Through 1996 and 1997, Mansun released "Egg Shaped Fred" (which was re-recorded for the album to include new drummer Andie Rathbone), "Stripper Vicar", "She Makes My Nose Bleed" and "Taxloss" (styled Taxlo$$).

[4] "Taxloss" alludes melodically and lyrically to the Beatles' song "Taxman", and also to the rhythmic feel of "Tomorrow Never Knows", as well as "Long Haired Lover from Liverpool" by Little Jimmy Osmond.

The video notoriously featured the band throwing £25,000 in five-pound notes onto the main concourse of London's Liverpool Street station during rush hour and watching the ensuing chaos.

[6] For its American release, the album's running order was re-sequenced, a move which some felt compromised the intended concept, as the song "Stripper Vicar" was replaced with "Take It Easy, Chicken."

NME reviewer Mark Beaumont, while noting that by the album's end "we still haven't the foggiest idea of what Paul Draper is on about", praised Attack of the Grey Lantern as "music for an unrealistically massive film script that verges on the awesome with almost every fondled fret.

"[11] In The Observer, Neil Spencer wrote that although "Mansun's guitar-driven sound veers rather too erratically between Nineties Britpop and Sixties psychedelia, the chime and idiosyncrasy of the songs hold steady, and with a scope that runs from Liverpudlian lovers to transvestite vicars, it's quintessentially English pop.