said that the group lost most of their audience by being "less experimental" with their music. Upon release, a Billboard reviewer predicted that "the group should score high on the charts" with the album and highlighted "Anna Lee, the Healer" and "Transcendental Meditation" as "catchy numbers". Rolling Stones Arthur Schmidt wrote in his review of the album: "Everything on the first side is great. ... Listen once and you might think this album is nowhere. But it's really just at a very special place, and after a half-dozen listenings, you can be there." Jazz & Pops Gene Sculatti reported that there were detractors of the Beach Boys who most frequently took issue with the band's "apparently excessive immersion in and identification with mass culture and 'commercialism'". In spite of such criticisms, he deemed Friends "[perhaps] their best" work yet, calling it "the culmination of the efforts and the results of their last three LPs. ... It is another showcase for what is the most original and perhaps the most consistently satisfying rock music being created today." In his review for NME, Allen Evans commented on the brevity of several of the tracks and described "Transcendental Meditation" as "a weirdo piece" and "Passing By" as "quite delightful" in its use of "voices … as instruments". He concluded: "Varied and interesting, though maybe not their best LP." Writing in the same publication's annual for 1968, Keith Altham reported that "Do It Again" "seemed like two steps backwards" but had nevertheless re-established the Beach Boys as hit-makers, while Friends received "considerable criticism from critics who complained that one entire side of the album lasted just a few minutes longer than the hit single 'MacArthur Park'". In Disc & Music Echo, Penny Valentine wrote of the "Friends" single, "Whither the progressive Beach Boys? ... If The Beach Boys are as bored as they sound, they should stop bothering ... They are no longer the brilliant Beach Boys. They are grey and they are making sad little grey records." Record Mirrors David Griffiths referred to "Transcendental Meditation" as "the most disappointing Beach Boys track of the year". Retrospective In its 1990 liner notes, David Leaf wrote that Friends was since reevaluated as "one of the Beach Boys' finest artistic efforts," whereas critic Will Hermes wrote in 2019: "The music from this period has generally been considered subpar by the impossible-to-match standards set by Pet Sounds".