In "Rolling Stone", the album was referred to as "a remarkable debut album", compared to Randy Newman, and was branded a "boozier, earthier version of same and delights in rummaging through the attics of nostalgia, the persona that emerges from this remarkable debut album is Waits's own, at once sardonic, vulnerable and emotionally charged" while "Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau noted that with his "jazz-schooled piano and drawling delivery ... Waits exploits an honest sentimentality which he undercuts just enough to be credible".