Trouser Press wrote that "with the almost orchestral sweep of this now-richly textured music, A Dream in Sound is a huge step beyond Elf Power’s relatively thin earlier albums, but Fridmann’s fingerprints are all over it, making the album considerably less distinctive and original."[8] The Chicago Tribune thought that "Andrew Rieger's sweetly plaintive voice gives the band's lilting melodies an air of hopeful melancholy, and if a few of the band's lyrical flights of fancy don't quite lift off, the songs on this disc rarely fail to charm."[9]
