"NME"s Nick Kent reviewed the album three months before it was released. He speculated it could be the group's best work to date, saying "the album's tonal density is absolutely the toughest, most downright brutal I've heard all year". In March 1975, "Billboard" magazine's reviewer wrote: "["Physical Graffiti"] is a tour de force through a number of musical styles, from straight rock to blues to folky acoustic to orchestral sounds." Similarly, Jim Miller stated in "Rolling Stone" that the double album was "the band's "Tommy", "Beggar's Banquet" and "Sgt. Pepper" rolled into one: "Physical Graffiti" is Led Zeppelin's bid for artistic respectability". "Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau was less impressed, writing that except for side two, the material often wanders into "wide tracks, misconceived opi, and so forth", and "after a while Robert Plant begins to grate".