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
    • 75 Critic Score
    Take Care
    The best of it affirms that Drake is shaping a pop persona with staying power.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    No Better Than This
    Whatever you think of Mellencamp, this is the kind of record that will compel a re-evaluation, an out-of-leftfield shot that mostly works because of its modesty, shagginess and humor--qualities not normally associated with the singer in the past.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Toward the Low Sun
    The collision of the abstract and the beautiful on Toward the Low Sun affirms the Dirty Three's enduring vitality.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Way Of The World
    Recording over five days with his hand-picked band of California-based conspirators (including ace drummer Jay Bellerose and guitarist Greg Leisz), Henry puts the jazz great in a limber, small-group setting well-suited to Allison’s no-frills style and laconic tone.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sun
    With its array of loops, chilled keyboards and rhythmic accents ranging from the Caribbean to the Mississippi Delta, Sun makes Marshall's sultry, darkly shaded voice sound almost playful at times.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ladytron
    A carefully integrated mood piece, and the mood is bleak.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Go-Go Boots
    Patterson Hood's plaintive growl couldn't suit his songs better, and Mike Cooley adds a plainspoken twang.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sound the Alarm
    El-P has never sounded more scathingly unhinged as an MC. Killer Mike, who brought an urban philosopher’s mind set to “R.A.P. Music,” conjures that same level of intensity when he rains down insults alongside his new sidekick.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    2
    2 picks up where the debut left off, with trace elements of Southern swampiness mingling with sun-kissed West Coast mellowness.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hit Reset
    Hanna has actually upped the ante. In many ways, this is the singer's most personal and musically diverse album.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Pearl Jam 20 [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Pearl Jam was typecast as the corporate pretenders to Nirvana's punk darlings in the Seattle hierarchy circa 1991, but they've not only endured but grown as a band--a case concisely made by the Pearl Jam 20 soundtrack.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Cost of Living
    The Providence, R.I., group’s third studio album, Cost of Living (Sub Pop), marks a step up in production clarity, with Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto slightly altering the band’s balance of power while retaining its not-having-it attitude.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    If You're Reading This It's Too Late [Mixtape]
    The album doesn't lift off until it's nearly over.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    World Painted Blood
    Slayer has remained unrelentingly true to its origins. The innovations no longer arrive with each album, but the quartet is playing at a high level, and Greg Fidelman’s production captures that sound with thrilling, their-fist-your-face immediacy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Odd Blood
    The album aims for pleasure rather than introspection, and most of the time, it hits the mark.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Seduction of Kansas
    The follow-up amplifies the hooks, widens the scope, deepens the wordplay.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Bloom
    It adds up to an album that presents a fluffier version of an already pillow-soft sound.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Seeds
    Yes, TV on the Radio is trying to write pop tunes. Some of them aren't bad, and some are so single-minded that it becomes wearying.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Once More 'Round the Sun
    If not exactly lighthearted, Once More 'Round the Sun is certainly the brightest and catchiest of the six Mastodon albums.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ones and Sixes
    Returning to some of the stylistic inroads made on its 2007 album Drums and Guns, Low builds a framework out of electronic static and subterranean feedback.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Under Great White Northern Lights [Live]
    But right down to the tongue-in-cheek stage patter (“My name’s Jack White and this is my big sister Meg White on the drums!”) there’s nothing here that White Stripes’ fans haven’t heard before.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Plastic Beach
    The result is an album that is slightly less immediate--the instant appeal of a hit such as “Clint Eastwood” or “Feel Good Inc.” is lacking. Bobby Womack’s strident vocal on “Stylo” is a rare burst of exuberance, but much of the rest exudes a chilled charm.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A Thing Called Divine Fits
    Divine Fits suggests that Daniel, Boeckner and Brown are doing a lot more than just killing time, if not eclipsing their other, better-known bands.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Voyager
    Nothing feels particularly overdone, and the album plays smoothly enough to qualify as background music for a sand bar.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Fallen Angels
    As mood pieces go, Fallen Angels is a notch or two below its predecessor.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Tree of Forgiveness
    This is the kind of record that preschoolers would find catchy enough to sing along with, accompanied by their grandparents. And yet, the wry, trippy humor and image-rich wordplay often feel futuristic, in the way they conflate time and space, sometimes wondrously, sometimes darkly.
    • 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.
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