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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    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    BLACKsummers'night
    It's free of gimmicks (Hey, an R&B record without Auto-Tuned vocals!) or trendy producers (No Kanye, no Timbaland; instead, guitarist Hod David does most of the work). No wonder BLACKsummers'night walks its own confident path down the artier fringe of R&B.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Strange Mercy
    Strange Mercy resonates as a strangely moving album about resilience. It's as messy as life often can be, ugly and beautiful all at once.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    I Hate Music
    The album’s more reflective tone cuts deepest in “Low F” and “What Can We Do,” and they’re both among the most intensely personal songs in the band’s long, distinguished history.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    American Band
    The band's feel for melodies remains sharp, and Hood's accomplished songwriting is now matched by Cooley, which makes for one of the band's strongest front-to-back albums.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    You Want It Darker
    This is not one of those waiting-at-death's-door late-career farewells that have become a cottage industry since Johnny Cash closed his career with a series of acoustic albums recorded by producer Rick Rubin. It instead presents an artist still near the height of his considerable powers
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Silver Bullets
    There are no throwaways on this album.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Black America Again
    One of the year's most potent protest albums. ... The album sags midway through with a handful of lightweight love songs, but finishes with some of its most emotionally resounding tracks: the "Glory"-like plea for redemption "Rain" with Legend, the celebration of family that is "Little Chicago Boy," and the staggering "Letter to the Free."
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Big Station
    Escovedo's growing confidence as a band leader and especially as a vocalist has never been more apparent.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    To the Sunset
    Shires’ fifth album, is in some ways an attempt to bust down some of the cliches that inevitably attach themselves to an artist stereotyped in that way (acoustic, folk, introspective, sad). And it does the job well. Shires’ way with words is still very much intact.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Woman
    Rhye’s debut album, Woman, is a beautifully sequenced song cycle of soul music with the flame turned low. It’s sexy, but not overheated
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Coexist
    The melodies aren't quite as immediate as the best songs from the debut, but Coexist functions as a near-perfect mood piece.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Dusk in Us
    If anything, the songs are more dramatic than ever, making greater use of near-silence and dynamics to underline hooks and refrains.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Congratulations
    The nine-song album aims for a more unified and introspective feel, a good deal darker, denser and less instantly accessible than the debut. Instead of concise singles, it more fully embraces the duo's interests in waving the Barrett-era freak flag
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Arrow
    Arrow sounds like the work of a top-tier singer who also is developing into a formidable songwriter.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    David Comes To Life
    In "Turn the Season," "Ship of Fools" and "Life in Paper," the guitars suggest a torrent busting through a dam, sweeping away all in its path. It's an exhilarating, engulfing sound that might've been better served by a more concise album. But then F Up never has been much for holding itself back.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night
    Right now no one is making music this grand, this big, this moving with so much assurance.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Benjamin Booker
    The production will frustrate those who demand cleaner sounds, who like their vocals to rise above the rhythm section. Instead the singer's voice folds into the noise, just another grimy texture on an album that treats the blues not as a museum piece, but as a roadmap of one prodigal son's early life.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Lady Killer
    Even with his quirks dialed down, Green has a voice that can burst any melody wide open.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Nine Types of Light
    Though this is TV on the Radio at its most melodic and accessible, the music never succumbs to formula.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Masseduction
    She drops some of the emotional armor on her fifth studio album, Masseducation, which comes off as not only one of her most ambitious works, but also her most transparent.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    My Woman
    lsen's songwriting has a way of undressing emotions, and she's got a voice that holds nothing back. Now she's made an album that sounds far bolder than anything she's released so far.
    • 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
    • 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.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    A Seat at the Table
    A Seat at the Table is in no hurry to deliver a knockout punch. Instead, its subtle grooves and delicate vocals underplay the steely resolve, the long-simmering ache in the words.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Acid Rap
    Whereas “10 Day” burst with callow exuberance, Acid Rap is a deeper, more emotionally complex work.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Slaughterhouse
    Slaughterhouse is the fourth album the ultra-prolific Ty Segall has released in the last 18 months, and it's the best of the bunch.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Gish [Deluxe Edition]
    Gish remains among the more sensual hard-rock albums of the decade.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Kiwanuka
    Songs melt into one another without losing their identities. Kiwanuka’s narrators drift through a world torn by violence and racism and find purpose. His voice remains plaintive, understated, deeply textured, but there’s a resolve that wasn’t as evident on his earlier work.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    What a Time to Be Alive
    What a Time to be Alive roars.
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