Editors at AllMusic rated this album 2 out of 5 stars, with critic Brian Egan writing that the band "took a short step back" from their previous album and that the songs "ultimately fail to register".[1] Byron Coley of Spin pointed to the work on Sandbox to declare that Guided by Voices is "one of the sharpest sounding angle-pop bands out of the Midwest since the days of Green".[2] In that publication's 1995 album guide, they rated Sandbox a 1 out of 5, stating that the band deviated from their lo-fi music roots after performing with R.E.M.[3]
In 1995, frontman Robert Pollard called this album "an attempt to make a huge power-pop record for less than a thousand dollars." Meanwhile, journalist David Sprague reported that this album was painful for him to listen to.[4]
