Critical reception Pitchfork said "The production is ambitious—soft, smooth, and spacious as ever—and Gartside's writing is consistently complex, always plotting out the classiest and most striking shifts in the chord structures and harmonies. But all this sophistication doesn't feel like some grand, expensive endeavor, like pop–soul always did in the 80s; it sounds like something that spilled privately out of Gartside's head... It's gorgeous, but it's the opposite of grand, and [...] I'm beginning to think it's one of the smartest records—musically and lyrically—we'll hear all year." Uncut said that "White Bread Black Beer could very well be the best record of this restlessly self-critical career... What gives the record its real kick is the lure of emotional engagement... It may have taken almost 30 years of philosophical investigations, but... Green Gartside finally sounds free." Q said "engagingly rambling, there are snatches of all sorts of things here, from the Beach Boys' layered melancholy to Paul McCartney's jolly solo albums; rudimentary folk to Kraftwerk's glittering modernism... Occasionally there's a little too much going on, resulting in a few sketchy moments as the album washes pleasantly past. Overall, though, Gartside remains intriguing, still ploughing his own furrow and still coming up with the goods." The Observer said that "White Bread Black Beer marks a welcome return to the more specific intellectual concerns of his earlier lyrics, and a simultaneous rediscovery of the pure pop sensibility which made his later, more mainstream work so addictive. The best of the songs here... might even be the work of a post-structuralist Brian Wilson." However, its sister paper The Guardian was unimpressed, feeling that White Bread Black Beer "is more flawed than masterpiece", and concluded that Green "always worked better with a creative foil. Left to his own devices, the music almost seems an afterthought and it's particularly disappointing to hear this former rhythm master turn in such pedestrian beats." Spin was also critical, describing the album as "wordy but somnambulant laptop-pop observations" and calling Green "more cryptic (and less substantial) than when he was making a name for himself in the '80s as Top 40's biggest Jacques Derrida fan". Track listing All tracks written and composed by Green Gartside. "The Boom Boom Bap" – 4:18 "No Fine Lines" – 1:43 "Snow in Sun" – 3:36 "Cooking" – 2:44 "Throw" – 3:20 "Dr. Abernathy" – 6:33 "After Six" – 2:13 "Petrococadollar" – 3:24 "E Eleventh