Completed in seven weeks, the album was produced by Stephen Street and the band.[6][7]Knox Chandler contributed on guitar.[8] The three core band members tried to be more open to collaborating with the additional musicians, rather than always directing how songs should be played.[9] The band started recording a week after their tour for Book of Days ended, and used few overdubs.[10][11] Singer Richard Butler constructed lyrics that were more personal than on previous albums.[12] He decided to use cello on some tracks after growing tired of employing a saxophone.[13] "All About You" was edited down from two jams that totaled 30 minutes.[14]
The Los Angeles Times wrote that "there is once more the bracing tension of understated melodic elegance scraping against understated musical discord."[17] The Ottawa Citizen determined that the band "maintains the most irresistible aspects of its art-rock sound including the melancholy underbelly, but it also focuses them into a commanding pop songs."[22] The Calgary Herald opined that "Richard sings wearily of romance in ruins... It's all so shoulder-shrugging boring."[15]
The Globe and Mail deemed the album "a crafty return to the edgy, intelligent rock of its earliest incarnation."[23]The Boston Globe called it "B-level pop songs."[24] The Vancouver Sun panned the "sameness in synth sounds, sameness in melodies, sameness in meter."[25]The Times concluded that "the album is leavened by a significantly keener sense of melody and somehow pulled into focus by the context of the times."[26]
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