Spin's Scores

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For 4,249 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 46% 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: 3,047 out of 4249
  2. Mixed: 1,147 out of 4249
  3. Negative: 55 out of 4249
4249 music reviews
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    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Purple Mountains
    Purple Mountains was produced and accompanied by Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earle of Woods, with eight other musicians filling the gaps. The arrangements, some of the most gracious Berman’s ever had, hum and glow with foggy organs and soft golden horns. Their serenity is at odds with his desperation: This is a portrait of a shattered man.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    ANIMA
    His voice emerges from the din only occasionally, embodying the sound of ANIMA itself: half-man, half-machine, totally immersed in the beat.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bandana
    Bandana isn’t a sequel so much as another helping of what worked so well the first time: a selection of Madlib’s finest beats, cave-aged and peppered with the same Gibbsian blend of lighthearted flexing and street philosophy. It’s a more refined take on a proven formula, with sterling track after sterling track cementing Gibbs and Madlib as a remarkably effective duo.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Help Us Stranger
    The result is Help Us Stranger, the group’s richest batch of songs to date.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest
    Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest distinguishes itself in Callahan’s catalog not just by its subject matter, but also by the holism of its compositions. Paradoxically, they achieve their feeling of tossed-off informality through an astounding intricacy of form.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am Easy to Find
    What first makes the record baffling is also what makes it fascinating, as the band toes the line between experimentation and self-sabotage. They wring maximum potential from bizarre ideas.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PROTO
    For listeners coming into the album without knowledge of its overarching concept, PROTO is also full of pop-forward compositions that are striking in their own right. ... For a record about the development of machine cognition, PROTO is remarkably human at every turn.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Father of the Bride
    What we’re left with is a stylistically stimulating album that further fleshes and mellows out the band’s peppy, preppy sound, shading it towards country music and acoustic stoner-rock--the sort of thing you might hear at, say, an impromptu Earth Day concert in a park.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    U.F.O.F.
    It moves according to the oblique logic of the subconscious, entering your mind through the back door. A newfound attention to space has allowed Big Thief to expand their palette even as they’ve brought the volume down.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    While We Wait [Mixtape]
    While We Wait has more features than the nearly all-Kehlani SweetSexySavage, but the guests acquit themselves best when they’re subsumed into the mood, like neo-soul throwback Musiq Soulchild and a relatively chill Ty Dolla $ign. Where the ballads on SweetSexySavage were very period-accurate--in that they were often filler--on While We Wait they’re the standouts.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This (Is What I Wanted to Tell You)
    Even more than on FLOTUS, the vocal effects and electronic textures of This (Is What I Wanted to Tell You) create a fractured and sometimes staggeringly beautiful sonic environment for his songwriting, which is as strong as ever here.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    American Football (LP3)
    Their most fascinating record to date, and possibly their best as well.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    When I Get Home
    When I Get Home, on the one hand, is a portrait of Solange, following the success of A Seat at the Table, leaning to the point of falling into all the most pretentious aspects of that record. On the other, When I Get Home is a complex and fascinating exercise in reconfiguring a whole history of black music for the post-modern age. ... Yes, When I Get Home is overbearing in the way it wants to announce itself as art, but the album also makes that easy to forgive.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Placeholder
    The music is stately and nocturnal guitar pop, arranged precisely and played with quiet conviction, as sure of its purpose as the song’s narrator seems unsure of theirs.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    thank u, next
    At times the writing struggles to keep pace: The concepts behind songs like “needy” and “fake smile” are as relatable as they are predictable, and begin to stretch thin after a couple of minutes. Still, there is an awful lot to like.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
    This is a record that sounds like it could be performed in living rooms, in department store foyers, on mall stages, at any moment, anywhere. The songwriting stands strong enough that the context of the music matters less and less, and the instrumentation becomes secondary to the tonal and lyrical moves--chamber music for the microdosing set.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Remind Me Tomorrow
    Remind Me Tomorrow turns on thoughts of growing older and reflecting on the past, resulting in some of Van Etten’s most mature lyrics to date. Most bittersweet is “Seventeen,” which applies radiant clarity to the hazy, faded production aesthetic of a band like the War on Drugs. Even when swamped in overproduction, Van Etten’s performances are uniformly the best of her career, and Congleton for once gives her the perfect amount of space.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Assume Form
    For such crackling peaks, there are also times where it seems Blake has found himself at the forefront of a heady new genre, trap-schmaltz. ... Despite those shortcomings, Assume Form stands as Blake’s most coherent statement to date. The Spartan singer-songwriter tropes of his debut, the half-baked collabs of Overgrown, and the overlong The Colour in Anything fall away to reveal a more dynamic Blake.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships
    Though A Brief Inquiry is just as dizzying and disorienting as 2016’s heroically omnivorous i love it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, the 1975 take themselves a little more seriously now.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Some Rap Songs
    The album reasserts his status as a uniquely fascinating rapper. On Some Rap Songs, he’s making the most adventurous and exciting music of his career so far.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chris Cornell [Box Set]
    If you come to this collection strictly as a fan of one particular period, you may have to work to appreciate the others. An Artist’s Legacy is certainly comprehensive, but it fails to highlight any common threads that might help us navigate Cornell’s long and varied career.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Caution
    On Caution, she is still doing it better than most of her students, and sounds more comfortable than she has in quite a while.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1: No Past. No Future. No Sun
    All signs pointed to Shiny and Oh So Bright (full title: Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun.) as an authoritative step back on track.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Saturn
    That it reads like it came from NAO’s diary points to her greatest achievement on Saturn: every song can shine as a standalone track, but they sound even better together.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Honey
    Honey, sparkling yet subtly realized and constantly in motion, follows Robyn from the precipice of heartbreak into the club and onto the beach, and eventually toward something resembling redemption.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Last Building Burning
    By setting its course in the equal and opposite direction of Life Without Sound, it becomes its evil twin, a still-incomplete picture of Cloud Nothings. ... Yet Last Building Burning feels like a triumphant return because there isn’t as much pressure on it to do or say anything beyond its purely utilitarian aims. It slaps, shreds, and whips ass in whatever way you see fit.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dose Your Dreams
    Dose attempts to go everywhere and do everything. Opener “None of Your Business Man” is classic Abraham ascendancy (and the perfect anthem to quit your job to). “Torch to Light” introduces the double LP’s first moment of psychedelia, a new-ish venture for the band that’s sprinkled throughout. Mascis’s contribution on “Came Down Wrong” is, unsurprisingly, fuzzy, lackadaisical indie rock. “Dose Your Dreams” is disco. “Two I’s Closed” is a Beatles ballad. “The One I Want Will Come for Me” recalls shoegaze-y Cure.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tha Carter V
    What we have is an album that’s mostly pretty good. It’s certainly an improvement over Tha Carter IV--likely his least memorable album ever--but it’s also not a record that is going to reignite a second peak from Wayne, if that was the hope.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chris
    A lot of Chris--and a lot of the coverage around it, to be fair--can seem reductive on first glance. But Letissier is one of the most nuanced songwriters working, and an inventive arranger.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Room 25
    Noname leaves little to no room for filler on Room 25, conveying a wide breadth of compelling ideas within 35 minutes. ... Though it can require attention to detail for her words to sink in, she gives off a feeling of effortless and whimsical grace as she speaks from a place of stark honesty over live instrumentation. A complete one-of-one act who continues to grow in real time outside of the limelight, Noname makes a subtle yet strong statement for women providing alternatives to one-dimensional rap archetypes.
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