Adam Webb, writing for Yahoo! Music, described the album's style as "professionally amateurish" and M.I.A.'s approach as "scattergun", but said that she "effortlessly appropriates the music of various cultures and filters them through the most elementary equipment". He said, "dancehall is the primary influence, but also one of many seismic collisions with several other genres." In his review for Stylus Magazine, Josh Timmermann described Arular as "a swaggering, spitting, utterly contemporary album" and went on to say, "We've not heard its like before." Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield found Arular "weird, playful, unclassifiable, sexy, brilliantly addictive". Sasha Frere-Jones, writing in The New Yorker, described the album as "genuine world music", based on "the weaving of the political into the fabric of what are still, basically, dance tunes". Other reviewers were not as complimentary. Pastes Jeff Leven said that the album, although strong, was not as "mindblowing" as many critics were saying. Q characterised the album as "style mag-cool pop-rap" and claimed that it lacked the substance suggested by M.I.A.'s decision to name it after her father. Arular was nominated for the Mercury Prize and the Shortlist Music Prize, and was named as the best album of the year by Stylus Magazine. The album placed second in two major critics' polls, The Village Voices 33rd annual Pazz & Jop poll for the Best Album of 2005 and The Wires annual critics' poll for Record of the Year. The Washington City Paper chose it as the second best album of the year, and Pitchfork and Slant Magazine named Arular the fourth best of 2005. The Observer listed it as one of the year's five best albums. Reappraisal Arular was featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, where it was described as "the most sparkling debut since Madonna's first album". The singer Nelly Furtado expressed her admiration for M.I.A.'s style, flow and dancing on Arular, having listened to it during the recording of her album Loose. Thom Yorke of alternative rock band Radiohead cited M.I.A.'s method of music making on Arular as an influence on his own work, saying that it reminded him of "just picking up a guitar and [liking] the first three chords you write" as opposed to "agonizing over the hi-hat sound which seems to happen with programming and electronica a lot of the time". In 2009, the NME placed the album at number 50