User Score
6.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 22 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 22
  2. Negative: 5 out of 22

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  1. JonL
    Jul 23, 2007
    5
    Some cool, interesting tracks where the beat approach actually works (usually Ranaldo's stuff), but most of it is dull or just embarrassing. Unless Ranaldo's writing it all, it's better for them to just hint at this approach rather than attack it outright.
Metascore
66

Generally favorable reviews - based on 18 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 18
  2. Negative: 2 out of 18
  1. Magnet
    80
    Doesn't quite reach greatness, but it grows and changes with every listen... [#46, p.92]
  2. 70
    The unruly, bad-dream aftertaste of this material echoes the quartet's early records from the 1980s... Even while there isn't a single song here that holds together from beginning to end, even as the music makes only itself felt in halting jigsaw fashion... the album has a gloomy, unaccommodating tenacity that's hard to shake.
  3. While it captures the contrary, questing essence of Sonic Youth surer than any SY release since 'Washing Machine', it also never betrays the sluggish, arrogant lack of self-editing that made '98's 'A Thousand Leaves' so bilious and unlovable, and the band's self-released 'SYR' EPs so hit and miss.