In making comparisons to other popular artists of the late 1990s, Al Muzer, in "Consumable Online", commends the band's music for being more sophisticated than chart-topping acts such as the Spice Girls and Hanson; other reviewers, such as "Spin"s Jeff Salamon, take a more critical stance in noting the preponderance of bands with similar influences—period film scores and orchestrated pop, overlaid with beats—in the wake of Portishead, and criticize Mono for playing "by-the-numbers" in a combined review with Alpha's "ComeFromHeaven", which is rated above "Formica Blues" for its more varied musical approaches. Several other critics make a note of Mono's relationship to this body of artists—characterized by Allmusic as "mid-'90s male instrumentalist/female singer duos" and "The Independent" as "that very Nineties pairing of the shady back-room knob-twiddler and the photogenic chanteuse".