[7] The first promotional shows for the album came in late 1999, including a headlining performance at the first Coachella festival on October 9 alongside The Chemical Brothers, Rage Against the Machine and Tool.

[11] Jon Pareles of Rolling Stone remarked that on Midnite Vultures, Beck "plays the insider, riding the executive plane through the good life with every need fulfilled.

"[18] Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that he gives the album "a cinematic richness, depth and detail with an array of mutations and surprises, from banjo hoedown to electronic effects".

[16] Q praised Midnite Vultures as an often "musically dazzling" album, while noting that "the one criticism that can be still levelled at Beck is that his songs remain strangely soulless, failing to ever really grip the emotions or stir the soul.

"[12] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice felt that "his problem isn't that he tries to be funny, but that his jokes are as forced as his horn charts",[20] later giving it a one-star honorable mention rating and remarking that it "does eventually get funky, if anybody cares but me.