Flipper - Some Day

(Subterranean, 1990)

Now recognized as an Important Influence, Bruce, Ted, and Steve are back to do their Flipper Shtick once more, even though singer Will Shatter had ditched the band a few years earlier in order to focus full-time on being dead. That means that Lose is left to take all the vocals, and you’re certainly itchin’ to know: how does THAT work out? Well, if choked sing-rapping and choked sing-screaming are your bag, then you oughta take this little record out to the corner store tomorrow morning and carry your goods home in it, because that’s EXACTLY WHAT YOU GET. But before you go using a Flipper reunion single as a grocery sack, consider that the songs themselves are mediocre and rather tired rehashes of what had come before. They’re not terrible – no sir! – it’s just that they don’t have the edge and catchiness of the earliest records, the weirdness of the second album, or the smart/dumb humor of the ’80s catalog as a whole. As with the Bruce-songs on, say, Gone Fishin’, the lyrics are more serious and “poetic” (which isn’t surprising on “Some Day,” given that it’s a tribute to Shatter), mostly to their detriment; I mean, do we really need another impassioned attack on scenesterism, as on “Distant Illusion”? Anyway: as a re-creation of the heavy Flipper sound of days gone by, this is a not-embarrassing second go-round for three-fourths of the old band – just make sure to go into it expecting regressive ultra-seriousness rather than a disc of shiny, new (in 1990) drunkpunk classics.