The Vinyl Files Part 6 ... Bread - The Sound of Bread (1977)

For those of us involuntarily tasked with the onerous assignment of growing up in the late Seventies and early Eighties, or at least, those of us prone to rummaging through our parents’ record collection, The Sound of Bread will be a very familiar album. You’ll know it, you’ll have heard it, and most of you will either love it or hate it - depending on your general disposition and any sense of nostalgia you’re able to attach to it ...

Pure nostalgia is the only reason this album has survived a couple of vinyl collection culls, and like the previous entry on the Vinyl Files, this one isn’t particularly rare. If anything it’s quite the opposite. It’s a soft-rock staple and many of the tracks on this compilation helped to define an era in popular music when soft-rock ruled. Classic Hits Radio playlist compilers still love this stuff. 

While The Sound of Bread blends a nice balance of the soft and fast with the softer and slower, it’s generally tracks of the latter variety which stand-out, and best serve to highlight the modest beauty of David Gates’ smooth yet occasionally delicate lead vocal - ‘Baby I’m A Want You’, ‘Make It With You’, ‘Lost Without Your Love’, ‘Guitar Man’, ‘If’, and ‘Everything I Own’ … really, what more needs to be said? 

Of all of my Mum’s records - and there weren’t that many, in retrospect - I found myself lounging about to in the hour or so after school before being forced to refocus my attentions on pesky stuff like homework, only Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours enjoyed more airtime than The Sound of Bread. 

But back then, I really didn’t know any better. 

(The Vinyl Files is a short series of posts covering the best items in your blogger’s not very extensive vinyl collection)