"Blacklight" tells a dark story. It is "an album written about Los Angeles' sketchy side... of characters starving for fame and fortune". At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 71, based on 32 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews." The album received many Fleetwood Mac comparisons. Critics praised the band's move into a newer sound, with Rolling Stone calling it "yet even more adventurous" (referring to the band's 2004 album "More Adventurous").