[10] Having spent much of the past decade working on two musicals, radio production The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman and the movie musical Annette, a collaboration with French director Leos Carax, the Mael brothers set out to return to a more traditional song-oriented, rather than narrative, pop format for their next Sparks release,[11][5][12] their interest in making such an album stoked by their recent collaboration with Franz Ferdinand.

[13] They worked on the album over a 10-month period, starting at the beginning of 2016 and ending in October, with most of the recording done in Russell Mael's home studio in Los Angeles.

[1] The video by Joseph Wallace for the single "Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)" featured stop-motion puppets modelled on the Mael brothers going on a surreal adventure in 1930s' Paris.

[21] Daryl Easlea's review in Record Collector noted that "Ron's lyrics, as always, locate the heart of the matter, finding the chink in the armour, the dust on the lens" and described the album as "exactly what you'd expect and more besides.

[31] The Times, in another five-star review, declared: "Russell's fraught falsetto may suggest high emotion, the melodies may be affecting, but Ron's lyrics never assume that the listener is interested in the brothers' life".

Reviewer Jason Anderson said that it "is wide and rich enough to provide no end of delights", whether it's an ode to Swedish aesthetics, "a celebration of Gallic cool or marvels too many to count".

[1] Rob Mesure of musicOMH judged the album "a varied and immensely satisfying set, picking elements from their different eras – from oddball, articulate rock, through synthpop, to opera – and tossing them nonchalantly together – adding a smattering of drum'n'bass (Giddy, Giddy) and cool, flatpacked Europop (Scandinavian Design) – like the assortment of objects floating in the pool of the title track ... a big, joyous beast of an album.