Retrospective reviews have been more favourable. AllMusic and BBC Music remarked that the album returned to the whimsical eccentricity of "Nursery Cryme" while retaining the hard rock intensity and pessimism of "Foxtrot", combining the best of both elements to make Genesis's best album up to that point. Christgau, later writing in "" (1981), admitted that the songs "Firth of Fifth" and "The Battle of Epping Forest" have "a complexity of tone that's pretty rare in any kind of art", though he summarised the rest of the album by saying "it sounds as snooty as usual".