Swampy rhythms? Check. Nasty, cutting slide guitar? Present. A funky combination of blues, country and rock and roll? Oh yeah. Quirky idiosyncratic songwriting? Well, three out of four ain’t bad. ... With keyboardist Billy Payne as the lone remaining original member, Feat stomp and strum their way through a pretty good batch of new tunes that capture the band’s distinctive musical gumbo but aren’t exactly classics on the order of Lowell George’s timeless songs that remain the backbone of the group’s raison d’être. Still, with help from Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, they’re solid enough and the veteran band sounds fresh, inspired and revived if not exactly young and hungry on their first studio album of original material in twelve years and after losing irreplaceable founding drummer Ritchie Heyward. Considering their time in the cult trenches, that’s plenty impressive.〔()〕

Rooster Rag reveals the same sophistication of all post-Lowell George-era Little Feat releases, except that this sophistication sounds progressive, more like the band is having a good time making the music. ... This album is something other than greater than the sum of its parts. The blanket presence of Paul Barrere's underrated slide guitar causes this disc to reveal that these seasoned musicians can still draw from their peers.〔()〕