[1][2] Composed whilst on tour in Europe, the album was noted for its "visceral" instrumental performances, Guy Kyser's gravelly vocals and his personal, abstract lyricism.

According to Trouser Press:[2]Sack Full of Silver is the first full-on studio documentation of the band’s visceral improv style, rife as it is with songs (like “On the Floe”) that rise and fall on crests of post-Hendrix controlled feedback.

To thicken the sonic miasma even further, Kyser and new drummer Matthew Abourezk perform a long, loving do-si-do in the framework of a faithful (if rocked-up) rendition of Can’s “Yoo Doo Right.”Kyser's vocals on the album have been described by Phoenix New Times' Louis Windbourne as "a cross between a gravelly Bob Dylan and an unsure Neil Young.

"[1] In a similarly positive review for Select, Dave Morrison called the album "[h]eavy, heady stuff and [...] as good a place as any to catch up on what all the fuss was about", despite being "a notch down from their very best ('Moonhead', 'In The Spanish Cave')".

[8] Despite the positive reception, guitarist Roger Kunkel would recall years later in a 2016 Tidal retrospective piece on the band's career (whose author Bjørn Hammershaug called the album "criminally underrated") that it "sold less than our others as far as I know.