It was their first album after original member Roger Hodgson left the band, leaving Rick Davies to handle the songwriting and singing on his own.

The track "Better Days" features an extended fade-out with voice-overs by the four key players in the 1984 Presidential Campaign: quotes spoken by Geraldine Ferraro and Walter Mondale sounding from the left audio channel and those of George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan on the right, mixed with John Helliwell's extended saxophone solo.

[8] To build interest in the release, the album was premiered to dozens of members of the press traveling aboard a specially chartered trip on the Orient Express from Paris to Venice, where reporters were shown the full video for "Brother Where You Bound".

[9] AllMusic's retrospective review is resoundingly positive, noting that the album's thematic exploration of Cold War tensions "is dated and hasn't aged very well… but the music is a pleasure."

The reissue was supervised by Bill Levenson with art direction by Vartan and design by Mike Diehl, with production coordination by Beth Stempel.