[3] Reviews of Flash and the Pan’s 1978 self-titled album are ambivalent about the vocal style and lyrics, fascinated by the weirdness, but upbeat and sometimes glowing in their overall assessment.

Alan Niester in The Globe and Mail calls the album “surrealistic in its detachment at times”, and “one of the strangest but ultimately finest records to surface in the seventies”.

[7] David Fricke in Rolling Stone notes unfavourably the “rampant punning” and “mind games” of the lyrics, but says that the songwriters, Vanda & Young, “never underestimate the simple joy of a good hummable tune”.

[8] Steve Simels in Stereo Review calls the album a “minor pop masterpiece” but says that the synthesiser sound “verges on Eurodisco, with some tacky New Wave organ”.

[9] But Simels gives up trying to pigeonhole the record with, “Let’s just say that it’s excellent music and let it go at that.” Jon Pareles, writing for Creem says Flash and the Pan’s songs are “incorrigibly catchy” but he earlier notes the detachment of the vocal style and the insincerity of lyrics; like Simels, he counters his own criticism, saying, “[If] You want sincerity, go watch Merv Griffin.”[10] Simon Frith in Melody Maker factors the experience of Vanda & Young into the album’s “pop mastery, [which is] evident in the hooks, the minor chords, the insidious orchestrations”.