"nyc ghosts & flowers" received an approval rating of 66 out of 100 on review aggregator website metacritic, signifying "generally favorable reviews". in a positive review for the "chicago tribune", greg kot said "though sonic youth flirted with alternative-rock songcraft in the early '90s, these noise-rock renegades are once again happily viewing their guitars as hunks of wood, wire and infinite possibility." he went on to write, "no rock band makes the avant-garde sound quite this tactile and sensual." "salon.com" also gave the album a positive review and stated, "even while there isn't a single song here that holds together from beginning to end, even as the music makes only itself felt in halting jigsaw fashion... the album has a gloomy, unaccommodating tenacity that's hard to shake." "mojo" stated that "in the end, it's surprisingly worth it for the few great, strange tracks." in "spin", douglas wolk hailed it as sonic youth's "artiest, most texturally spectacular album" yet, writing that it "fashions a link between the free-jazz of the new york art quartet and the psychotic spasms of 1978's no wave grail, "no new york"." in "nme"s opinion, the album "burns with such a sense of direction and focus" that revealed the group to still be "a vital creative force" in music.