The album has sold 30,000 copies in the United States according to Nielsen SoundScan.[13] Overall it has shipped 170,000 copies worldwide [14] with 65,000 shipped units in continental Europe and Japan, 20,000 of those were in France.[15]
Critical response
Alphabetical was met with largely positive reviews. DIY Magazine called the record "a beautiful and melodious, yet still not quite on a par with some of their debut album."[16]Drowned in Sound described Alphabetical as "a deceptively simply album; a lot of work has gone into making tunes as beautifully organic as this sound so impressively pieced together." They gave the album 8/10, concluding it to be "so utterly, utterly Parisian. Not French, mind, Parisian. But what else did you expect? The most sophisticated, deliciously out of step pop album of 2004 simply had to come from the most urbane, beautiful city in the world."[17]Pitchfork praised the lead single "Everything Is Everything" as "a glorious example of how to write a classically ambiguous soft-pop song." They gave the album a score of 6.7 describing the entire record as something that "doesn't ask you to remember it in the morning."[18]
