"The record's secret weapon (...) is saxophone player Zach Djanikian, whose unshowy contributions across the album add new textures ... Along with newfound vocal dexterity from Newman, Djanikian helps lend the record a greater sense of sonic adventurousness ... Even while the New Pornographers have an immediately recognizable sound, you can't really call any one album a retread of another. They're all good - many great - and each one somehow tweaks or branches off from the sound of the previous one. That pattern includes Continue as a Guest, which once again finds enough twists and turns to ward off "the long fade out" that Newman hints at in the title track".