The "Melody Maker" album review opened with the phrase "A case study in post-modern ennui", which became a theme in some analyses of the album. Nicholson, in interpreting "Hello Cleveland!", calls the song a pastiche of musical "quotations", comparable to Berio's "Sinfonia" in its referencing of past musical works. In addition, since the samples are not identified, Nicholson points out that, for the majority of listeners, they become simulacra — the postmodern concept developed by Jean Baudrillard, meaning imitations that can't be ascribed to an original object — referring to, in this case, the fact that most listeners, including professional reviewers, do not recognize them as being anything beyond generic compositions reminiscent of classical music. From the perspective of a listener familiar with the source material, however, Nicholson suggests that Virgo seems to even use the placement of the samples to parallel the musical references found in the original works.