Bread's reunion album is stronger in every way than the solo albums by individual members David Gates and James Griffin, because it blends the former's sweetness with the latter's rough-edged approach into an easy-listening sound varied enough to carry a whole album.

Original album advertising art. Click image for larger view.

Though its vocal overdubs and keyboard coloration provide more textural richness than any previous Bread-associated music, the style remains the frankly formulaic teen pop it always was, with the emphasis still on tunes and the mood dreamily romantic. Though Gates' title cut is the most immediately striking song, most of the other material is well crafted and catchy. The aural prototype of reformed Bread is America, whose melodic, seamlessly produced albums of highway wistfulness also suggest a West Coast response to the Brill Building pop tradition.

- Stephen Holden, Rolling Stone, 4/21/77.

Bonus Reviews!

There's a really charming (you heard me, charming) track here: "She's the Only One." Bread, back together again with David Gates at the helm, performs it beautifully and simply against a shimmery acoustic-guitar background, and it is one of those easy, folk-inflected songs that automatically spread sunshine all over the place. Most of everything else, unfortunately, is Velveeta-bland, even the stately dramatics of "Our Lady of Sorrow" ("Just today I watched them as they carried her away") and the "sensitive" blubber of "Lost Without Your Love" ("I'm as helpless as a ship without a wheel"). As a group, Bread is hardly a quartet likely to give you much pause one way or another. At least "She's the Only One" proves that they have the occasional ability to charm. But then again, don't we all?

- Peter Reilly, Stereo Review, 5/77.

Bread's reunion album Lost Without Your Love was tepid and uninspired. *

- Steve Holtje, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.

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