[23] Press promoting the album cited "gloomy Britpop, warm Motown, soaring indie, a love for Kings of Leon’s Aha Shake Heartbreak, skittering IDM, Madchester, classic rock, old skool hardcore" as influences.

[25] Paul Simpson of AllMusic wrote that the album's near-constant "anxiety and doubt [...] all goes down easily and thrillingly due to the winning combination of slamming breakbeats and Nia's charming personality, as well as the chiming guitar melodies influenced by samba and dreamy indie rock", though felt that her "always sincere" lyrics could "be a bit on-the-nose at times".

[26] Joe Muggs of The Arts Desk described Silence Is Loud as "a singer-songwriter record, unmistakeably made by someone raised in the 2000s era of Lily Allen, Kate Nash, Arctic Monkeys, Amy Winehouse", complete with "the “junglist” hardcore rave momentum and soundsystem power of her early work".

opined that "her signature breakbeat [was] the ideal vehicle to communicate the chaos of being the overwhelmed girl in the corner of the party", though felt that her breakbeats were "often somewhat indistinct from one another",[29] and Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of the Financial Times wrote that Archives had "turn[ed] jungle and drum and bass into pop music [...] with eclecticism and personality, in the spirit of jungle’s original nuttahs".

[35] Ed Power of the i described the album as "a spikily enjoyable mash-up of Blur-meets-Goldie, Liam-Gallagher-does-LJT-Bukem" [sic] and "the work of an artist with both a magpie’s eye for retro flourishes and a talent for bare-boned songwriting", and compared her "landfill indie-era confessional pop" to that of Nash, Allen, and Caity Baser.

[30] Louder Than War's Banjo wrote that "taken as a whole, Silence Is Loud is a tremendous debut that surely marks Nia Archives' move into the spotlight of being a major act".

[31] Alexis Petridis observed "a certain colloquial snottiness to the vocals" and described her voice as "strong and appealingly unmannered", though felt the songwriting to be uneven, opining that it "ranges from slightly undercooked [...] to genuinely striking, even daring"; he did however favourably compare the album to Goldie and Noel Gallagher's "Temper Temper", and felt that the album was "impressive and bold enough to leave you wondering how she might develop, rather than worrying where she can go next".

[23] Ben Jolley of Rolling Stone wrote that the album "boasts plenty of intense bass lines to keep jungle purists satisfied", and opined that "the record’s intricately detailed, narrative-driven songs make this a collection to be experienced in full, from start to finish".

[37] Noah Barker of The Skinny opined that the album played "like the record's runtime was set before material was allotted to the space, unleashing a high-octane sugar rush in a space fit to dilute it into the unbearableness of being palatable",[32] and Charles Lyons-Burt of Slant Magazine compared Archives's vocals to Amy Winehouse wrote that the album "often sounds like she’s both narrating a scene and retreating back into herself", and felt that Archives was "ultimately unable to wring enough pathos from the narrative she presents".