Justin Furstenfeld unveiled the title and tentative track listing on Blue October's website on January 31, 2008.

A live version of the song "Weight of the World" appeared on Blue October's 2004 album, Argue With a Tree.

Justin Furstenfeld first performed the songs "Blue Skies" and "My Never" at Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn concerts in August 2008.

[9] The song "Kangaroo Cry" was released on the NCIS official soundtrack on February 10, 2009[10] and featured in the coda of the season 7 Christmas episode, "Faith".

Billboard contributor Christa L. Titus praised Steve Lillywhite's production for delivering on the band's "penchant for emotive playing and tight rock chops", and Justin Furstenfeld's writing for crafting scenarios involving "lullabies to children ("Blue Does") and plucky life affirmations ("Jump Rope")".

[16] Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly called the album "an often gloomy yet commercial-sounding collection" that gravitates towards Twilight author Stephenie Meyer and its fans for having "heartfelt muscularity" in the lyricism.

[17] Conversely, AllMusic's Andrew Leahey saw it as a smorgasbord of "post-grunge missteps and ill-advised detours into genres [far] beyond the band's grasp", criticizing Furstenfeld for being overly theatrical when singing unintentionally funny lyrics and added that his "vocal resemblance of Jack Black" and a reworking into the "tongue-in-cheek outlandishness" that Tenacious D have created before would make the record more listenable, concluding that "Blue October remain totally unaware of their own absurdity, however, which makes Approaching Normal the sort of cringe-worthy drama fest that inspires a ton of laughs but few repeated listens.

"[14] Rolling Stone writer Mark Kemp also lamented Furstenfeld for disrupting his tragicomic melodrama with "self-indulgent pathos" to add to his band's growingly intolerable "post-grunge whinefest".