Produced by Don Fleming, it was originally intended to be a concept album based on the idea of the world ending as soon as the year 2000 started.

[2] It was the last studio album to feature bassist Mike Mesaros, who left the band in 2006, but returned ten years later for occasional live dates.

[4] A two-disc deluxe edition with rare demos and live recordings was released in February 2005 paired with frontman Pat DiNizio's debut solo album Songs and Sounds.

[2] He realized after a while that the millennium-influenced project "had already begun to feel a bit dated and more than a tad gimmicky", so by the time the band entered the recording studio "we quickly and intuitively shifted gears".

[8] While some songs on the album fall in the traditional Smithereens vein, others represent the band's "experimental tendencies", according to guitarist Jim Babjak.

[5] Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine rated the album three stars out of five and called it "a good journeyman record that plays up their strengths quite nicely".

The album has "a little bit of everything" that the Smithereens usually do, said Erlewine, "jangly pop, doomy rock, melancholy ballads, crunching riffs".

[11] "A World Apart" was originally written for A Date with The Smithereens, but ultimately found its way onto Pat DiNizio's solo album Songs and Sounds.

Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" is a Pat DiNizio solo acoustic home demo and was also considered for possible rerecording and inclusion on God Save The Smithereens.

"All Revved Up", a band demo, was written in an early Beach Boys style, described by DiNizio as "hyper-speed "Little Honda"-influenced surf beat".

"House at the End of the World", according to DiNizio, is a "very well recorded and neatly arranged home demo" originally intended for his part-time project The V.I.P.s.