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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Hell-On
    Women as underdogs, history as patriarchy, nature as kindling for civilization’s bonfire--there’s an anger percolating beneath many of these songs, yet the hard medicine goes down smoothly thanks to the ease of the arrangements.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Patch the Sky
    Patch the Sky is something of a darker twin to the 2014 "Beauty and Ruin," itself an album filled with grief and reckoning. But the music, in contrast to the often bleak, edge-of-despair lyrics, is cleansing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    On the Line
    There’s loneliness, heartache and regret mixed with more than a pinch of decadence in these songs. The boozy, druggy indulgences match the haziness of the best songs, the self-medication of a generation of Los Angeles kids raised on broken families and bittersweet relationships.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Silence Yourself
    The album could’ve easily done without the first two [moodier pieces], and been even better for it. No matter. Silence Yourself is still a disquietingly brilliant debut.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    In Between
    The band doesn't need to say much, because that message is there in the music.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I Love You, Honeybear
    Misty's music cushions some of his most outrageous observations in plush wordless harmonies, strings and orchestral-pop melodies, sometimes to a point where he melts into background music.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dirty Pictures, Pt. 1
    Dirty Pictures (Part 1) (Contender) comes close enough often enough to qualify as a worthy substitute for one of the Philadelphia quintet's bar-room blowouts.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Together
    On Together, the band's fifth album, Newman again pumps out exuberant melodies brimming with offbeat twists.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    blackSUMMERS'night (2016)
    He is subtle rather than strident, sensitive rather than demanding.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Thank Me Later
    So Drake isn't the hip-hop savior he was hyped to be. Instead, as he drifts through what should have been his boisterous coming-out party, he comes off as muted and rueful, missing the days when he was 19 and it was just about him and his girlfriend in a college dorm room.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Witness
    Booker soundtracks his anxiety with music that feels more textured and spacious than any he has made previously.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    American Dream
    The album gets personal, but in a more low-key way than ever before.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Brill Bruisers
    Brill Bruisers sounds like a bunch of friends reuniting for a long-overdue blow-out.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Reflektor
    The finish provides a slow comedown from the buzz of the album’s first half--which by itself ranks with Arcade Fire’s best, most challenging work. The textural experiments of Part 2 can’t keep pace.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Schmilco
    Wilco has made a weird little folk record. It not only sounds different than the band's previous album, but slightly out of step with the rest of its discography.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The World Is Yours
    Much of this will sound familiar to Motorhead fans, but there are enough sly lyrical twists to keep things fresh, and when all else fails, Motorhead's rhythm section is still beastly.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    False Beats and True Hearts
    It glides rather than gallops--especially when Yang sings in a voice as light as a breeze rippling through lace curtains--which makes it perfect background for all sorts of civilized activities.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dig in Deep
    Dig in Deep prompts a fresh perspective on Raitt herself and a five-decade musical career that is still unfolding and revealing new facets.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    No Cities to Love
    No Cities to Love& is not a complete triumph, the totally devastating statement of revived purpose that they might have intended, but it's not for lack of trying.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Catastrophist
    They're best when dabbling in the exotic, the offbeat, the slightly unsettling. Smooth surfaces are never quite what they seem in the best Tortoise songs.
    • 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Farmer's Daughter
    When the production and the outside songwriters stay out of her way, Bowersox expertly works the territory between folk and country.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Still
    Thompson's new album arrives as another example of how a mature artist can continue to innovate.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sheezus
    Sheezus connects because it's more conversational than confrontational, a personal statement that dabbles in pop rather than trying to embody the pop moment.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wide Awake!
    As usual, there’s a lot more going on than first meets the ear.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    She Remembers Everything
    Her first album in four years, the singer navigates the uncertainty of today. It toggles between stark reality and more abstract images, sometimes blending them in ways enhanced by the production.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Big Day
    These songs conflate his newfound responsibilities as a husband and father with memories of childhood innocence, a mix that humanizes the rapper even as his career transcends music.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Bravest Man in the Universe
    It adds up to Womack's strongest work since the early '80s.
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