according to robert christgau, "nyc ghosts & flowers" proved to be sonic youth's "dud by acclamation" among critics; he himself had given it a positive review in "the village voice" but later said the record's "meanderings", which had "captivated me in their ambiently environmental way, never fully reconnected" on later listens. "select" wrote that "the songs suffer from a lazy approach and the relentless repetition of unengaging chord patterns." "billboard" believed the record "either encapsulates sonic youth's most endearing or annoying qualities, depending on how one feels about the band and the spoken-word poetics from kim gordon." brent dicrescenzo's review for "pitchfork" was far more critical and assigned the album a score of 0.0 out of 10, with the critic panning it as "an unfathomable album which will be heard in the squash courts and open mic nights of deepest hell." commenting on the album's avant-garde roots, he said, "these are not new ideas. these are ideas that were arrogant and unlistenable upon birth thirty years ago." dicrescenzo later reevaluated his opinion of the album and, in 2013, remarked on the higher esteem with which he now held it: "i now love the record. it's unlike anything else; eerie and beautiful. [...] no, the lesson here is: beware the opinions of a kid right out of college." he also described "pitchfork"s decimal scale as "knowingly silly" and "arbitrary".