According to New Zealand music critic Graham Reid, a contemporary Australian review remarked on the album's religiosity: "oftentimes the music is a more truthful guide to the sense of the lyrics than the words themselves. Harrison is not a great wordsmith but he is a superb musician. Everything flows, everything interweaves. His melodies are so superb they take care of everything …" Like Holden, Nicholas Schaffner approved of the singer's gesture in donating his publishing royalties to the Material World Charitable Foundation and praised the album's "exquisite musical underpinnings". Although the "transcendent dogma" was not always to his taste, Schaffner recognised that in "Living in the Material World", Harrison had "devised a luxuriant rock devotional designed to transform his fans' stereo equipment into a temple".