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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    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Rome
    Rome does one better than conjure nostalgia; it puts those vintage signifiers in service of fine, contemporary songs.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    They Want My Soul
    The quintet likes to pull melody out of dissonance and repetition. Now they've also found the soul.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Magic Whip
    It's actually quite good; not exactly a return to the band's mid-'90s Brit-pop peak, but a welcome progression beyond. Blur delivers a stranger, more atmospheric but still melodic brand of electro-folk salted with rock guitar and orchestral sweep.
    • Chicago Tribune
      • Posted Apr 27, 2015
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Honey
    Though the album is less immediate than “Body Talk,” the choruses not as insistent, it exudes a hypnotic pull nonetheless: this is a gentler brand of body music about absence and need.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Courage Of Others
    With "The Courage of Others" (Bella Union), Midlake singer Tim Smith sounds like a refugee from the late ‘60s English-folk scene, with songs delivered in an unaffected, understated voice that could’ve easily complemented Sandy Denny or Anne Briggs, or fit in with Pentangle or Fairport Convention.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Snakes For The Divine
    They patented a style and on their fifth studio album, Snakes for the Divine, see no reason to change it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Falling Off the Sky
    "Falling Off the Sky" sounds like the work of a band still very much at the top of its game.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sukierae
    The second disc is lower key, a less varied collection of music than Disc 1. Though it might have made sense for tonal variety to distribute the acoustic pieces more evenly between the two albums, they work together in creating a sustained mood piece.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Surf
    Surf integrates a mish-mash of sounds, genres and guests into a relatively coherent whole, textured and nuanced in ways that demand repeat listens.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Channel Orange
    Channel Orange creates a state of mind with words and sound.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Nothing Was the Same
    Drake’s increasing mastery of not just rhyme, but tone and inflection is readily apparent.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Blackstar
    Mood frequently trumps melody, but the music is rarely flat or monochrome.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Both
    It's a unified album, in which sound is every bit as crucial as craft. Despite the formidable solo careers involved, The Both improbably sounds like the work of a band.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Gloss Drop
    "Playful" isn't often the first word that comes to mind when listening to music with this kind of cerebral veneer, but it's a perfectly apt description of Battles' subversive and frequently delightful brand of avant-pop.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sound & Fury
    Distortion-saturated guitars, synthesizers squealing like tea kettles and tribal drums give country tradition a swift kick in the back side. This carnage doesn’t belong to a genre, it’s more like a feeling: Side 2 of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s “Rust Never Sleeps,” ZZ Top demos after three cases of Tequila in a Texas roadhouse, a hurricane.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Wounded Rhymes
    Her producer and co-songwriter Bjorn Yttling (of the Swedish rock band Peter, Bjorn and John) keeps things from sounding like mere revivalism.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Mirror Mirror
    Sons and Daughters add to their canon of murder ballads, then finish the album with the sound of a rain storm on a beach enveloping Bethel's ghostly vocal, a sound that seems to linger long after it fades from earshot.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    IRM
    Though the album hits a few sleepy troughs along the way, it gets progressively stranger and more aggressive, with distorted bass (“Trick Pony”), tribal drumming (“Voyage”) and T-Rex-style boogie (“Dandelion”) giving Gainsbourg room to stretch.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Relax
    They're deceptively laid-back satirists who deliver their smackdowns amid da-da streams of consciousness, sometimes with such subtlety that by the time the joke finally registers they're off on a fresh, equally strange and frequently hilarious tangent.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO
    It’s slower, dreamier, with songs that prize atmosphere above immediacy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sorry To Bother You
    WAVIP closes the album with an anti-climatic "we are all V.I.P." chant, the only dud on an album that otherwise makes even the hardest-hitting messages sound care-free and danceable.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Americana
    Americana reveals the hard truth inside songs that have been taken for granted.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Juice B Crypts
    Though Battles might be viewed from a distance as a potentially daunting listen, “Juice B Crypts” provides multi-faceted kicks, whether on the dance floor, through the headphones, or riding, screaming with joy, on a rollercoaster.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    All We Love We Leave Behind
    All We Love We Leave Behind occupies the unruly intersection of metal, punk and progressive music, weeding out the weaknesses the band perceives in each genre and saving the good stuff for its rigorously constructed songs.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Golden Archipelago
    The details – the drone of a guitar string, the reverberation of a drum mallet, the swoon of a string section --- are reason enough to reward a close listen.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Relatives in Descent
    With each album the Detroit quartet retains its deceptively casual air while pulling triumphant moments out of the noise. It can also conjure surprising tenderness when you least expect, or turn darkly comic in one verse, and lash out in the next.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Kaleidoscope Dream
    The singer with the feathery falsetto creates a fluid, dreamscape environment that floats across eras with a connoisseur's discerning feel for the telling detail.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Silver Age
    Silver Age affirms what he does best.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Man on the Moon, Vol. 2: The Legend of Mr. Rager
    The music is as consuming and intoxicating as the lifestyle Cudi describes. On two albums, the stoned-and-alone rapper has created a world built for one.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Solid State: Songs from the Long Play
    It's rare for an artist entering her fourth decade to keep releasing music of such high quality, but Phillips sounds like she's rejuvenated--and never better.
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