now "an exposed, rather than a comfortable, place to be". In the NME, Tony Tyler began his review by stating that he had long idolised Harrison as "the finest packaged object since frozen pizza", but he had changed his opinion dramatically in recent years; after the "dire, ennui-making" All Things Must Pass, Tyler continued, "the unworthiness of my heretical thoughts smote home around the time of the Bangla Desh concerts." Tyler dismissed Material World with the description: "[It's] pleasant, competent, vaguely dull and inoffensive. It’s also breathtakingly unoriginal and – lyrically at least – turgid, repetitive and so damn holy I could scream." The reviewer concluded: "I have no doubt whatever it'll sell like hot tracts and that George'll donate all the profits to starving Bengalis and make me feel like the cynical heel I undoubtedly am." Robert Christgau was also unimpressed in Creem, giving the record a "C" grade and writing that "Harrison sings as if he's doing sitar impressions". In their 1975 book The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, Tyler and co-author Roy Carr bemoaned Harrison's "didactically imposing said Holy Memoirs upon innocent record-collectors" and declared the album's spiritual theme "almost as offensive in its own way" as Lennon and Yoko Ono's political radicalism on Some Time in New York City (1972). Writing in the inaugural issue of the Australian publication Ear for Music, Anthony O'Grady remarked on the album's religiosity: "oftentimes the music is a more truthful guide to the sense of the lyrics than the words themselves. Harrison is not a great wordsmith but he is a superb musician. Everything flows, everything interweaves. His melodies are so superb they take care of everything." Like Holden, Nicholas Schaffner approved of the singer's gesture in donating his publishing royalties to the Material World Charitable Foundation and praised the album's "exquisite musical underpinnings". Although the "transcendent dogma" was not always to his taste, Schaffner recognised that in Living in the Material World, Harrison had "devised a luxuriant rock devotional designed to transform his fans' stereo equipment into a temple". Aside from the album's lyrical themes, its production and musicianship were widely praised, Schaffner noting: "Surely Phil Spector never had a more attentive pupil." Carr and Tyler lauded Harrison's "superb and accomplished slide-guitar breaks", and the solos on "Give Me Love", "The Lord Loves the One", "The Light That Has Lighted the World" and "Living in the Material World" have each