The album received mixed to positive reviews 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 60, based on 11 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews". AbsolutePunk's Drew Beringer deemed the album "a very diverse and potent debut album", and suggesting it as "one of the most honest records of 2006". "The Washington Post" described +44 as being in the same spirit as Blink-182 ("adorable, cuddly pop punk") and "The Gauntlet" called the record the best post-Blink project. Jenny Eliscu of "Rolling Stone" criticized the album's lack of electronic content, and dismissed much of its content as derivative of Blink-182. Trevor Baker of "Rock Sound" deemed the album "by far the most personal, vitriolic, and self-indulgent thing that Mark and Travis have ever done. In a good way and in a bad way."