Upon its release, James Slattery of
Melody Maker felt Erasure had taken a "misguided quest for serious critical acclaim", resulting in the "greatest singles band in the last 10 years" to produce an album without one "shag-happy top-five certainty" and only "glimpses of what might've been". He said, "Erasure seem too willing to rein in the extravagances and plump for a utilitarian
pop-techno sound, pussy-footing around in a fog of lightweight moderation." Alan Jones of
Music Week remarked that the album "sadly contains fewer songs of merit than any previous Erasure album" and predicted it would be "huge initially" but with a "shorter chart life than usual". He singled out "
Always" for "standing head and shoulders above the rest". Steven Wells of
NME felt the band had "once again proven themselves worthy" with an album which "runs the whole gamut of current bink-bash-bleep-bonk-diddley-bop
dancepop". He added, "There are ten screamingly obviously international top-ten hits here, all of them hymns to an innocence which yearns desperately to be corrupted and all of them with fabulous, juddering, soaring, sickeningly sweet melodies that wiggle and jiggle past the appalled intellect and make straight for the tear ducts." Emma Cochrane from
Smash Hits wrote, "Whether they're camping it up (complete with choir) on 'So the Story Goes' or bopping about on '
Run to the Sun', these boys are onto a winner, and they know it." ==Track listing==