Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	86/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
The A.V. Club	A−
Robert Christgau	A
Consequence of Sound
Drowned in Sound	(8/10)
musicOMH
Pitchfork Media	(8.5/10)
Prefix	(9/10)
Spin	(7/10)
Sputnikmusic
Rolling Stone

Bakesale is the fifth album by American indie rock band Sebadoh. It was released by Sub Pop in 1994.

Bakesale was the first Sebadoh album released following the departure of founding member, Eric Gaffney, though he did drum on four of the album's tracks from a session engineered by Bob Weston. Tara Jane O'Neil also contributed drums to three tracks on the album. Bob Fay, who had previously filled in for the unreliable Gaffney, officially joined the band for this record.

The album cover is a photograph of a one-year-old Lou Barlow, taken by his mother.

Initial sessions for the album were done at Steve Albini's home in Chicago, Illinois with Bob Weston, though the band didn't work with Albini. Four songs were recorded with Gaffney, which became his final recordings with the band. Further sessions were done at Fort Apache Studios in Boston, Massachusetts after Gaffney had quit and been replaced by Fay.

As a result of Gaffney's departure, the songwriting on Bakesale was handled primarily by Barlow and Loewenstein, with Fay contributing the lone track, "Temptation Tide." The album continues the band's departure from the largely acoustic, lo-fi sound and shorter song structures that characterized their first three albums, and boasts a more polished production value than previous Sebadoh albums. This helped the band not only expand its underground following but flirt with mainstream success, and several singles and even a few music videos were released from the album.

Bakesale was initially well received by critics. It was included in a number of year-end lists in 1994, including Spin's "20 Best Albums of '94" (#16), the Village Voice's "1994 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll" (#20), the NME's "25 Best Albums of 1994" (#27), and Mojo's "25 Best Albums of 1994" (unranked).

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