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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    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    You and I
    You and I is more a raw sketch than a fully formed portrait of a 26-year-old artist still coming to terms with what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    untitled unmastered.
    Untitled, Unmastered is presented as an unfinished work, though it rarely sounds like one.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson
    An understandable reverence prevails over most of these primarily straight-forward interpretations, but a handful dig a level deeper.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dig in Deep
    Dig in Deep prompts a fresh perspective on Raitt herself and a five-decade musical career that is still unfolding and revealing new facets.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Life Of Pablo
    Sounds like a work in progress rather than a finished album.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love Yes
    In trying to break away from synth-pop cliche, the quartet sometimes ends up simply overdoing the songs. Yet the band's mastery of contrasting textures remains impressive (versatile rhythm section, a chameleon-like keyboardist), and Teeny Lieberson's voice meets every challenge.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Scheherazade
    Fortunately, the music and, above all, the voices of the two singers fight through the darkness. The voices complement, converse and contradict, like sisters finishing or amplifying each other's sentences.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Catastrophist
    They're best when dabbling in the exotic, the offbeat, the slightly unsettling. Smooth surfaces are never quite what they seem in the best Tortoise songs.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Adore Life
    On the follow-up, Adore Life (Matador), the fight in this band is still audible. But there's something else too--desire, cutting humor, vulnerability.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Blackstar
    Mood frequently trumps melody, but the music is rarely flat or monochrome.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Ties That Bind: The River Collection [Box Set]
    It's an iconic if flawed album. But the overflow of songs presented on The Ties That Bind makes for a great argument-starter. Did Springsteen assemble the best version of The River? This boxed set provides evidence for piecing together an even better one.
    • 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.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Art Angels
    The first half of the album follows one knockout punch with another, with guitar-centric melodies underpinned by glitchy electronics that have more in common with 1980s post-punk and early industrial music than they do the pop mainstream.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    25
    She sprinkles just enough specifics amid the cliches to identify the songs as her story, rather than a cut-and-paste factory job assembled by a committee of songwriters. But the music itself sticks to a formula centered on piano ballads and churchy hymns.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Montage Of Heck: The Home Recordings
    Most of it might fascinate for a listen or two, but presenting this as new work at top-end retail prices is the type of barrel-scraping exploitation that would've made the ever-wary Cobain retch.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Perfectamundo
    A number of songs feel underdeveloped, little more than chants fitted with a groove that has neither the fire of first-tier Latin music or the witty blues crunch of prime ZZ Top.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Silver Bullets
    There are no throwaways on this album.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Divers
    Newsom can still be a daunting listen, and Divers requires time and attention to fully embrace. Those who do invest in it will find an artist whose highly personal art is edging toward the universal.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Agent Intellect
    The album (and the Detroit quartet's career so far) peaks near the end with two brilliant songs, in which the humanity that underpins this bleak, bracing music finally becomes undeniable.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Unbreakable
    The low-key approach may not be enough to storm the charts. But the mood suits her.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Caracal
    Pleasantly executed exercise in retro dance pop.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Crosseyed Heart
    The guy who wrote "Angie," "Wild Horses," and "Ruby Tuesday" sprinkles the album with ballads, though the only one that has a pulse is Gregory Isaacs' reggae lament "Love Overdue." The other slow ones wobble.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Imani, Vol. 1
    The tracks brim with sing-along choruses, strutting horns and bright melodies that evoke the heyday of Philly soul, the mystic optimism of Earth Wind & Fire and the "Car Wash" soundtrack.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ones and Sixes
    Returning to some of the stylistic inroads made on its 2007 album Drums and Guns, Low builds a framework out of electronic static and subterranean feedback.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Beauty Behind the Madness
    He's aiming for harder truths, creating pop that also works as a commentary on choice and consequence.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Depression Cherry
    Many of the songs address the notion of transition and change, of leaving one part of life behind and moving into another, and Depression Cherry sounds like the work of a tentative band working through its own transition, unsure of its next move.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Under the Savage Sky
    Greenberg again contributes a handful of songs to the toughest sounding Savages recording yet.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Trackless Woods
    As the songs unfold, the nuances in DeMent's vocals become more apparent, as painterly as the poet's words.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blood
    Rather than a personal statement, the music becomes an exercise in smoothness. Even La Havas' vocal power plays don't translate as an emotional imperative so much as a pop formula.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful
    Georgeson was a key architect of the new Millennium's folk renaissance in indie-rock with his productions for Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart, among others, and his thumbprint is all over Morrissey's songs, for better and sometimes worse.
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