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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    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life
    The merger of a furrowed-brow intellect and hip-freeing rhythm has been a Tune-Yards constant since Garbus made her 2009 bedroom recording, “Bird-Brains.” I Can Feel you Creep into my Private Life is both more refined and yet more raw.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Bloom
    It adds up to an album that presents a fluffier version of an already pillow-soft sound.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Seeds
    Yes, TV on the Radio is trying to write pop tunes. Some of them aren't bad, and some are so single-minded that it becomes wearying.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Once More 'Round the Sun
    If not exactly lighthearted, Once More 'Round the Sun is certainly the brightest and catchiest of the six Mastodon albums.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Under Great White Northern Lights [Live]
    But right down to the tongue-in-cheek stage patter (“My name’s Jack White and this is my big sister Meg White on the drums!”) there’s nothing here that White Stripes’ fans haven’t heard before.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Plastic Beach
    The result is an album that is slightly less immediate--the instant appeal of a hit such as “Clint Eastwood” or “Feel Good Inc.” is lacking. Bobby Womack’s strident vocal on “Stylo” is a rare burst of exuberance, but much of the rest exudes a chilled charm.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A Thing Called Divine Fits
    Divine Fits suggests that Daniel, Boeckner and Brown are doing a lot more than just killing time, if not eclipsing their other, better-known bands.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Terror
    It sounds like it was made by the last survivor on a dying planet, a final transmission from an underground bunker.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Voyager
    Nothing feels particularly overdone, and the album plays smoothly enough to qualify as background music for a sand bar.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Fallen Angels
    As mood pieces go, Fallen Angels is a notch or two below its predecessor.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Dream Attic
    Coincidental or not, the [live] setting opens things up considerably for Thompson the guitarist, his songs gaining an immediacy and intensity that sometimes gets refined away in his sometimes too-careful studio recordings.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Tree of Forgiveness
    This is the kind of record that preschoolers would find catchy enough to sing along with, accompanied by their grandparents. And yet, the wry, trippy humor and image-rich wordplay often feel futuristic, in the way they conflate time and space, sometimes wondrously, sometimes darkly.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Push Any Button
    The 10 tracks breeze past in 29 minutes, and the singer-songwriter doesn’t waste any of them.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sacred
    The bulk of the 14-track album is more than just a rehash of past glories. Notably, this latest incarnation of the Obsessed benefits from the cleanest production on just about any Wino-related project.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Silver Tongue
    Torres takes over production and plays most of the instruments on her fourth studio album, “Silver Tongue” (Merge). It was a good call, her strengths as a songwriter, singer and musician fully realized.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love Letter
    This style of music also meant everything to his late mother, whose record collection set Kelly on his path. Love Letter is as much an homage to her as it to the classic soul tracks she loved.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Reign of Terror
    With Reign of Terror Sleigh Bells proves they've got more than one formula they can tear apart.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Cherry Thing
    It's spontaneous music, full of first-take twists, turns and surprises that somehow coheres as a transcendent album.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Humanz
    Amid a series of electronic soundscapes that incorporate club, dance hall, R&B and hip-hop rhythms and textures, Albarn packs the album with songs that speak to the instability of uncertain times.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Little Dark Age
    Little Dark Age does return to some of the “form” of “Oracular Spectacular” with its greater pop accessibility, but it also embraces a less obvious and more intriguing path on several songs.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hesitation Marks
    Too much of Hesitation Marks sounds tentative.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
    It's a voice built for drama, and on this album its emotional range has never been wider.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    New
    For the most part it works, though McCartney never quite digs as deep as he did on the sturdy "Memory Almost Full" (2007), his last studio album of completely original material (or his adventurous 2008 side project as the Fireman, "Electric Arguments").
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Red Barked Tree
    Wire doesn't break ground on Red Barked Tree, but more than three decades into its career, the band's deceptively simple songs still exude subversive allure.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hypnotic Eye
    Petty's music stands strong against a tide of new trends, fresh sounds, fabulous makeovers. His defiance underlines the music, animates it, makes it feel vital even if it may sound familiar.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
    The melodies flow in relatively concise arrangements, which makes the album feel less weighty than earlier Decemberists' releases. At a minimum it could stand a little pruning. But several songs show a new, equally engaging side to Meloy's songwriting.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Bon Voyage
    If anything, Bon Voyage is even stranger than its predecessor, seven songs splashed in psychedelic colors.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs
    Tempos drag in the Latin-flavored "Cinco Minutos Con Vos" and the static "Viceroy's Row," and the title track is a mood piece that never climbs out of neutral. But even these misfires feel like experiments that fell short, while the rest of "Wise Up Ghost" revels in its uneasiness.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Wake Up!
    This well-intentioned collection never surpasses the strong originals from which it draws. But in pointing young listeners back to the work of fine if mostly forgotten artists such as Baby Huey and Prince Lincoln, Wake Up! serves a worthy purpose.
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