photograph of Blank and Meier standing by the same window, with the painting visible on the window between them. Critical reception The album received mixed reviews from the UK music press. In Record Mirror Betty Page enthused, "This picks up where [You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess] left off, taking its themes and mashing them up, pointing them in new, exciting directions... An album of moods and atmospheres, it must be listened to at maximum volume in a very dark room. Bliss." Kevin Murphy of Sounds declared that "Yello's wry, pulsating melodramas lavish themselves on Stella in a sensuous escapade, leaving no room for faint hearts or lovers. Each haunting episode reeks of a sublime suspense with a liberal coating of electric eccentricity. Mellow moods are savaged by impassioned cries and discordant desires as humour seeps from vital pores." Martin Aston of Melody Maker was less impressed, saying, "Their slick marriage... no, make it a steamy affair, between accessible splicing montage methods and sophisticated disco has the necessary balance of artifice and sweet melody, crisp danceateria [sic] moves and conceptual laziness (posing as artful dodging) that could conceivably pull the wool over people's eyes... Post-Fairlight, Yello are clever, sometimes too clever-clever, occasionally jarring as the montaging lays code upon codas." The most critical review came from Ian Penman in NME, who stated that avant-garde art should not appear perfect, as Stella did, and that "the various whispered or wailing 'mood pieces' of Stella strike me as branded and bandied about with a rather familiar complacency". He concluded that the record "has no fuzziness, no loose threads, its metronome beat has nothing of the layered bliss of funk". Reviewing all six reissued Yello albums in 2005, Ian Harrison of Mojo stated that Stella "saw further refinements in sound [to You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess] and a more pronounced Euro-pop agenda, but however slick tracks like 'Oh Yeah' or 'Vicious Games' might be, it's never entirely comfortable listening". AllMusic's John Bush believed that Stella was Yello's "best single LP, an excellent production throughout by Boris Blank, from the theatric instrumentals 'Stalakdrama' and 'Ciel Ouvert' to the frenetic pitched percussion on 'Let Me Cry'. As well, Dieter Meier proves he's at his best vocally, whether it's the seamy side of life on 'Desert Inn' or an exaggerated leer for 'Koladi-ola'. Both hit their peak on the same album, and Stella