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
Is This What You Want? "Is This What You Want?" and the "uncommonly tender" "Fall Inside Your Eyes". Discussing the 2004 reissue in "Record Collector", Terry Staunton described Lomax's style as "[mining] the same seam as Joe Cocker, albeit with a voice neither as distinctive or as powerful" and singled out the "gentle balladry" of "Fall Inside Your Eyes" and "Baby You're A Lover" as highlights. Staunton concluded that Lomax's only Apple album was "a fairly pleasing blue-eyed soul set, which is probably more revered today than it was 35 years ago". Writing in the "Encyclopedia of Popular Music", Colin Larkin says that next to