Reviews

Album of the Week   /   Genre Reports   /   SPIN Essentials

In 2011, Carly Rae Jepsen was 26 years old. Lots of people, of course, were 26 years old in 2011, but not all of them…

Initially, the National’s I Am Easy to Find feels like the band’s dull middlebrow fuckup, twelve years after Matt Berninger muttered that about…

A Dubya-era star whose pop distillations of crunk failed to win her label’s confidence at the turn of the decade, Ciara Princess Harris has spent the time since…

Writing about machine consciousness in a 1974 New York Review of Books letter to the editor, the philosopher Hubert L. Dreyfus said, "Intelligence…

Despite his goofball persona, it’s clear there have always been depths to Mac DeMarco. Over the course of a decade, he’s refined a…

Has there ever been a better time to appreciate Vampire Weekend? This is a band, of course, whose modus operandi has long been to pierce…

The first song on U.F.O.F., Big Thief’s third album, is called "Contact," and the first word in the song is "Jodi." That’s how…

Nas’s Illmatic was released on April 19, 1994. In honor of its 25th anniversary, we’ve digitized and republished our original review, which ran in the August 1994 issue of Spin.

On Kurt Wagner’s latest Lambchop album, This (Is What I Wanted to Tell You), there are a lot of lyrics about light, and how it…

All three American Football records are self-titled, and all sound like their covers: The first one is dusky and wistful, the second pleasant enough but…

Blur's 13 was released March 15, 1999. In honor of its 20th anniversary, we’ve digitized and republished our original review, which ran in the May 1999 issue of Spin.

Kehlani Parrish is very good at what she does: hazy, deceptively ethereal R&B tracks from which hooks bubble up as clear and plentiful…

Solange Knowles has worked for this moment. For a period of her career, the singer was simply "Beyoncé’s sister," trying to…

placeholder, the title of the new album by Hand Habits, may at first scan as a wry joke, à la the Breeders’ Title TK: We…

In the 19 years since their reunion, Weezer’s most memorable songs have been jokes. Recall "Beverly Hills," in which Rivers Cuomo explains why he wants…