Benson said in an interview with Mojo magazine that the album feels like a demo because of how the band plays the songs live now.

"Hands" features an outro heavily influenced by AC/DC's "Back in Black", "Call It a Day" has been sped up (found on the Zane Lowe EP), "Store Bought Bones" has been merged with B-side "The Bane Rendition", and many other changes.

"[13] Dan Raper of PopMatters described the group's sound in the album as "garage-tinged/power-pop/rock 'n' roll, the kind of straightforward verse-chorus-bridge songs that do well on commercial radio".

[7] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic commented that the album's songs "prove that the Raconteurs are nothing less than a first-rate power pop band".

It entered the UK charts at #2 and managed to reach #7 in the U.S. As of 2009, the album has sold 522,000 copies in United States.