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Bakesale [Deluxe Edition] - Sebadoh
Bakesale [Deluxe Edition] Image
Metascore
86 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 16 Critics What's this?

User Score
8.2 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 5 Ratings

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10 out of 10
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  • Summary: Originally released in 1994, the fifth studio album for the low-fi indie band led by Dinosaur Jr.'s Lou Barlow is remastered and reissued with B sides and rare tracks.

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 16
  3. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. The A.V. Club
    Jul 6, 2011
    91
    It's a chance to marvel at the record's sturdiness in spite of its sonic adherence to an extremely specific time in music history.
  2. All Music Guide
    Jul 6, 2011
    90
    There's an amusing irony that one of Sebadoh's most straightforward and tuneful albums is accompanied by an hour's worth of the sort of indulgent four-track murk Sebadoh seemed to be actively moving past, though as such things go, there's plenty of adventurous lo-fi sound collage to be found, as well as some prime examples of Barlow staring down his neuroses.
  3. BBC Music
    Jul 6, 2011
    90
    What can't be denied, however, is that the album easily deserves its place in the hearts of those who admire fellow fuzzy-edged slackers Superchunk, Pavement and Guided by Voices as much as those new to the game, who'll find echoes of the band's sound fizzling through modern-day collegiate grungesters like Milk Music or Gun Outfit.

See all 16 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. brianjeremy
    10
    My personal favorite Sebadoh album. This is the one album I suggest that people start with: it's easily their most accessible and polished effort. This reissue tacks on an extra disc of bonus material culled from the Bakesale era singles, demos and so on. As such, the bonus material is mainly for long-time fans. Newer fans would do well sticking with the proper album. The bonus disc is completely different from the proper album because it contains some very noisy material. It's a good juxtaposition to the polish of the proper album. However, the Rebound single, their best single in my opinion, is included and contains some great acoustic renderings of some Bakesale songs plus Social Medicine (a great b-side).… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  2. ZeCatalist
    10
    Remember indie rock? Waaaay back, before Deerhunter and Dirty Projectors? Poor dudes making fuzzy pop songs on four tracks while crashing on friend’s couches? Yeah, those days, when LPs were not a so much a hip fetish item as they were a cheap way to hear a whole lot of music. None this grad school Vampire Weekend BS, but the **real** stuff. The Lou Barlow and Robert Pollard era of indie music – back when the word “indie” had nothing to do with glasses, shoes and haircuts. Seventeen years ago one of the all-time great indie rock albums, Sebadoh’s **Bakesale**, hit record store shelves, instantly earning great reviews and setting frontman Lou Barlow up for what just might go down as the gig of his life, scoring Larry Clark’s classic debut film, **Kids**. Sharing songwriting duties with Barlow for the record was Jason Loewenstein, who joined the band for their other classic record, **Sebadoh III**; not present for the record, of course, is Barlow’s co-founder, the said-to-be flakey Eric Gaffney, who left the band after their much loved 1993 disc, **Bubble and Scrape**. So what is it about **Bakesale**, a record now being celebrated with a two-disc reissue, that makes it sound so classic? Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, I like every Sebadoh album, even their final record (which many seem to hate). That said, **Bakesale** has definitely been the reissue I’d been most looking forward to, as Domino works their way through the band’s entire catalog over a series of years. This because **Bakesale** was, arguably, the time where Barlow (the reason I dig the band so much, though the other members are surely talented) was in his songwriting prime. He’d just left his original band, Dinosaur Jr. for the first time and his third outlet, The Folk Implosion, was starting to get really interesting. At the center of the Barlow era, though, was Sebadoh; and, from what I can tell, **Bakesale** is the album he put the most into, at least from a songwriting standpoint. Where previous Sebadoh albums were either super lo-fi or an uneven mix of loud and gritty and sweet and poppy, **Bakesale** felt like a front-to-back album that played through nicely, with no need for the skip button. Around the same time this album came out both Pavement and Guided by Voices, two somewhat similar sounding and spirited bands, had also gone from messy to focused, releasing classic records that, like **Bakesale**, focused more on the song than the sound. And sure, this move lost some fans, but it probably gained quite a few more. Songs like “Not Too Amused,” “License To Confuse,” “Magnet’s Coil,” “Skull” and “Rebound” sound like all-time college radio classics, ranking easily amongst the best songs by both GBV and Pavement, helping define one of the strangest eras for pop rock music. Disc one (the original album), clocking in at 15 tracks and 42 or so minutes, never gets old, passing quickly and memorably. For the reissue we also get a 25-track second disc full of era-specific bonus material, much of which has been hard – or even impossible – to get for over a decade. We get the seven song **4-Song CD** EP, which instantly makes this an essential purchase if you count yourself a fan and have never owned said EP. Sure, two of the tracks are 4-track versions of **Bakesale** cuts, but the other five are must-owns. Also on the bonus disc: four songs taken from a little known 7″; four songs from the band’s **Rebound** EP, two b-sides from the “Skull” single; three b-sides from the **excellent** “Magnet’s Coil” single; the b-side from the “Not Too Amused” single and four of Loewenstein’s original demo recordings. All together, that’s 15 era-relevant studio recordings collected neatly onto one disc – pretty much a bonus album that feels something like a brother to **Bakesale**, if not quite as good. As suspected, the **Bakesale** does turn out to be the best of the Sebadoh reissues, not just because it’s maybe their signature record, but because the strength and tidiness of the material on the bonus disc. If you’ve bought any of the past reissues, you’ve likely felt a bit frustrated about how tossed together the bonus material feels. Yeah, there’s a generous amount of it, but many of the bonus tracks on past reissues feels more like completist filler-type material than actual songs anyone will spend much time listening to. Not the case with this two-disc set. The ten demo/acoustic tracks are maybe a bit unnecessary, but the other 15 selections are all pretty solid cuts, totally worthy of playing backup to the original 15 cuts on **Bakesale**, one of the best albums of the 1990s.… Expand
    • 1 of 1 users said yes

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