what all the bells and whistles are about, though. But tracks like 'My Blue Heaven', 'Spin', 'Divine Intervention' and 'I'll Let You Live' promise even greater things to come from this band, who are only now hinting at their growing sonic maturity." NME gave the album a score of six out of ten: "It tails off towards the end, and TBS never quite shake the feeling that other people are doing this sort of thing far more thrillingly elsewhere." Now reviewer Evan Davies wrote that although the group's fans and label had expectations, it "doesn't mean you have to put out the exact same fucking album twice in a row." According to Davies, Taking Back Sunday writes two kinds of songs: "energetic pop rock with whiny vocals, and midtempo power rock, again with whiny vocals." Christian Hoard of Rolling Stone wrote that the group "amped up their sound," with Valentine "delivering a turbocharged attack spiked with dark, catchy melodies and giant choruses." Hoard called most of the album's songs "skull-rattling slasher[s] with enough pop smarts to keep the heartbroken agony from becoming too much to handle." For Stylus Magazine, Ian Cohen wrote that the album "tables the discussion" of whether Taking Back Sunday "embrace their arena destiny or disappear into the basement for cred that never really existed." Cohen concluded, "As was the case with pop-metal, 'albums' weren't the objective, so much as a few ace singles and album tracks that hold serve, which is Louder Now in a nutshell." Commercial performance Louder Now was expected to sell 185,000 copies. It sold 158,000 copies in its first week, and debuted at number two on the Billboard 200. The album had lower first-week sales than Where You Want to Be, which had sold 164,000 copies. Louder Now was surpassed at the top of the chart by Godsmack's IV, which sold 211,000 copies. The album was number two on the Digital Albums chart, number seven on the Top Rock Albums chart and number nine on the Tastemaker Albums chart. It was number five in Canada, number 17 in Australia, number 18 in the UK, number 70 in Ireland and number 90 in Japan. Two months after its release, Louder Now was certified gold by the RIAA. By August 2006 the album had sold over 470,000 copies; in November it was certified silver by the BPI, and was number 124 on the Billboard