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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    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Amok
    As technical achievement, Amok is an amazing album in many ways. As a collection of songs, it’s as slippery as its rhythms.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Push the Sky Away
    Lovely strings, flute and backing vocals occasionally shed some light, but mostly this is Cave playing it slow, hushed and haunted.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Jazz Age
    Ferry’s best songs bubble with double-edged nuances and pastiche-style textures, drawing on influences from many eras. The Jazz Age diminishes that complexity, turning many of these brilliant tunes into period caricatures.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    M B V
    Shields and his bandmates have made a transitional album, one that nods to the band’s storied peak but winds up heading in a new direction.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Electric
    “Dream Attic” was looser and rougher than the guitarist had been in quite some time, a timely reminder that Thompson could still let it rip, and Electric follows suit.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Finally Rich
    Keef is a remote presence on his major-label debut.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood
    The freshness of Shifty Adventures owes to his love of surprise and subversion.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Girl on Fire
    Despite being hyped as her most "personal" album, Girl on Fire is really just more of the same.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Unapologetic
    Talk about a mixed message. Even Rihanna sounds confused.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    King Animal
    They sound more like singer-songwriter leftovers from his solo albums than the stuff of which big rock-band comebacks are made.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sorry To Bother You
    WAVIP closes the album with an anti-climatic "we are all V.I.P." chant, the only dud on an album that otherwise makes even the hardest-hitting messages sound care-free and danceable.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Music From Another Dimension!
    It's hardly ground-breaking, but when Tyler brays, Perry blooze-ifies on guitar, the cow-bells ring and the back-up singers wail, Aerosmith approximates a cartoony version of its glory days. But the album's second half nosedives.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Psychedelic Pill
    The foursome may be interrupted by time and circumstance, but whenever they find themselves in a room together with their instruments they pick up the conversation exactly where they left off.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Blak and Blu
    The guitarist's musical openness is admirable. But Blak and Blu sounds like he's just trying on different styles
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Good Kid, M.A.A.D City
    ["Compton" has] one of the few predictable moments on an album that otherwise brims with comedy, complexity and the many voices in Kendrick Lamar's head.
    • 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.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    All We Love We Leave Behind
    All We Love We Leave Behind occupies the unruly intersection of metal, punk and progressive music, weeding out the weaknesses the band perceives in each genre and saving the good stuff for its rigorously constructed songs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Twins
    It's another strong entry in his fuzz-garage/acid-punk free-for-all, if not quite as ferociously relentless as its predecessor, "Slaughterhouse" (In the Red).
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Unfinished Business
    She connects much more deeply with the country lament "Am I Even a Memory?," a duet with Earle. Her interpretation affirms that even at 74, she's still much more than that.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Sing the Delta
    On this quiet beauty of an album, she once again makes a virtue of her modesty.
    • 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Babel
    The real issue with Mumford & Sons is its pedestrian songwriting and predictable delivery.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Uno!
    Armstrong sounds detached, despite a stream of curse words, and the band plays with a machine-like efficiency.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Truth About Love
    It's not the left-field pop classic she seems capable of one day creating, but it also contains a handful of tracks that laser in on exactly what she does best.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Tempest
    Most of it is an inspired mix of blood and bawdiness.
    • 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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Silver Age
    Silver Age affirms what he does best.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    thefearofmissingout
    thefearofmissingout makes for an excellent, extended mood piece, but its distinguishing moments and alluring melodies are almost too subtle for their own good.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Anastasis
    With this less melodramatic, late-period Dance Can Dance, the finer things are encoded in the details.
    • 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.
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