Hayden Thorpe and the three other members of Wild Beasts met in a pub during their 2016 Christmas break and mutually decided to disband.

[2] The band played shows together in 2017 in support of their fifth album Boy King,[2] including a date at Glastonbury Festival,[3] but they did not publicly announce their split until 25 September 2017.

[7][8] In January 2017, Thorpe flew to Los Angeles, explaining he wanted to escape the Cumbria winters and needed a place to "suspend reality" for enough time to deal with the breakup of Wild Beasts.

[2][12][13] Thorpe's time in Los Angeles, which lasted a few months, was spent writing in "secret" because he was contractually not permitted to tell others that Wild Beasts had disbanded.

The album is characterized by sparse arrangements, featuring piano-based ballads that emphasize Thorpe's vocals and piano work.

[14][15][16][17] The album sees Thorpe trading the more bombastic, falsetto vocal style he exercised with Wild Beasts for a gentle croon.

[19] In an interview with Dork, Thorpe stated, "I don't think it was a conscious shift, but complete solitude is pretty unsexy.

The sexual energy that emanated from Wild Beasts' work was definitely the by-product of men together, the ego dynamics and the chemistry of four boys putting their position out to the world.

[20] The music video for "Diviner" was directed by Crowns & Owls and features Thorpe playing on an old piano in the forest at night.

[21] "Love Crimes" was released as the album's second single on 9 April 2019 with an accompanying music video and the announcement of Diviner.

[16] The music video for "Love Crimes" was directed by Alexandra Liveris and shot on Dreamtime Beach in northern New South Wales, Australia in response to a vision Thorpe received from a psychic.

Performed in Paris, London, Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles, the venues were revealed to ticket winners only 48 hours beforehand.

On the day of the shoot, Thorpe was riding his bicycle along Regent's Canal en route to Chanarin's studio when he fell off his bike.

"[36] Victoria Segal of Mojo said, "Diviner came out of post-band convalescence and a spell of recalibration, yet for all the intense, cocooning introspection in these songs, Thorpe is obviously more than ready to face the world alone.

"[35] Jordan Bassett of NME said, "Wild Beasts sometimes seemed overly enamoured with ideology, self-aware to a fault, while Thorpe's solo album is simpler, more direct, more self-contained – and therein lies its power.