Garvey had been trying to write lyrics during the journey for the song's music, which had been composed by guitarist Mark Potter, and he noted that the spot where the suicide occurred was one of the less picturesque places along the train route, and that the man had therefore seen no beauty in the act he committed.

[2][5] "Empires" acknowledges that someone somewhere in the world is always affected by deaths, natural disasters or job losses,[2] and also describes Garvey's belief that Brexit will trigger the eventual break-up of the European Union.

"Doldrums" describes an event in Vancouver, where Garvey was accompanying his wife Rachel Stirling while she was filming The Bletchley Circle,[5] when he saw a well-dressed woman walk down the street past homeless men, who stepped aside to let her through, and she never acknowledged them.

"[5] The album cover artwork is a stock photograph from Visual China Group (VCG) licensed to Getty Images, showing a crowded Chinese swimming pool in summer.

Garvey explained to Music Week that the band had wanted to use an image that showed as many people as possible, to depict a wide range of human emotions and interactions, and which could be opened out to display a larger photograph on gatefold versions of the album.

[12] Roisin O'Connor of The Independent called it "perhaps their greatest album since their Mercury Prize-winning breakthrough The Seldom Seen Kid" and "more explicit statements on social and political affairs than we're used to from Elbow".

[18] The Guardian's Alexis Petridis called it "a succession of troubling songs", noting the references to Grenfell Tower fire and deaths of Garvey's father and two close friends, and that Giants of All Sizes "digs into prog's more disruptive side, the wilful awkwardness expressed by its jarring time signatures, unpredictable shifts and knotty cramp-inducing riffs", but concluded that the album "is richer and stranger than anything they've released since their commercial breakthrough" and that the style suited them.