Chicago Tribune's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mylo Xyloto
    Coldplay has a formula, and formula prevails on Mylo Xyloto despite Eno's presence.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Biophilia
    Only "Virus" connects in the way Bjork's best work can, uniting the fundamental optimism and wonder underlining this project with music that sounds otherworldly yet welcoming.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tha Carter IV
    At his best, Wayne was positively psychedelic in his wordplay, capable of creating entire alternative worlds out of a few surrealist metaphors. But he sounds slower, more methodical, less unhinged on Tha Carter IV.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I'm with You
    [The] Los Angeles' funk jesters sound like they're treading water.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Watch the Throne
    In many ways, West and Jay-Z are saying something similar on their new album. But their approach is not to shine a spotlight on their community. Instead, they urge listeners to "watch the throne," and gaze in awe on their good fortune.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Femme Fatale
    Over a clipped backdrop that at times sounds like white-noise static, bell-like notes accent an airy, almost vaporous vocal. The voice belongs to Spears, but it could be anyone's – an anonymous ghost in the dance machine.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Collapse into Now
    What better band to cover R.E.M. than R.E.M.? That's exactly what the longtime Athens, Ga., trio sounds like it's doing on its 15th studio album, Collapse Into Now.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Party Ain't Over
    Her voice often sounds overly pinched, and the horns come off as gimmicky.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Michael
    It's not that Michael is embarrassing, it's just below par, a warehouse for songs that languished in the vaults for decades because they didn't quite measure up.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Live It Up
    With the relentlessly bland Live It Up, he becomes the latest in a long line of folk-pop singers air-brushed to melt into the pack, not rise above it.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Belle and Sebastian Write About Love
    It was a promising evolution, but four years later the Scottish band's new album, Write About Love, sounds like old news.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hemingway's Whiskey
    He's a troubadour for the suburbs, a guy who sings about middle-class life with a plainspoken mixture of wistfulness and humor.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lonely Avenue
    The pianist has a malleable voice, capable of swinging from poignance to sarcasm, though sometimes Hornby's dense wordplay can't help but sound awkward in making the transition from the page to the speakers.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    False Priest
    The hooks are more pronounced and the bottom end beefed up, which gives Barnes' R&B leanings a lot more dancefloor appeal and makes songs such as the buttery Solange duet "Sex Karma" sound better than anything Prince has come up with in years. But the affectations remain troubling.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Come And Get It!
    Reed's second major-label album, Come and Get It! (Capitol), is loaded with terse, catchy pop-soul songs outfitted with sharp horn riffs, taut guitar fills and bouncy bass lines. It's all done well enough. But when he slows down and attempts a ballad such as "Pick Your Battles," Reed's gusto is no longer enough to mask his limitations as a singer.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
    Like the similarly star-studded (but bland) "Twilight" and (insufferably twee) "Juno" soundtracks, Scott Pilgrim is something less than the sum of its parts.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Praise & Blame
    With Praise & Blame, Jones dials down the camp and tries to act his age--he turned 70 in June. So what we get is a more refined, more serious Jones, and that's no fun at all.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dark Night Of The Soul
    Unfortunately, the ambitious concept proves too unwieldy to work as a consistent album.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Recovery
    For an artist who has sold 30 million albums, his latest release is brutally short on hooks and, most of all, fun. The subversive humor is long gone, and his cultural references (David Cook? Austin Powers? Yet another dis of Mariah Carey?) remain dated.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook
    The album definitely could’ve used a little more friskiness; as it is, a horn-spackled version of Derek and the Dominoes’ “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad” and a brisk run-through of the Beatles “The Word” are the only moments where LaVette busts loose from her always heart-felt, but sometimes overly earnest, introspection.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Here Lies Love
    Both Byrne and Fatboy Slim have built careers on beats, the imperative of activating the hips as much as the brain, and they touch on everything from salsa to Philadelphia soul on Here Lies Love. But too often the needs of the narrative supersede the music, and too much of "Here Lies Love" falls into midtempo blandness.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Winter Of Mixed Drinks
    The problem is that the songs all have a similar arch, with instrumental grandeur substituting for the previous album’s emotional punch and tears-of-rage specifics.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scratch My Back
    Gabriel’s decision to pay homage to the core essentials underpinning these songs is a noble one, he also sacrifices many essential ingredients: rhythmic drive, dynamic surprise, harmonic and textural variety. As experiments go, Scratch My Back ranks as a well-intentioned dud.
Page: