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
Suffer Little Children of Keith Bennett and Pauline Reade were not attributed to Myra Hindley and Ian Brady until 1985, after "Suffer Little Children" had already been released. The phrase "Hindley wakes and Hindley says; Hindley wakes, Hindley wakes, Hindley wakes, and says: 'Oh, wherever he has gone, I have gone'" is likely a pun on the title of Hindle Wakes, a silent film which made use of location filming in Blackpool and Manchester. First released on "The Smiths" in February 1984, it was re-released in May as a B-side of the single "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now". The "Manchester Evening News" reported