Chicago Tribune's Scores

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For 566 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 I Like to Keep Myself in Pain
Lowest review score: 25 Graffiti
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 456 out of 566
  2. Mixed: 97 out of 566
  3. Negative: 13 out of 566
566 music reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    VIEWS
    Views is ostensibly set in Drake's hometown of Toronto, but most of it sounds like it's being narrated from a shuttered room at 3 in the morning. The moodiness seeps into a weary, bleary series of recriminations tinged with bitterness and petulance.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Head Full of Dreams
    On most of the album, Coldplay's relatively buoyant music tries to submerge the band's most annoying trait. But sometimes Chris Martin, lyricist, just can't help himself.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Britney Jean
    An army of producers, including will.i.am, Diplo, Dr. Luke and David Guetta aim to keep Spears centered in the hit parade, but don't take many chances.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Christmas In The Heart
    Dylan’s craggy voice isn’t really equipped for crooning, so the sometimes middle-brow orchestration and singing--particularly the use of backing choirs--sounds like a misguided attempt to sweeten a dish best served lightly salted.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hesitation Marks
    Too much of Hesitation Marks sounds tentative.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dark Night Of The Soul
    Unfortunately, the ambitious concept proves too unwieldy to work as a consistent album.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Small Craft On A Milk Sea
    It's the kind of hair-raising music that one wishes occurred more frequently on this overly subdued collection.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Finally Rich
    Keef is a remote presence on his major-label debut.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Come Around Sundown
    In search of the grandiose, Kings of Leon seem to have forgotten how to rock. It's as if the quartet wanted to become the next U2 so badly that it lost sight of how it got here in the first place.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Head and the Heart
    More problematic are the melodies and the songs themselves; they strive for rousing resonance, a deep sense of loss, but often settle for pat prettiness and easy sentimentality.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    22, A Million
    Bon Iver is moving on, but to where exactly? Even Justin Vernon doesn't appear to know, which may be why this transitional album sounds so muddled and the songs so elusive.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Joanne
    Once a step ahead of everyone else in recalibrating what it means to be a pop artist, she made her appropriations and reinventions look like fun. Now she sounds like she's just trying too hard.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nobody's Daughter
    Songwriters Linda Perry and Billy Corgan (moonlighting from the Smashing Pumpkins), producer Michael Beinhorn--sand down her rough edges and turn Nobody's Daughter into a dreary piece of middle-of-the-road product.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Days Are Gone
    The lyrics flirt with turmoil--there are lots of songs about holding on or jumping into the fire, and so forth--but don’t really say much of anything.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hardwired...To Self-Destruct
    It's an album that would be far improved if it were chopped in half.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Storytone
    The orchestral Storytone comes off as a showy distraction. It's best ignored. Head for the acoustic version instead, which contains a handful of Young's better recent songs, syrup-free.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
    Gallagher never turns these slight detours into genuine departures. By not veering far from the Oasis blueprint, he invites unflattering comparisons to his best work.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive
    Maybe working on a novel distracted Earle, but the feisty dust-kicker of old appears to have taken this one off.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ghost Stories
    Variation, once a strong suit of Coldplay’s songwriting, isn’t much in evidence. Over nine songs, Martin and company create a mood and then stick with it--to a fault.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jesus Is King
    The gospel-singer moments (the stirring intro to “God Is”) and the verses by the Clips’ Pusha T and No Malice on “Use This Gospel” provide most of the musical sparks, with West allowing message to trump musicality. ... Otherwise, this sounds like a walk-through to West’s next destination, a tentative step that feels neither accomplished nor particularly memorable.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Center Won't Hold
    Much of “The Center Won’t Hold” doesn’t sound like the old Sleater-Kinney, which is precisely the point. Brownstein and Tucker prefer to go charging into the future, but at the expense of some of the very attributes that made them so compelling in the first place.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wasting Light
    It's all competently done, but none of it matches the invention of Grohl's drumming in the last decade with Queens of the Stone Age, Probot or Them Crooked Vultures.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nostalgia
    Clearly, these songs are standards for a reason, and Lennox does nothing to tarnish their legacy or expand it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ultraviolence
    Ultraviolence almost qualifies as a parody. Unfortunately, there's not enough punch in the songs to make listeners care whether she's joking or not.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Caracal
    Pleasantly executed exercise in retro dance pop.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP 2
    The sense that we’ve all been here before, twice, is exacerbated by the tired samples and interpolations.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Uno!
    Armstrong sounds detached, despite a stream of curse words, and the band plays with a machine-like efficiency.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sea Of Cowards
    But as with “Horehound,” “Sea of Cowards” is all about the volatile vibe rather than songs. When the vibe works, it’s a decent approximation of the band’s top-shelf live show. But beneath all the “Hustle and Cuss,” the tunes just aren’t there.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Prism
    Though not exactly spiritual, Prism does come off as a more serious--if no less formulaic--album than its predecessor. But being taken seriously may be Perry’s greatest challenge yet.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man of the Woods
    Too often, Timberlake sounds adrift.
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