[10] Q reviewer Martin Aston commented that Palomine "is produced with a bar band intimacy that amplifies the sparse, roaming spaces at the heart of the music", and that "Carol van Dijk has a vibrant, husky voice, capable of plaintive, precocious passion and gutsy ferverishness".

[15] Stephanie Zacharek, writing for CD Review, said that as a vocalist, van Dijk "taps into" the subtleties of her "austere" lyrics and "brings home, in words, the sorts of things that are otherwise best communicated by a wry smile or the flutter of eyelashes.

"[12] Spin's Jim Greer stated that the album juxtaposes "Van Dijk's suspiciously accurate Long Island-inflected langour with the slow, intense sloppiness of the band to form one glorious mess of sound", while also finding Bettie Serveert's songwriting remarkably mature for an indie rock band.

[1] In The New York Times, Jon Pareles wrote that the band's songs "echo the clear-cut melodies and verbal directness of Neil Young and the garage-rock scruffiness of his collegiate-rock heirs, like Dinosaur Jr."[20] Palomine placed at number 15 in The Village Voice's 1993 year-end Pazz & Jop critics' poll.

[21] Robert Christgau, the poll's creator, awarded it a "two-star honorable mention" and remarked, "by the time the tunes grow on you, you'll be wondering why the songs never get where they're going".