the album as "riding a thematic railroad from nuggets of pure pop philosophy to weighty matters of the soul". Comparing the album's ambition to "other great pop jamborees from Sign o' the Times to the White Album", Maconie commented "to say it's the pop triumph of the year is to damn it with faint praise". David Wild of Rolling Stone said, "If Brian Wilson at the height of his creative powers had spent a year in the studio working up a concept album about love, God and Elvis, the result might have sounded like Jordan: The Comeback. Simon Reynolds of Melody Maker considered the album the band's best since Steve McQueen, deeming it "exquisite, sumptous, marvellously intricate, angelically forceful" while Record Mirror praised what it called "a masterly collection of 19 richly emotive songs".{{refn|group=nb|Reynolds declared of Jordan: "No record has sung inside me more insidiously, more irrepressibly this year, apart from Ultra Vivid Scene's Joy".}} The Washington Posts Joe Brown praised the album's "smart lyrics, buoyant melodies and a pure pop charm the likes of which we haven't heard since the Beatles, or at least Elton John". Q reviewer Lloyd Bradley was most impressed by how the album "fills every nook and cranny with sounds" without overshadowing its songs' core rhythms and melodies. Ira Robbins of Entertainment Weekly commented "Those accustomed to musical junk food may find Jordan: The Comeback too subtle and complex at first, but this airy delicacy is a taste worth acquiring." In lists of the year's best albums, Jordan: The Comeback was ranked third by Mark Woodruff of Spin and 23rd by NME. Ranking the album 27th, Melody Maker added: "If you aren't seduced by one of these 19 tracks, you don't like music". Among retrospective reviews, Jason Ankeny of AllMusic called it "Prefab Sprout's largely successful attempt to embrace the breadth of popular music", adding: "Over the course of no less than 19 tracks, McAloon chases his twin preoccupations of religion and celebrity, creating a loose thematic canvas perfect for his expanding musical palette". Trouser Press deemed the album "remarkably dense, intensely rewarding listening". In 1995, Q included Jordan in its publication "In Our Lifetime: Q's 100 Best Albums 1986–94", a list compiled to celebrate its 100th issue. Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger ranked the record at number 77 in a 1999 list of his favourite albums of the 1990s. Writing in 2007, BBC Music's