of a nationally fraught Q&A that’s long deserved the answers, none of whom are currently running for president.- Spin
- Posted Oct 12, 2017
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Like all of Four Tet’s work, New Energy can be viewed as an addition to this unlikely canon, whose practitioners share a desire to remove a listener from their surroundings and bring them someplace higher, no matter the means.- Spin
- Posted Oct 6, 2017
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Kelela proudly stands within the genre’s tradition. For the most part, she avoids making any grandstanding romantic or political statements, but Take Me Apart finds its purpose within the subdued complexities.- Spin
- Posted Oct 6, 2017
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Though energetic, their danceable chassis and sprawling melodies nevertheless feel weary, as if constantly grinding against some looming, countervailing force. It’s true that wearied, furtive anthems have always been Wolf Parade’s thing, but they feel especially right for these enervating times.- Spin
- Posted Oct 5, 2017
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While mediating the difference between bitterness and hooks was such a hallmark of past releases, it feels good to hear them find catharsis here, even if it’s in small doses.- Spin
- Posted Oct 3, 2017
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Wonderful Wonderful is the Killers’ strongest statement since 2005, a more than okay affirmation of their power to keep a global audience.- Spin
- Posted Oct 2, 2017
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The dreamy project leaves the snide social critiques and radicalisms to the wayside for 36 minutes that feel of its own realm, where the dichotomies and bodily desire feel self-contained. The intimacy is never lost within the set’s high concept: For an album centered on lonesomeness, Aromanticism feels warm.- Spin
- Posted Sep 29, 2017
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Three Futures is a slow burn, but Torres doesn’t require speed, not when she can hold our attention with something more akin to intense eye contact.- Spin
- Posted Sep 29, 2017
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Taken together, Cold Dark Place affirms the band’s pursuit of technically ambitious rock with high production value, while continuing to disrupt traditional notions of genre and song structure.- Spin
- Posted Sep 28, 2017
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These are passive recollections that come off as quietly rebellious, because he plainly acknowledges the value of the black voice, as well as the weight of its silence.- Spin
- Posted Sep 20, 2017
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Grohl and his pals never set out to write the gospel on modern rock--they only sought to preach it, hammering it into our heads by way of biting hooks and anthemic melodies. There’s more than enough red meat to go around on Concrete and Gold, the band’s ninth album.- Spin
- Posted Sep 19, 2017
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A decade-plus of refining this particular sound has led to the purposeful pop of Okovi, her sixth album. Danilova’s vocal performance momentarily recalls darker and more secretive Sia songs.- Spin
- Posted Sep 8, 2017
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The libretto and effects boards on Sleep Well Beast may signal doom, but the replenished energy in the music feels life-affirming. Somehow, the most despondent album they’ve ever made still sounds like a celebration.- Spin
- Posted Sep 8, 2017
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An album that’s fundamentally modest, even as it stretches to be both looser and more technically ambitious.- Spin
- Posted Sep 7, 2017
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You certainly won’t find a clunker among Hitchhiker’s more familiar cuts, though few of them surpass the official versions. ... Young’s talent is vast and his art contains plenty of contradictions. Hitchhiker stands as proof that no matter how strange his creations might sometimes seem, he always draws them from the same well.- Spin
- Posted Sep 7, 2017
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American Dream is good enough to dispel all of those concerns. The passing of their imperial phase has left them like any formerly Teflon hipster: honest, and ready to move on from whatever they found at the heart of the party. Admitting for real that they’d lost their edge is one of the most interesting things they could’ve done, and hopefully they keep making more records after this one.- Spin
- Posted Sep 1, 2017
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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.- Spin
- Posted Aug 28, 2017
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A stunning, sprawling sucker-punch of a finale equally amenable to die-hards and newcomers, Science Fiction is a worthy (if bittersweet) send-off to one of the most brutally honest, forward-thinking rock bands of the new millennium.- Spin
- Posted Aug 25, 2017
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