Thought Gang was met with mostly positive reception. The album received an average score of 70/100 from 5 reviews on
Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
AllMusic's Bekki Bemrose acknowledged the difficulty and eccentricity of the music but recommended it to hardcore fans of Lynch and Badalamenti. She went on to write that the album's greatest asset is its "sound of two old friends having a great deal of mischievous fun". Andy Beta of
Pitchfork expressed mixed feelings on the strangeness of the music (especially Badalamenti's spoken word vocals) and wrote, "As frightful and bewildering as a
Dion McGregor nightmare,
Thought Gang reveals Lynch and Badalamenti’s shared drive to disrupt any through line or logical outcome, the sounds and words as baffling as dream logic". Kory Grow of
Rolling Stone described the album as "unpredictable and uneven but also strangely compelling", echoing the sentiment of other reviewers that the music is at once magnetic and repulsive. Writing for
Exclaim!, Jenna McClelland described the album as "for lovers of non-expositional storytelling, crude mystery, lipstick-red esoteric jazz, and noise". == Legacy ==