On 5 April 2011, Phoenix posted a blog update on their website revealing CCTV stills of a studio where the band was working.

Glassnote head Daniel Glass announced at a Spotify event on 6 December 2012 that the band had finished recording their new album, and it was scheduled for an April 2013 release.

The album's lead single, "Entertainment", premiered on Zane Lowe's show on BBC Radio 1 on 18 February 2013,[7] and was released digitally the following day.

On 2 July 2013 a video for the song was released, with a live performance of "Trying to Be Cool" and "Drakkar Noir" in a studio in New York City.

The video was directed by Spanish collective "Canada" and produced by Phoenix in conjunction with Intel and Vice's 'The Creators Project'.

[24] Simon Price music critic for The Independent called the album "derivative and is a near hybrid of Mew, the Postal Service, M83 and Empire of the Sun, but it's perfectly likeable without ever inspiring outright love.

"[17] At Los Angeles Times, Randall Roberts found the album to be "hardly groundbreaking" because it "feels like a predictable progression, too logical an evolution", yet the release "succeeds despite its verbal elusiveness.

"[26] NME's Matthew Horton rated the release a 7 out of 10, and noted that the album has been "buffed and polished", which will edge the band "towards the big time" because "their own flashy banks of synths and treated guitars sound meaty and perfect together".

an album "rich with colorful, astral-planing synths, wry guitar shimmer, pillow-pump drums and Thomas Mars' blue-eyed vocal swoon".

"[28] At Under the Radar, Dan Lucas noted how the album "will sound familiar to the band's fans from the off, but also represents the first significant aesthetic shift in their oeuvre", and the release "suggests that the rest of the world has a lot of catching up to do.

"[32] Slant Magazine's Mark Collett found that the "lightness of touch, however, is otherwise missing", which makes the album "cool and pleasant, but easy to forget.