In many interviews leading up to its release, both Nettles and Bush described the new album as "steampunk movement", best described as a branch of science fiction that imagines a world where humans evolved intellectually, but technology remained set in Victorian times.
[2] This description led fans and critics to believe that the album would have "steam engine sounds", and would also be a sharp deviation from the uptempo country for which they're known.
[3] Blake Boldt of Engine 145 described the first single, "Stuck Like Glue", as "A catchy twang-pop package" and that is "a fun mixture of accordion and mandolin, is a hooky earworm that begins to zero in on Sugarland’s vision of the musical future".
[4] Entertainment Weekly described the track "Wide Open" as "a propulsive rocker", and "Stand Up" as "pure inspiration in two-part harmony".
[6] Influences were drawn from English electronic group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD),[7][8] progressive rock musician Peter Gabriel,[7] and the hair metal genre.
[8] AllMusic critic Thom Jurek felt that the album also borrowed from Joshua Tree-period U2, and post-New Gold Dream era Simple Minds.
[9] The theme of the tour is inspired by steampunk, a style described by The New York Times as "a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and ... fashion".
Basically, it's based on the concept of 'if' during the Victorian era and the age of inventionism, If instead of moving and evolving toward the cyber-world that we're in now – with plastic and computer and silicon chips – what if we just kept it really romantic and organic and made it about steam engines and machines?
So the album itself reaches a little bit further to each of the new parts of who we are and our influences and the places that we love and was inspired kind of forwards and backwards by the development of the show at the same time".
[20] Chris Roberts of BBC Music gave it a positive review and said, "Ultimately you have to admire the precision tooling, the cunningly-gauged parallel levels of bigness and blandness, the ruthlessness – the only-too-plausible machine.
[22] He noted the increased presence of Bush's voice on the album, referring to it as a "blatant error of judgment" and said "[his] anguished scrape is a heavy anchor pulling down "Stand Up," "Wide Open" and the many songs on which he sings harmony at the chorus.
"[22] On a positive note, he called the track "Shine the Light" an "exception", saying, "it’s just Ms. Nettles here, singing while playing the piano, tossing her big voice around with ease.
"[14] Thom Jurek of AllMusic gave it a 2½-stars-out-of-five rating, and largely criticized the production of the album, saying, "while much is being made of how brave and challenging this record is, it's not.
"[8] J. Edward Keyes of Rolling Stone also gave it a 2½ rating, and criticized the sound of the album, saying, "Any remnants of country music left in Sugarland are wiped clean on The Incredible Machine, replaced by spit-shined arena pop [...] Sugarland are ruthless in their desire to leave no radio-ready trick untried, but in the end it's too much machine, not enough heart.
"[16] Mario Tarradell of The Dallas Morning News gave it a 'C−' rating, criticizing Nettles' "grating" voice on the record and saying it "mak[es] the disc immediately hard-to-take".
[23] Randy Lewis of Los Angeles Times gave it 2½ stars out of four, saying it "might easily have [been] subtitled, The Arena Rock Album.
Many country fans are going to dismiss the album simply because Sugarland has gone pop, when the far greater issue is that The Incredible Machine is just awful of its own accord".
"[25] Uncut gave the album only one star out of five and said, "The downhome strum of 'Stuck Like Glue' has a certain charm—at least until its horrific cod-dancehall break down—but fails to redeem a depressingly calculated record.