Chicago Tribune's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    R.A.P. Music
    With R.A.P. Music he's added a must-hear chapter to the hip-hop bible.
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Crushing
    That sense of surprise, the risk-taking of an artist daring to dig for truth, no matter how inconvenient or uncomfortable it might be, isn’t something to be taken for granted. That it informs every song suggests that “Crushing” is likely to become one of the year’s enduring albums.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Kaputt
    Kaputt is Bejar seemingly at his mellowest, drifting through a world shrouded in synthetic keyboard fog and saxophones.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mental Illness
    This is a solid addition to Mann's estimable discography, the kind of record that sets a mood and sustains it for 39 craftsmanlike minutes.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Fantasy Empire
    Its records can be exhausting listens, buried in mulch, but Fantasy Empire cleans things up a bit without reining in the intensity.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Warm
    He makes the 11 songs on Warm (dBpm Records) sound effortless, sprinkled with Byrds-gone-country twang and touches of ambient dreaminess and acid-tinged atmospherics.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Indestructible Machine
    She conveys toughness, tenderness and humor with off-handed conviction.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Cancer4Cure
    Few artists create a tougher, colder world as convincingly.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    This Is Happening
    It in many ways is the most danceable LCD album yet, a celebration of losing yourself in semi-darkness and a sea of undulating bodies between the speaker cabinets.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Treats
    Together they create absorbingly terse songs, and prove that the indie-rock trend of minimalist, two-person bands still has some kick in it.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Yeezus
    On the surface, he’s created a polarizing album that practically demands to be loved or hated. But with West, it’s never quite that easy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You
    It’s music, fighting to be wild.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness
    Burn Your Fire for No Witness boasts an even more robust presence [as her 2012 debut, "Half Way Home"], thanks to production by John Congleton.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cuz I Love You
    Over 11 songs in 33 minutes, Lizzo rarely lets up, a relentless assault that favors excess verging on camp over subtlety.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Currents
    Though still dense and detailed in a way that lives up to Parker's reputation as an obsessive studio hermit, Currents also feels more spacious and danceable in its finest moments.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Rebound
    Friedberger’s economical way with language, the way she can pack complex emotions into the space of a few lines, testifies to her craftsmanship. Though its origins are relatively modest--a woman alone with her thoughts and a cheap keyboard--Rebound doesn’t sound like a bedroom record.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Modern Vampires of the City
    Overall, the band has sacrificed the immediacy of the earlier records for something knottier and stranger. For those who once found the band a pleasant diversion at best, Modern Vampires of the City represents an intriguing left turn.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    El Camino
    "El Camino" is all about instant gratification: guitar riffs, handclaps, slinky keyboard textures, walloping beats, wordless sing-along vocals, and even more guitar riffs. It sounds like it was written with the express purpose of rocking the arenas that the Black Keys will be headlining next year.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Freedom's Goblin
    With 10 tracks spread across a mere 36 minutes, Segall’s self-titled 2017 album functioned as an instant career overview. As the longer, less-focused sequel, Freedom’s Goblin comes off as almost too much of a good but increasingly overfamiliar thing.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Celebration Rock
    What makes this album so powerful and moving is the way that innocence erodes in its second half.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
    The music is breezier, more relaxed, even as it wiggles beyond the contours of traditional pop. It’s the aural equivalent of a sun-kissed afternoon swaying in a hammock, the mind and the songs drifting away on their own quirky paths.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Turn Out the Lights
    An album that turns its predecessor’s intimacy into something far more ambitious.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Ugly
    New Jersey trio Screaming Females plays with more ferocity and confidence then ever.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Tempest
    Most of it is an inspired mix of blood and bawdiness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Blunderbuss
    It makes for an entertaining rollercoaster of a listen.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    case/lang/veirs
    The work is what counts, and it's the songs and their organic presentation that make case/lang/veirs resonate.
Page: