Work began on the album about a year after the final shows promoting the previous Rogue Wave album, Permalight. Frontman Zach Rogue, feeling exhausted after the tour and recording and release of the album, took time off from Rogue Wave to work on other projects.[4]
Says Rogue: "I didn't want to do Rogue Wave unless I felt really excited again, like it was when we were starting out. So Pat and I hadn't hung out in like a year, and we just started playing in our studio in Oakland, and as soon as we started, it felt right. Right away, it felt inevitable that we were going to work on these songs and have a new record; we need to kind of start over and start with a new label and do all new things and it feels good. I feel like we're a whole new band now. We are! We have all new players."[4]
In an interview with Charged.fm, Rogue speaks about the recording and production behind the record, saying, "On this one, we tried to just let go and not try to make it perfect and just have fun and try to play live more and not try to not to overdose unless we thought it really needed that. Just make it sound like how we actually play."[5] On the overall rawness of the album and recording process, Rogue says, "We like records where you’re using mixed media. We do demos of stuff, and then we tracks the songs formally and take pieces of the demos and put them into the final product. One of the songs on the record, 'Without Pain,' is actually the demo, and so we wanted to bring the rawness back to what we do. We wanted to sound like how we actually play, and not the highly edited version. That’s not us, that’s not who we are. We’re not slick. We’re pretty real, and I like putting it out there."[6]
