"Rolling Stone" staff writer Al Weisel gave "Vitalogy" four out of five stars, describing the album as "a wildly uneven and difficult record, sometimes maddening, sometimes ridiculous, often powerful." While Weisel praised several songs as " the soaring anthems of "Ten"", he criticized some of the more experimental songs as "throwaways and strange experiments that don't always work". Jon Pareles of "The New York Times" praised the album's diversity compared to the band's previous records. He commented that the band incorporated "fast but brutal punk, fuzz-toned psychedelia and judicious folk-rock, all of it sounding more spontaneous than before." Pareles felt that the band continued to be "unremittingly glum", and described the majority of the songs as "tortured first-person proclamations". Pareles concluded, "Vedder sounds more alone than ever." "Time" reviewer Christopher John Farley singled out "Bugs" as one of the album's "share of stinkers". Farley added, "But that's one admirably experimental failure on a largely successful album." Despite writing negatively of the album's "shapeless high-energy riff-rockers", "Newsday" staff writer Ira Robbins lauded "Vitalogy"s sound and called it a "compelling triumph of surface over substance". In a mixed review of the album, Mark Jenkins of "The Washington Post" perceived a lack of subject matter and lyrical substance as "Vitalogy"s weakness.