Despite not being an immediate success, the album grew popular alongside the band's high-profile concert performances, which also helped establish them as fixtures of the Madchester and baggy cultural scenes.

[8] In the opinion of Spin critic Andrew Unterberger, it sounded more like "an exercise in rock classicism", featuring accessible melodies like those of the Beatles and resonant guitars similar to the Byrds, along with "the cheeky (and quintessentially British) humor of the Smiths" and "the self-fulfilling arrogance of the Sex Pistols".

[4] While by this time the Madchester scene had already attracted some coverage from music publications, The Stone Roses originally received little attention from both consumers and critics in the United Kingdom.

[14] Bob Stanley from Melody Maker called it "godlike" and said the foundation of the music was John Squire's guitar playing, which he deemed "beautifully flowing, certainly psychedelic, there are elements of Hendrix (especially on 'Shoot You Down') and Marr (check the fade to 'Bye Bye Badman'), but the rest is the lad's own work".

[15] In Q, Peter Kane was less favourable and felt that The Stone Roses was a promising album weighed down by "strangely monotone production",[16] while NME journalist Jack Barron wrote that it was merely "quite good" while giving it a score of seven on a scale of 10;[17] the latter magazine later ranked it as the second best record of 1989 in their year-end list.

[14] In The Village Voice, US critic Robert Christgau wrote that the group was "overhyped" and no different from the numerous American indie bands, asking "what do they do that the Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield weren't doing better in 1967?"

[18] To support the album, the band played several high-profile gigs, including one on 27 February 1989, at what was regarded as the centre of the associated Madchester and baggy scenes, Manchester's The Haçienda nightclub.

Andrew Collins wrote in NME: "Bollocks to Morrissey at Wolverhampton, to The Sundays at The Falcon, to PWEI at Brixton – I'm already drafting a letter to my grandchildren telling them that I saw The Stone Roses at the Haçienda.

[14] The album eventually brought them nationwide success and soon the band, along with fellow Madchester group Happy Mondays, were perceived as one of the key acts of the baggy scene.

[31] Reassessing it for NME upon its 1991 re-release, Mary Anne Hobbs deemed The Stone Roses "the most fluent crossover album of the last decade", and on its cultural impact, wrote: "Indie-dance was activated, its underground sister the rave scene outed, and Britain went Baggy.

[27] Bernadette McNulty of The Daily Telegraph believed the 2009 reissue polished the band's bold mix of discordant psychedelic sounds and clever dance beats, but that its legacy as a fabled debut album was enhanced more by the darker, masculine music that followed in Manchester during the 1990s.

[34] PopMatters critic Jennifer Makowsky argued that "the psychedelic, drug-powered pop songs on the album earned the band a well-earned place in alternative music history.

"[35] However, American music journalist Jim DeRogatis felt The Stone Roses had been highly overrated by critics, pointing to a "lame retread disco beat" and "oh-so-dated chiming guitars",[36] while Neil Kulkarni from The Quietus said its first three songs were enjoyable but preceded a "right barrel-load of shite afterwards".

[37] In an article on overhyped records for The Guardian, Peter Robinson said that The Stone Roses was "an average rock album – lyrically pedestrian and with a sonic policy swerving from the play-safe to the over-indulgent".

[38] Guardian journalist Penny Anderson criticised the length of certain tracks and noted that the record "doesn't half drag on",[39] while Fiona Sturges of The Independent found Brown's singing and the band's lyrics to be remarkably poor, and objected to the editors of NME voting The Stone Roses the best British album of all time.