Returning fully to Frontier Records after Whenever You're Ready was deemed a commercial failure by Sony,
Flop wrapped up its short but sweet existence with one more great record.
World of Today stints neither on the hooks nor the blasting power, and with Kurt Bloch again doing the production, all is more than well. If
Willoughby sounds a touch brusquer at points than before, especially in comparison to Whenever You're Ready, it's in the service of engagingly pumping it up and blowing down the door. Though
Flop really never changed from start to end in terms of what it did, it did it well, and more often than not
Willoughby's sly lyrics pack in a lot in a short amount of space. "Waste of Space" is a good example from
World of Today, capturing a situation of emotional frustration smartly: "Complain in a word or two but never action/Wasted is the useless space I occupy/Worried that my heart will never be satisfied." As before, pop smarts also cover accomplished musicianship; more than once the quartet creates a rock-out din that could easily match any of the big Seattle names of the early '90s. Perhaps
Willoughby just needed to sing gruffly instead of sunnily about his pain. Subtlety in the music is never far away either -- the acoustic breakdown and distanced vocal echo in the middle of "April Ate Our World" or the prominent, lovely surfy twang in "Around." The group also makes a neat nod to the past via a rollicking cover of the Move's "Yellow Rainbow." With this as an epitaph,
Flop shows that while they weren't the great lost band of the '90s, they deserved far more attention than some of the losers who got it instead. ~ Ned Raggett