With their latest release, Left Behind, New Jersey indie alternative rock band The Spins set themselves up to become key players in the music scene. This project tastefully blurs genre lines and serves as an emotional arc that powerfully portrays the grief, heartbreak, and acceptance that accompany lost love.
The Spins introduce a blend of pop punk, indie, and emo that feels fresh but is also right at home with bands like Oso Oso and Origami Angel. What starts as a standard, accessible, and catchy, indie record quickly unpacks itself like a Russian nesting doll of surprisingly evolving influences.
Just when you think you’ve pinned them down, The Spins throw curveballs with beachy steel guitar, glittery synths, and distorted vocals that reshape the sound to mirror the emotional chaos below the surface.
I’m a big fan of the “crying at the club” microgenre—the one that has you dancing in your seat while feeling like you’re being punched in the gut. The Spins absolutely nails this. High-energy hooks meet painfully relatable lyricism about the uncomfortable and awkward process of coping with heartbreak and moving on.
The opener, “You Know What I Mean” sets the stage with familiar post-breakup resentment, using lyrics like “Don’t pretend you wanted me when you’re just lonely.”
The title track explores denial and bargaining as the singer asks their muse to “forget the romance, maybe we’ll be better off as friends.” This gives way to unapologetic yearning with “Flat Out” as the band begs for “one last try” (or at least one last night). Despite this, they admit they “wake up every morning ignoring every warning sign”—a canon event for everyone.
The latter half of Left Behind effectively portrays the bittersweet feelings of acceptance and understanding that it’s over. Á la Frank Ocean’s Blonde, there is an introspective and genre-bending shift.“Break It Off” finally resigns itself to this loss, reflecting, “I guess I’ve learned my lesson.”
This album closes with “Aftermath” and “Tides Turn,” a softly hopeful endnote that acknowledges how far they’ve come and concedes that they’re “gonna be alright.” In comparison to many of the tracks, there were a couple that fell flat lyrically. While they aren’t egregious and don’t derail the record, “Aftermath” and the single “Rain or Shine” lacked the thematic cohesion of other tracks.
There is a drop in sonic energy in the back half that felt a little abrupt. A bit more cohesion and momentum here could’ve given the album’s ending the bite that it needed to really hit home at the end. I also noticed some inconsistent mixing that sometimes resulted in muddy vocals and overpowering percussion.
Despite a couple of nitpicks, this review wouldn’t be complete without pointing out the album’s powerful and dynamic instrumentals. Moody, angsty guitar licks, driving percussion, and subtly dreamy synths elevate Left Behind and give it texture.
Special shoutout to lead guitarist, Jimmy Barr, whose talent really shone. His riffs consistently made my ears perk up and became immediate earworms.
Left Behind asserts The Spins as a band to invest in before they hit the mainstream. It isn’t perfect, but this album’s raw, emotional honesty and musical risk-taking more than make up for its flaws.
As a board-certified lover girl, I absolutely ate up the way that it portrayed the journey of heartache. It’s the type of music that you cathartically scream along to while driving down the highway as you find yourself accidentally doing 80 in a 60.
My standout tracks included “Flat Out” and “Left Behind.” If this project is an indication of what is yet to come, then expect to see these guys opening for Hot Mulligan or Prince Daddy and the Hyena in the near future.
