Writing for AllMusic, Daniel Browne commented that the album is "full of soaring choruses and orchestral backdrops that might as well have been inspired by Tunesmith, Webb the Elder's giant treatise on the art of song", judging their "subject matter" to be "the lifestyle of carefree (and careless) swingers, and they capture it in spare, acidic lyrics that are almost the opposite of their father's grandiloquence".

Club felt that while the Webb Brothers' "perspective remains dour throughout" the album, it "comes cloaked in songs so instantly ingratiating that it's not hard to overlook the sadness just below the surface", opining that Maroon "captures a band with no shortage of methods for converting misery into melody".

Phipps also complimented Stephen Street's "crisp production [that] gives the Webbs a solid base for their ambitious, eclectic songwriting".

[2] Brian Garrity of Billboard summarized Maroon as a "smart collection of California-style orchestral-pop fused with Elvis Costello sensibilities" and a "loose chronicle of the brothers' time spent playing in the Chicago music scene of the mid-1990s" that is "steeped in a weary decadence".

[1] Spin felt similarly, describing the record as a "piano-driven waltz with the ghosts of drugs, alcohol, and loneliness, variously evocative of Elvis Costello, Elliott Smith, and even Wilco, with melodic/harmonic roots in the Beatles".