With Boingo, the band's sound changed to a guitar-driven rock style, with Danny Elfman having released the keyboard and horn players after the first recording attempt.

After 1990's Dark at the End of the Tunnel, frontman Danny Elfman felt he was again "starting to get bored" with the band's musical direction and that a change was necessary to stay active.

However, horn players Sam Phipps, Leon Schneiderman and Dale Turner, as well as keyboardist Marc Mann, are credited in the album's liner notes.

[5] Recording for Boingo commenced in February 1993 prior to the change of line-up, but was postponed when Elfman was commissioned to score Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).

[3][4] Elfman wrote "Insanity" during the 1992 U.S. election cycle as a reaction to Dan Quayle and the religious right, and Bartek encouraged him to write more songs in a similar vein.

[5] The cover of the Beatles' "I Am the Walrus" was a jam recorded in one take, simply "to use up the rest of the [tape] reel", and was included on the album after band members lobbied for it.

"[1] Steve Hochman of Los Angeles Times felt the album was the group's best since the early '80s, praising Elfman's "more down-to-earth presence" and the band's new "pared-down, guitar-rock attack.

"[6] In retrospective reviews, Peter Fawthrop of AllMusic bemoaned the absence of "the plucky instrumentals on past efforts", concluding that the band had "made an unquestionable, 100 percent crossover into grim alternative."

Fawthrop also praised the cassette-only "Helpless" as the stand-out track, noting Elfman's "Jack Skellington–mode" vocals, and felt the song "nearly parodies the grieving found on the rest of the album.