[1] musicOMH contributor John Murphy said that nearly "overnight, The Zutons shifted from quirky cult indie group to 'the band who wrote Valerie'" heightening the expectations for their next album.

[3] The Guardian critic Ian Gittins wrote that Drakoulis' work on the album gave it a "layer of gritty blues" to the band's "skew-whiff psychedelia".

[4] "Dirty Rat" is a ballad[7] that The Independent music critic Andy Gill said was an "adulterer's mea culpa set to the first cousin of a Kaiser Chiefs melody".

[8] The album's closing track, "Little Red Door", merged the sound of the Verve and Neil Young;[5] Murphy said it had "Drakoulis' influence" all over it with its "slide guitar, mournful vocals and handclaps".

[11] The Fly writer Darren James noted that there was "less joyous freshness evident than on the previous two albums, but at times they hit some hugely high spots", such as the performances on "What's Your Problem".

[14] Gill wrote that the band's "difficult third album features another cast of flaky characters culled from the seedier corners of David McCabe's imagination, though the inevitable attrition means that none has quite the anthemic appeal of 'Valerie'".

[12] Record Collector's Terry Staunton felt that it "could have been released at any point in the last 40 years and it wouldn’t sound dated or out of place, but such era- and genre-hopping can be a double-edged sword".

BBC Music's Chris Jones wrote that the songs were "delivered with that great yearning scouse voice of Dave McCabe that helps overcome the overwhelming kitchen-sink squalor of it all sometimes".

[15] Cook wrote that McCabe's vocals were "unvaried and only infrequently made better with the addition of Abi Harding's more exciting, refreshing voice making for a disappointing album on the whole with instances of under-explored brilliance".