Critical reaction to Sixteen Tambourines has been polarized, with the album being hailed as "incredible" in some quarters, but dismissed as "precious" or "twee" in others.
Trouser Press described the album as "absolutely charming and remarkably memorable," as well as being "an incredible full-length collection of chiming, memorable power pop tunes played and sung as if each track were likely to get played on every radio station coast-to-coast," singling out producer Earle Mankey's work as "slick and inventive."
In a contemporary review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave Sixteen Tambourines a "C+" and said hearing such "precious falsettos" and "baroquely tuneful" music "might (I said might) have been fun" in the 1960s, "but in 1983 it's likely to make a grown man puke".[2] A blogger for The Guardian later called the album "pretty awful", complaining that The Three O'Clock "always hinted at something incredible, and then ruined it all with an anaemic keyboard line or singer Michael Quericio's weedy vocals. If you were to sum them up in one word, it would be twee."[3]
Reviewing the album's paired release with the 1982 EP Baroque Hoedown, AllMusic critic Sean Westergaard gave it four and a half out of five stars and recommended the release as "a good way to check out this important band from the paisley underground".[4]
Track listing
All song written by Louis Gutierrez and Michael Quercio, except where noted.
Side A
"Jet Fighter" – 3:22 (Mariano, Gutierrez and Quercio)
