[4] He is accompanied on the album by his Mike Watt + The Missingmen bandmates, guitarist Tom Watson and drummer Raul Morales.

The album is a loose concept album (Watt refers to it as his third "punk opera"[5]) of thirty short songs, all two minutes or under (most average about a minute and a half) inspired by creatures from the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch; each of the thirty song titles is derived from a nickname Watt came up with for each creature, "since I don't know three-hundred-year-old Dutch".

[6] According to Watt, the album "is quite different" from his previous punk operas Contemplating the Engine Room and The Secondman's Middle Stand "in that it has no standard narrative... meaning no regular beginning-middle-end.

"[6] Musically, Watt was inspired to write short songs again after re-immersing himself in the back catalog of his first band, The Minutemen prior to and in the course of filming the documentary We Jam Econo.

"[6] Inspired by his earlier music Watt still wanted to take into account the changes in his life saying "I would write lyrics dealing with myself as a middle-aged punk rocker, which is something the Minutemen never dealt with really.