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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    • 86 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Bon Iver
    The sound is a good deal plusher, the arrangements thickened with pedal steel, saxophone, horns, percussion. But Vernon still sounds like he's back in that Wisconsin cabin that birthed "Emma."
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    How I Got Over
    The first half of the Roots' ninth studio album, How I Got Over, sounds like a hangover, a brooding meditation on a world teetering toward anarchy.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Love & Hate
    With Burton as his accomplice, the singer has learned how to juxtapose contrasting textures and emotions for maximum impact, and it makes for one of the year's most consistently engaging listens.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Southern Rock Opera
    "Southern Rock Opera" is the kind of record most bands don't have in them.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    blackSUMMERS'night (2016)
    He is subtle rather than strident, sensitive rather than demanding.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Locked Down
    The legendary pianist sounds reinvigorated on "Locked Down" (Nonesuch), in part because he's not plugging into a formula, but animating it with some feisty new sidemen.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    American Dream
    The album gets personal, but in a more low-key way than ever before.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Acid Rap
    Whereas “10 Day” burst with callow exuberance, Acid Rap is a deeper, more emotionally complex work.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lost In the Dream
    It would be difficult for any album to consistently live up to those peak moments, and Lost in the Dream doesn't. But Granduciel is on to something with this more band-focused release, and that new dynamic deserves an even deeper exploration next time.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    untitled unmastered.
    Untitled, Unmastered is presented as an unfinished work, though it rarely sounds like one.
    • 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
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Agent Intellect
    The album (and the Detroit quartet's career so far) peaks near the end with two brilliant songs, in which the humanity that underpins this bleak, bracing music finally becomes undeniable.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Stranger to Stranger
    On Stranger to Stranger (Concord), his 13th solo album, he blends the custom-made, fancifully titled cloud-chamber bowls and chromelodeons of maverick composer Harry Partch with an army of globe-spanning musicians into off-kilter pop songs.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    50 Words for Snow
    The singer does a lot of luxuriating on her 10th album; 50 Words for Snow spreads seven songs over 65 leisurely minutes, her multi-octave voice and piano mostly at the forefront.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    So Beautiful or So What
    He approaches it with a light touch and a skip in his stride. He turns the metaphysical into a series of narratives tinged not just with poignance but humor and groove.
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
    The California quintet is as comfortable submerging itself in cheesy beauty as it is in conjuring mayhem, all in service to the neo-poetic lyrics of singer George Clarke. That boundary-free approach makes the band’s fourth album, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (Anti), both a divisive and energizing listen.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Helplessness Blues
    In striving for more self-less version of self, Pecknold and his excellent band have made an album that embraces modesty.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    My Favorite Picture of You
    His first album in four years and one of the best of his storied career.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Have One On Me
    As pretty and carefully detailed as many of these tracks are, their tempos are relatively static and the arrangements tend to drift. Over three discs, the lack of variation becomes problematic.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Old Ideas
    Still feisty after all these years, his entanglements with love and aging [are]documented with wicked wit and an attitude that is anything but sentimental.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Harrow and the Harvest
    It's difficult to fault the songs or the performances, but the hand's off presentation is conservative to a fault, as if the duo were trying not to break the fine china.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    High Violet
    High Violet sees no need to tinker with a successful formula, and because of that it's less a step forward than a refined restatement of well-known strengths.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Beyoncé
    The merger of trap beats, punk defiance and feminist theory may not be destined for the top 10, but boldness like this can’t be measured by chart positions.
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