[4] Among the topics: "[Frontman Doug] Martsch sings about everything from the erotic thrill of touching a girl's thumb during an elementary-school game of seven-up to the hip appeal of David Bowie.

Neil Strauss at the New York Times was positive in his 1995 assessment of the record, commenting: "With jagged layers of guitar, a piecemeal approach to pop music and sharp, introspective lyrics, the second album from this Boise, Idaho, band shined like a sequin on the dirty shirt of indie-rock.

"[16] John Bush at AllMusic wrote, "Beneath the wacky guitar fooling and somewhat nasal vocals, Built to Spill write great love songs, whether its bouncy pop or fragile melodies.

"[19] Upon its 2015 reissue, Jillian Mapes at Vulture opined: "The excitement Doug Martsch rings out of childhood anecdotes gone sideways with little more than his completely ordinary voice and his now-imitated guitar-playing (see: “Twin Falls”) is something to cherish, but so are the jangly, distorted rocking-out moments like “Big Dipper,” too.

[21] Mark Richardson, in a retrospective piece for Pitchfork, suggested that Love "has come to define a certain strand of indie rock, leaving a cluster of threads picked up by Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, and many more.

[22] Jon Dolan from Spin ranked it among the best albums of the 1990s: "[it] challenged slacker cynicism with basement-band symphonies that turned his own private Idaho into indie-rock’s last unknown country.