"Black Sea" received critical acclaim. An unnamed "Billboard" reviewer deemed the album "consistently appealing and more accessible than ["Drums and Wires"]. The vocals of Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding have an attractive breeziness and the instrumentation is tight." In "Musician", Roy Trakin wrote of XTC as among "the new English art rock" and praised "Black Sea"s successful fusion of "Partridge's love of rhythm and Moulding's affinity for melody ... Songs like 'Towers of London' and 'Burning With Optimism's Flames' show the two approaches finally achieving a seamless synthesis."