Reviewing In an Expression of the Inexpressible for NME in 1998, Kitty Empire praised Blonde Redhead's music as "a noble enterprise, fraught with detuned Sonic Youth guitars and scything hardcore fury."[7] In Melody Maker, Neil Kulkarni called the album "funkless" yet "helluva lot more moving, thrilling and intriguing than anything the whole avant-rock/cod-funk axis has ever produced."[6]AllMusic critic Matthew Hilburn attributed its "fuller and more polished" sound to Guy Picciotto and John Goodmanson's production and commented that Blonde Redhead has "never sounded quite as good", despite expressing mild reservations about the band's vocal and guitar performances.[5] Nick Mirov of Pitchfork was less enthusiastic, writing that the band strives for "laid-back tension and moody sexiness" but instead sounds "lethargic and unengaging."[8]
In 2018, In an Expression of the Inexpressible was listed as the 46th-best album of 1998 by Pitchfork.[9] In an accompanying essay, Pitchfork writer Claire Lobenfeld noted the album's shift away from the grittier sound of earlier Blonde Redhead recordings, and toward "a more romantic and uncharacteristically lustrous version of the Sonic Youth mimesis of their first three albums."[9]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Blonde Redhead (Kazu Makino, Amedeo Pace and Simone Pace), except where noted
