Despite minimal stylistic and instrumental differences from previous releases, Flood is distinguished by contributions from seasoned producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley.

Because of her confidence, the band was given an extensive level of creative control over their projects, in addition to the ability to take advantage of the label's resources.

[8] Two-thirds of the album's budget was exhausted for the production of four songs: "Birdhouse in Your Soul", "Your Racist Friend", "We Want a Rock", and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)".

The press release for the album notes the "rock rave-up 'Twisting' ... the [country] inflected 'Lucky Ball & Chain' ... the existential oom-pah of 'Particle Man'", and "tender night-light metaphor and melody" of the lead single, "Birdhouse in Your Soul".

[6][12] However, John Linnell and Flansburgh took care to avoid using humor excessively, acknowledging the requirement that recorded music withstand repeated listens without losing value.

[6] "Theme From Flood" acts as a tongue-in-cheek introduction to the album, and it is regarded by scholars Elizabeth Sandifer and Alex Reed to be one of the first in a recurring trend of processional tunes composed by John Linnell.

[18] Reed and Sandifer call Flood in general "modular" in its movement between musical ideas, which they accredit partly to its largely digital composition: the band's MIDI sequencer made it easy to transpose sections of a song out of the original key.

[6] The fourth track and second single, "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", a cover of the 1953 original, was added by Flansburgh and Linnell to their repertoire in the early 1980s to lengthen their live sets.

[22] The cryptic "We Want a Rock" features a violin performance by Mark Feldman, and "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" revolves around petty concerns and their importance "when everything else is going haywire".

references the name of a wooden horse in the Parker Brothers board game Derby Day; musically, the song is a mix of eclectic sounds (such as the noise of mallets and drumsticks banging on a sink and base of a refrigerator), samples (such as a door buzzer), and unique recording methods (such as running horn samples through a guitar fuzz box).

In the cheerful tune "Women and Men", the band examines human reproduction from a "disengaged view", and "Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love" takes its title from a Mahavishnu Orchestra album cut of the same name.

[6] Due to the haste with which the final portion of the album was recorded, the band accidentally forgot to include an entire verse of the song in the finished product; Linnell and Flansburgh felt that they did not have the time to fix it, so the mistake remained.

Large posters of postage stamps adorned the stage as props; the minimal arrangement was received as a boldly simple choice.

[30] As in the past, the band was backed by a tape deck playing drum tracks or a metronome in lieu of a full rhythm section.

Chris Heim wrote for the Chicago Tribune that the album is a rare example of success for a "quirky cult band" signed to a major label.

[33] Steve Simels, writing for Stereo Review, compared the album's structural complexities to The Beach Boys at the peak of their career.

[42] Writing in Spin, Ira Robbins called Flood "another captivating variety show of art-rock, swing, the Bonzo Dog Band, cow-pop, show tunes and the Schmenge Brothers ... Boundless imagination, loopy mix-and-match arrangements and a gyroscopic sense of what makes a pop tune click are still responsible for the easy and abiding appeal of TMBG's ingenious material.

"[43] In a retrospective AllMusic review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that despite some inconsistencies and awkward selections, the album is musically superior to its predecessors.

[32] Reviewing the album in 2022 for Pitchfork, Quinn Moreland commented that the duo's "ability to grab listeners with sharp, catchy songwriting was never more evident than on ...

In a review for Q, Peter Kane lauded the record for its uniqueness and for the sheer quantity of tracks, which he said ensured that the listener would enjoy at least one song, and concluded that Flood was "as playful an entertainment as will be heard all year".

[37] In NME Jerry Smith called the collection "a weird and wonderful varied combination of the zany, trivial, witty and wacky, delivered with a spritely foot-tapping ease that belies their bizarre subject matter".

[35] Record Mirror's Iestyn George observed that "if it's to be faulted, the album is a mite too cluttered for its own good, but the virtues of imagination and originality that these native New Yorkers display are worthy of enthusiastic approval".

[38] Andy Ross of Sounds believed that it was the duo's melodic talents that prevented them from becoming just a novelty act, and wrote that Flood was "a real cryptic crossword of an album, requiring perseverance and application with ultimately rewarding and fulfilling results".

[41] Conversely, Village Voice critic Robert Christgau and Rolling Stone's David Browne found Flood to be unremarkable overall.

[44][39] In the UK Caroline Sullivan of Melody Maker felt that enjoyment of Flood "hinges upon one's general feelings about similarly zany characters like Talking Heads and Frank Zappa.

"[45] However, in a 2009 Rolling Stone article revisiting Flood near its twentieth anniversary, D. X. Ferris praised the album as both the band's most iconic release and one that revolutionized the college radio scene.

In February 1991, Tiny Toon Adventures aired animated music videos for two tracks from the album, "Particle Man" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)".

The band planned to perform a series of Flood concerts in early 2020 to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the album's release, but the tour was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[63][64] Some early tour dates were additionally postponed to later in the schedule due to Flansburgh suffering broken ribs in a car accident.

In addition to two vinyl reissues in 2014, the entire album was included in a two-part 2013 CD compilation that collected They Might Be Giants's work from their period with Elektra.