[2] The band hired an outside producer, Tony Hoffer, for the record, having felt that their last release, Supergrass, lacked some of the urgency of their previous albums: "He helped us keep the takes quite short and sweet", says Danny Goffey.

[3]" The naming of the album was influenced by this excursion, but also by a telescope which qualified astrophysicist and keyboard player Rob Coombes, would bring with him to the recording studio in order to see the planets; "...we got fascinated on everything above us and came up with the title,"[4] explained Mick Quinn.

The band claim that much of the inspiration for this album was gleaned from a "working holiday"[4] in the Côte d'Azur, Southern France together, listening to the French radio station Nostalgie and watching Carl Sagan documentaries on the cosmos.

[8] Pitchfork contributor Joe Tangari referred to it as a "tour of 70s British rock, but more to the point, it's a summary of Supergrass' own career, merging all of the band's many mutations into one decisive sound".

[9] In a review for Rolling Stone, journalist Greg Kot wrote that throughout the album, there are "chirping birds, bleating sheep, Munchkin choirs, fumbled tambourines and an Elvis imitator".

[10] Tangari said "Za", the album's opening track, was a standard Supergrass "rocker stuffed with big, crashing Mick Ronson riffage, but backed by strange, wordless vocals".

[9] "Prophet 15" evoked "Let 'Em In" (1976) by McCartney's Wings;[10] Spin's Alex Pappademas wrote that it has the spirits of "Oscar Wilde, John Belushi, and Che Guevara visit Coombes while he's blowing out his mind in a car".

[7] Kot said the album's 12 tracks were "packed to bursting with the tension of too many ideas and too little time", mentioning that the band's "lack of commitment can get wearisome, and Life suffers without a guiding sense of personality, a point of view".