The Washington Post called the album "less jaunty than the band's early work, with a high percentage of string-swaddled laments about such subjects as faithless women, haunted widowers and unsolved child murders." Exclaim! wrote that "many of the compositions wander into slower, quieter places of lyrical introspection about love and love astray, while other upbeat numbersseemthrown in for good measure, abound with delightfully catchy guitar melodies and hopeful vocals." The A.V. Club wrote that "songs occasionally ride dangerously close to the adult-contemporary world, but only in search of something simply adult." Robert Christgau considered the album to be a "dud".