Robert Palmer of The New York Times hailed it as the year's "most outstanding rock album," writing that Reed had finally matched the "hard, thoughtful, unflinching songs" of the Velvet Underground's groundbreaking debut from 1967.

He also praised the musicianship, particularly Reed and Quine's guitar work, writing that they "interact with a sort of empathy and lucidity one expects from a seasoned jazz combo and the music always reaches out to invite the listener in, even at its most intensely personal level.

"[14] In The Boston Phoenix, Ariel Swartley wrote that "What Reed has done (it sounds simple to lay things out this way, the album's anything but) is to expose rock ‘n’ roll’s intellectual affinities without spoiling its immediacy.

He’s solved, or at least brought evidence to bear on, a variety of post-punk problems: how to say complicated things in inarticulate-sounding voices; how to achieve the sustained revelation of confessional writing while escaping the claustrophobic confines of personality; how to reconcile inspiration with craft.

"[16] NME said, "What made The Blue Mask Lou Reed’s watershed album was his choice of musicians, a new wave super-set of them – Fernando Saunders on bass, Doane Perry on drums, and the legendary Robert Quine on guitar.

[17] Alternately, Barney Hoskyns criticized the album for a "smarmy self-satisfaction that said: 'I may have been a bit of a jerk when I strutted around on stage with a needle in my arm, but I am now a bona fide Artist and you will treat me as such.

[19] In a retrospective appraisal, Jess Harvell of Pitchfork praised Quine's "virtuoso blend of post-Reed skronk and speed-folkie melodicism" and wrote that "The Blue Mask is still the one to slot alongside Transformer and Street Hassle.