[7] II is a departure from the Meat Puppets' first album, which largely consisted of noise-filled hardcore punk with unintelligible vocals.

[8] Kurt Loder, in an April 1984 review in Rolling Stone, described Meat Puppets II as "one of the funniest and most enjoyable albums" of the year, as he thought the band had developed beyond thrash music to become "a kind of cultural trash compacter" in which they blend head-banging with "a bit of the Byrds...Hendrix-style guitar...and...Blonde on Blonde–style wordsmithing.

"[14] In his review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau wrote that Curt Kirkwood had combined "the amateur and the avant-garde with a homely appeal," which resulted in a "calmly demented country music" in a "psychedelic" vein.

"[17] In a retrospective review for Pitchfork, Matthew Blackwell called it "a sun-baked, country-fried, acid-addled cowpunk album that could have come from nowhere else but the Arizona desert.

[21] The Meat Puppets' SST labelmates Minutemen covered "Lost" on the live EP Tour-Spiel and their last studio album, 3-Way Tie (For Last).