Is This What You Want? superstar backing musicians, saying, "they're always talkin' about who's on the album and not the album itself." Writing in "ZigZag" in July 1974, Andy Childs advised the magazine's readers: "it's worth its weight in gold, so if it's absent from your collection, add it to your shopping list of second-hand records." Greenfield and Childs both recognised Harrison's "Sour Milk Sea" as a highlight of the album. Richie Unterberger of AllMusic offers a less favourable opinion of "Is This What You Want?", describing Lomax as "a passable but unarresting singer and songwriter". Unterberger identifies the best moments as the "Beatlesque" songs
This Is What the Truth Feels Like It was the venue for her first live performance with her band No Doubt opening for Ziggy Marley in 1990. "This Is What the Truth Feels Like" received generally favorable reviews from contemporary music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 62, based on 16 reviews. Leah Greenblatt of "Entertainment Weekly" stated that Stefani's material "feels truer—and sounds stronger—than it has in years". Mikael Wood of the "Los Angeles Times" was very positive in his review, highlighting that "[h]er singing—and, more important, what her