Overall, reception of the album was positive. AllMusic's Zac Johnson described the album as "another set of obscenely lush and opulent pop operettas... meticulously layered and richly textured, with full orchestral passages and many-throated harmonies". After praising the album, Johnson concluded that Wainwright "could be singing lists of names out of the phone book and it would still be more exciting and inventive than 99 percent of the other albums out there". Wainwright's style caused Sal Cinquemani of "Slant" to draw comparisons to a giant peacock's kaleidoscopic tail, and he insisted that producer Marius de Vries " the singer's opulent poperas and lush ballads in check while bringing them to a new level of lovely pageantry". Cinquemani also asserted that "Want One" had a "balanced mix of rollicking rock operas" and "quiet piano ballads".