[5] Record label interference extended further than the choice of producer, with Parlophone imposing several limitations that Draper felt restricted their creativity: "[W]e were battered into being a pop group with 'Little Kix'... We were told absolutely definitively 'You are not allowed to have any prog rock elements in the album', so that's why the album fades in and it's one second longer than Dark Side of the Moon, just to piss the record company off (laughs)".

[6] In the liner notes of Legacy: The Best of Mansun Draper provided an example of the dysfunction that existed between the band and its label that centred on the track "Fool".

[3] Dean Carlson of Allmusic observed in negative review, "a new, lovelorn Mansun is shown stripped of their highly divisive costuming of old -- and their bare bodies are ugly.

It's this album's simpler approach that shows them naked and floppy without their previous new romantic/prog-rock garments to hide their failings.

and concluded,"Mansun sometimes fly a little too high with ideas above their station but more often than not they deserve to get away with it thanks to superb musicianship and sheer spirit.

Mature, mainstream and utterly predictable, the band that once promised us the world have delivered yet more lame, cripplingly self-referential, puffed-up, headache-inducing, late-Manics-style retro indie-pomp.

The complete lack of irony prevents it from reaching its potential as a genuinely satisfying production... Everything is so amazingly darling and clichéd.