Jefferson Airplane's third album, After Bathing at Baxter's, had received warm reviews from the underground press but was a relative commercial disappointment after Surrealistic Pillow, failing to reach gold record status.

Just prior to recording the follow up, the group had their manager and promoter Bill Thompson purchase a large 20-room, three-story, home at 2400 Fulton Street directly across from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where the members would live communally.

"Greasy Heart" was a hard rock song with wah-wah guitar work from Kaukonen that took lyrical aim at phony socialites obsessed with hair dyes, waxing and cosmetic surgery[9] yet flopped on release that March, reaching #98 on Billboard and falling off the charts in just three weeks.

[6] The rest of the album was recorded between March and June, in between gigs when time permitted,[10] during which the band overdubbed numerous distorted sound effects and multilayered guitar parts, with many tracks featuring Kaukonen's newly acquired wah-wah pedal.

Kantner also contributed the heavy acid-rock of the title track, with lyrics borrowed verbatim from John Wyndham's sci-fi novel The Chrysalids, now repurposed as a revolutionary counterculture anthem.

[6] When the group appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour to promote the song that November, Slick controversially wore blackface and gave the black power salute at the close of the performance.

[6] Slick also contributed "Lather", a folky, reflective piece inspired by boyfriend Spencer Dryden's upcoming 30th birthday about what it meant to grow old in a youth-oriented movement, which also featured a "nose solo" by Gary Blackman.

The group also covered David Crosby's "Triad", a controversial song about a ménage à trois that had been rejected by his band The Byrds the year prior; the Airplane gave it a soft acoustic arrangement featuring Slick on vocal lead.

[22] The album initially received a mixed review in Rolling Stone, whose Jim Miller opined that it "shows the group caught in the midst of a struggle between style and stylization, and the results are sometimes ambiguous."

He praised the use of acoustic guitars on "In Time" and "Triad" but thought Slick's vocal phrasing on "Greasy Heart" was "eccentric" and labeled "The House at Pooneil Corners" a "noble failure.

"[26] Retrospective reviews have been warmer, with many critics naming it one of the band's best albums for managing to impeccably represent the transition in 1968 between the lingering acid euphoria of the previous year with themes of unease and revolution that would come to dominate 1969's Volunteers.

Bruce Eder at AllMusic states that it is "deliberately more accessible musically than its predecessor, even as the playing became more bold and daring within more traditional song structures" while praising "If You Feel" as one of Balin's most heartfelt vocal performances and "Pooneil Corners" as the group firing on all cylinders.