"Horses" was met with near-universal acclaim from music critics. Reviewing the album for "Rolling Stone", John Rockwell wrote that "Horses" is "wonderful in large measure because it recognizes the over-whelming importance of words" in Smith's work, covering a range of themes "far beyond what most rock records even dream of". Rockwell highlighted Smith's adaptations of rock standards as the most striking songs on the record. In "Creem", Lester Bangs wrote that Smith's music "in its ultimate moments touches deep wellsprings of emotion that extremely few artists in rock or anywhere else are capable of reaching", and declared that with "her wealth of promise and the most incandescent flights and stillnesses of this album she joins the ranks of people like Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, or the Dylan of 'Sad Eyed Lady' and ." "Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau said that while the album does not capture Smith's humor, it "gets the minimalist fury of her band and the revolutionary dimension of her singing just fine."