Upon release, "Vespertine" received universal acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 88, based on 28 reviews. Heather Phares from AllMusic called it "an album singing the praises of peace and quiet", praising it for proving that "intimacy can be just as compelling as louder emotions". Anthony Carew from About.com gave the album the highest rating and said it was "quite possibly the best album of the '00s". He considered the album to be self-aware of "the digital epoch had just dawned upon the realm of recorded music" in the early 2000s, noting that it is "not just a product of this brave new non-world, but wholly informed by that." "The A.V. Club"s Keith Phipps found it to be: "an album both timeless and of the moment, an avant-garde electronic-pop exploration of classic themes". David Fricke of "Rolling Stone" felt that "Vespertine" was: "the sound and sentiment of a woman exulting in the power and possibility of her gift, one who has finally figured out how to grow up without growing old." In a later review for "The New Rolling Stone Album Guide", Douglas Wolk described the album as "a banquet in the hall of Björk's personal erotics" and stated that "it's not the stuff of radio hits, but the music is spectacular".