What About Regret

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[9]
The Indianapolis Star	[10]
MusicHound Folk: The Essential Album Guide	[11]

Stereo Review considered that, "while there's great warmth in Jacobs's songs, and a nice homemade quality, many of her offerings have an off-putting vagueness and an eccentricity-for-eccentricity's-sake quality about them."^[12] The Indianapolis Star opined that "Jacobs' voice is light and lilting, but unwavering... Musically, she's akin to Nanci Griffith and Iris DeMent, but she's no clone."^[10] The Philadelphia Inquirer determined that Schramm "decorates each tune beautifully with whatever acoustic or electric touches the songs demand."^[13]

The Chicago Tribune concluded that the "brilliant lyrics continue to detonate long after these lovely, sometimes meandering, folk-pop tunes have finished."^[14] Trouser Press wrote: "A moderately demanding emotional experience, (What About Regret) rewards careful listening with details and empathy, like a series of personal letters from close friends."^[15] The Chicago Reader thought that "Jacobs sings her airy country-tinged folk rock with a slippery warble, sliding over clearly defined melodies with a palpable shyness."^[16]

Will Hermes, in City Pages, listed the album as his fifth favorite of 1995, writing that "of all the country-rock sets this year, Jacobs's moved me the most... In a word, it was her stories—tales not of vague ennui, but of people I knew intimately"; The Star-Ledger also listed What About Regret among 1995's best albums.^[17][18] MusicHound Folk: The Essential Album Guide praised "some of the richest, most complex songs written during the [1990s]."^[11]