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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    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Long Sleep [EP]
    From murky ambience to noise, free jazz, and beyond, Hval deploys sounds with a careful attention to feeling, building lush collages with a strategic intent further amplified in the lyrics. While ultimately smaller and less ambitious than her previous full-lengths, The Long Sleep grasps at ideas about presence, affect, and influence, recognizing the important potential of networks of all types in the lives of all who listen.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    DAYTONA
    The album is claustrophobic and unrelenting, but also intensely exhilarating in its brevity.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Universalists
    That’s the beauty of Universalists: there’s no use trying to pin it down. What’s more, doing so discredits its core thesis: music is music, plain and simple. Gat manages to capture the ecstasy of his live performance, while expanding his production and experimental practice to a global, and—dare I say—universal palette.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Yourself: Tear
    Their most relaxed to date. ... Whereas the first installment of the series seemed uneasy and disjointed in its span of styles, Love Yourself: Tear’s genre-hopping sounds like the group is simply having a good time.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Die Lit
    Instead of sounding like a half-baked aberration or a tedious, overlong experiment, Die Lit broadcasts a refreshing and well-developed aesthetic--one that feels like Carti’s specific achievement. Its appeal feels distinctly corporeal, like it’s inducing some swag-rap equivalent of ASMR through exploring a limited and tightly EQd collection of sounds.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sparkle Hard
    Sparkle Hard is the kind of quirky and realized record made by an artist with nothing to prove.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wide Awake!
    Parquet Courts’ ridiculously good new album Wide Awake!, is a delirious ode to the power of collectivity thinly masquerading as a gameday anthem.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Voicenotes
    Across the album’s 13 exceedingly catchy yet contradictory tracks, Puth laments his success and desirability while boasting about both. ... Voicenotes feels like a step, at the very least, in the right direction.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    7
    A short, precise album which is equal parts inventive and masterful.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Knock Knock
    The result is an eclectic mix of tempos and moods that maintain Kozalla’s sense of whimsy without sacrificing earnestness.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino
    There’s little to be found here with the immediacy of yore, but this ends up working in the album’s favor: the more you give in to these vibes, the more the vibes give back. That goes double for Turner’s lyrics, which are playfully quotable in a manner that recalls the opaque asides of Destroyer’s Dan Bejar.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Rebound
    While writing some of the most accessible music of her career, she makes fun of the assignment a bit while completing it. The maturity of her songwriting voice on Rebound is staggering, and makes her enterprise feel like an emotionally embodied exercise as well as a technical, aesthetic one.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beyondless
    Beyondless is a far cry from the New Brigade immediacy that attracted fans, but it offers something perhaps much more valuable: longevity, if you’re on their side.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Horizon Just Laughed
    The hopelessness that loomed over his prior work gives way to a sort of circumspect hope on The Horizon Just Laughed, a new sense of things working out or having the chance to, and that’s victory enough.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dirty Computer
    Her ability to transcend her influences has always been song-to-song, and that’s true here, too. But it also feels like she is inching closer to a breakthrough: an album that fully lives up to her reputation and ambition.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grid of Points
    Grid of Points is as untidy as 2005’s Way Their Crept or 2008’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. What’s different--and what’s key--is that in her ongoing embrace of the piano, Harris has made room in her artistry for a new sensation: the unmistakable glow of comfort.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vide Noir
    Even when the concept stumbles, parts of Vide Noir are pretty enjoyable listening anyway, like the flecks of psychedelic guitar across the title track and the filigree detail and sensual current of “Moonbeam.”
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Sciences
    For the most part, they don’t disappoint.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sparrow
    Sparrow transcends its own tastefulness, and odds are excellent you’ll find it gorgeous.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    KOD
    It’s a commendable effort, with Cole putting himself in a creative territory to respond to critics, peers and progeny. His messages are timely despite the fact that they continue, rather than conclude, a larger conversation.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Joyride
    Despite its tortuous path to existence, Joyride is a strong, cohesive project.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Invasion of Privacy
    Invasion of Privacy is a cohesive piece of work that demands to be heard in full, from front to back, side to side, on the pole and on the stove.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cerebral Hemispheres
    “Outer Acid” remains uncanny in its mix of blissful keys and menacing acid squiggles and “Spy” diffuses some dubby harmonica into Heard’s atmospheres. “Inner Acid” returns to the squelchy acid house Heard made back in the ‘80s and the knocking beat and bells of “Nodyahed” suggest that he can still make a dancefloor quake.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ephorize
    By balancing on the tightrope between meme and icon, between relatable and aspirational, Ephorize emerges sounding remarkably human.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs
    The richness of the music occasions her best vocal performances to date. The arrangements are airy with distance and light, but their architecture is boldly drawn: the basslines thick and taut, the arpeggios whirring and spangled, the guitars unfurling in a glossy neon cursive.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bark Your Head Off, Dog
    Freer of their influences, Hop Along have produced a stunning batch of songs--each of them like a small world of its own, continuously unfolding.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Tree of Forgiveness
    Here’s hoping The Tree Of Forgiveness is not either an incidental or deliberate farewell. If it must be, at least it’s both a suitably goofy celebration of his career and a dignified capstone.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Your Queen Is A Reptile
    Kinetic and thrilling as the uptempo blasts are, where Your Queen shines is on the slower pieces, revealing that Hutchings can purr, murmur and wax lyrical as well.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Golden Hour
    Where she once had a compelling songwriting portfolio, here she has a compelling mood. That mood’s best described as “content.” ... It’s not a belting voice, but it’s a remarkable instrument, capable of imbuing with winsome empathy songs.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Freedom
    McMahon’s most transcendent statement yet. ... Freedom rings as both immediate and timeless, intensely personal and easily understood. ... Freedom exalts in subtlety. It offers powerfully economical songwriting.
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