Beautiful Freak is the first album using the full band name Eels, in an attempt to get the records in the same general location in the stores as frontman Mark Oliver Everett's previous works under the name "E".

[3] Four singles were released to promote the album: "Novocaine for the Soul" in February 1996, "Susan's House" in May, "Your Lucky Day in Hell" in September, and the title track the following year.

In a contemporary review of Beautiful Freak, Q praised the album as "a complete musical vision, a genre-spanning soundscape that reels you in with its myriad hooks".

"[9] Ethan Smith of Entertainment Weekly stated that "the Eels' postgrunge pop melodies and quirky, intelligent production make for catchy modern rock that's miles ahead of the competition", but felt that E's "attempts at warts-and-all portrayals of urban life come off as a disingenuous, arty pose" and that "a little less pretension would get these guys a lot further.

[14] The Village Voice's Robert Christgau assigned the album a "dud" rating,[15] indicating "a bad record whose details rarely merit further thought.