"Demolition Plot J-7" was ranked as the fourth best EP of 1990 in the "Village Voice" Pazz & Jop Critic's Poll. "Demolition Plot J-7" helped define the early "messed-up, art-steeped guitar noise" sound of Drag City, which would become a seminal independent label. Donna Freydkin of CNN.com wrote in a 1999 retrospective of the band's history that "it was with the release of the 1990 EP ["Demolition Plot J-7"] that Pavement secured a devoted following." "Village Voice" writer Michaelangelo Matos noted "Demolition Plot J-7" and its follow-up, the 1991 EP "Perfect Sound Forever", as "epochal to ... sloppy early-'90s undergrads."