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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    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Thanks for the Dance
    Overall, though, the songs don’t measure up. ... And it’s clear why. The master songwriter simply ran out of time.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Western Stars
    The large-scale orchestrations rarely complement the mood. Instead, they barge in, a river of syrup that drowns the sense of betrayal in “Stones,” gushes through “The Wayfarer” and inspires some of Springsteen’s most egregious Gene Pitney-style over-emoting in “Sundown” and the disastrously overdone “There Goes My Miracle.”
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am Easy to Find
    The arrangements only rarely bring out the drama in these interactions. The intimacy becomes wearying, with spoken-word interludes, interstitial pieces and hushed vocals stretching the 16 songs to 64 minutes, an experiment in search of a direction. The most radical album of the National’s career is also its most disappointing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Glastonbury 2000 [Live]
    Bowie at his best was both a crowd-pleaser and provocateur, a pop visionary and an avant-garde subversive. The crowd-pleaser is on full-force display at Glastonbury 2000, but the facets of his stage persona that made him the most unsettling of rock stars are nowhere to be found.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Anthem of the Peaceful Army
    Greta Van Fleet now adds its name to the list of Zep disciples who have made albums that sound kinda, sorta and sometimes exactly like its primary influence. If nothing else, the quartet has demonstrated that guitar-rock can still be popular with a young audience that either hasn’t heard of Led Zeppelin, or prefers Greta’s version to their grandparents’ original.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ye
    About half the album has West as a role player on tracks that suggest a theater scene, with a handful of voices playing characters (quite possibly all living inside West’s brain). The album moves from spoken-word monologues to more expansive musical settings that try to “take the top off (and) let the sun come in.”
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man of the Woods
    Too often, Timberlake sounds adrift.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything Now
    ["Creature Comfort" is] one of the album's strongest moments, matched by "Electric Blue," in which Regine Chassagne's delicate voice floats over a wistful yet hypnotic electro groove. Much of the rest struggles to stay buoyant.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Harry Styles
    As debuts by boy-group alums go, Harry Styles goes bolder than expected. It establishes that Styles can pull off a more mature sound and style, but it lacks the hooks and pop appeal of One Direction's big hits.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Drogas Light
    It falters beneath its own cynicism. Rather than continuing to forge his own sound in tandem with longtime producer Soundtrakk, he chooses to co-opt mainstream currency--the gangsta tropes of trap music, the club rhythms of EDM--and delivers a mix of parody and second-rate would-be radio singles.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Peace Trail
    Young remains a treasure because he refuses to bow to convention, and his inherent distrust of studio sugarcoating or polishing has led to some of the rawest, most powerful music of our time. But it can also lead to slapdash projects such as this one.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hardwired...To Self-Destruct
    It's an album that would be far improved if it were chopped in half.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kidsticks
    Mostly the arrangements feel amorphous and vague, and matters aren't helped by the way Orton's voice is positioned in the mix. Her tone veers between conversational and angelic, just another texture in a scattered and shapeless series of musical pieces.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Junk
    Junk, M83's seventh studio album, sounds chintzy--a bubble-gum snyth-pop album that indulges Gonzalez's love of decades-old TV soundtracks, hair-metal guitar solos and kitschy pop songs.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Life Of Pablo
    Sounds like a work in progress rather than a finished album.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Caracal
    Pleasantly executed exercise in retro dance pop.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sonic Highways
    Twenty years deep into its career, Foo Fighters could've used a bit of a shake-up, if not a makeover, to re-energize its music. But Sonic Highways provides little more than window-dressing on business as usual.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Songs of Innocence
    Songs of Innocence comes off as flat and strangely complacent, even as it pays lip service to youthful inspiration, notably the punk and post-punk of the late '70s.
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