"evol" has been well received by critics. robert christgau, with whom the band had sparred in previous years, gave the album a b+. it ranked number 4 among the "albums of the year" by "nme". "slant magazine", who placed "evol" at number 82 on their best albums of the 1980s list, described it as "one of [sonic youth's] strangest albums" and "a difficult album that's nonetheless one of the best latter-day invocations of no wave chaos." "pitchfork" described the album as "the true departure point of sonic youth's musical evolution – in measured increments, thurston moore and lee ranaldo began to bring form to the formless, tune to the tuneless, and with the help of steve shelley's drums, they imposed melody and composition on their trademark dissonance." pitchfork went on to say that "evol" "[was] where the seeds of greatness were sown", and placed it 31st on their list of the top 100 albums of the 1980s. "trouser press" labeled it "a near-masterpiece", and stephen thomas erlewine of allmusic gave it a 4.5-star review, writing that "evol" is "a stunningly fluent mixture of avant-garde instrumentation and subversions of rock & roll."