A variety of topics are addressed in the songs on Making a New World, including war reparations, social housing reforms, women's suffrage, the Dada movement, the Tiananmen Square protests, sanitary napkins, gender realignment operations, and the development of technologies such as ultrasound, synthesisers, and air-to-ground radio communication.

[17] In the spring of 2018,[7] the IWM formally commissioned Field Music to create a commemorative sound and light show based upon a picture about munitions from a 1919 publication by the United States Department of War.

[5][18][19] The image was created using a technique called sound ranging that used transducers to detect the vibrations, then displayed the distances between peaks with lines on a graph to show the location of enemy armaments.

[15][44] Despite the album of Making a New World, Field Music tried to avoid placing too much historical detail into the songs or writing lyrics that would require a great deal of context to understand.

[8][14] The title "Coffee or Wine", which is also a lyric in the song, reflects the meeting's attendees asking which refreshments they should enjoy, which Field Music used to illustrate the former's detachment from the devastation caused by the war.

[8] The song "A Change of Heir" was inspired by Harold Gillies, a New Zealand-born surgeon who pioneered facial cosmetic surgery and skin grafts for injured soldiers, and later conducted one of the first gender realignment operations.

[19] Arunachalam Muruganantham, the Indian investor who designed machines to develop sanitary pads as a way to combat unhygienic practices around menstruation in rural India, was another inspiration for "Only in a Man's World".

[8][12][69] He felt the discussion and advertising of sanitary pads had not changed much since the early development of the product,[10][70][71] and David believed that would not be the case if men also experienced menstruation,[70][72] as is reflected in the lyric: "Things would be different if the boys bled".

[8] David described "Only in a Man's World" as a song that approaches the topic in a "light-hearted way",[73] but his exasperation about the double standard is also reflected within some of the lyrics, including the repeated declaration "I don't know what to say".

[78] Although not explicitly addressed in the song, Field Music used written material from their IWM performances to link the suffrage movement highlighted in the former to the elections decades later of female leaders like Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Margaret Thatcher.

[8] The track "Money Is a Memory" concerns the final payment by Germany in 2010 of the economically ruinous reparations it owed under the Treaty of Versailles, and is written from the perspective of a functionary in the German Treasury.

[37][38][87] He wrote the lyrics from the perspective of a bureaucrat whose job was to process the paperwork for the final payment,[88] reducing a momentous occasion like the conclusion of World War I to a routine and boring administrative task.

[8][24] David called this approach to the song "a bit comical",[37][38][87] but it also reflects how such financial transactions have lasting repercussions that affect people,[24][89] and serves as a commentary on how the monetary system works.

[7] Stephen Thompson of NPR Music said the album "uses the past as a prism into which to view the present",[91] and NME writer Mark Beaumont described it as "a collection of interlocking stories spanning decades, probing at the roots of the modern malaise".

According to Field Music and materials the band provided during its performance for the IWM, the track was inspired by how treaties and agreements after the war influenced the Middle East and other parts of the world for 100 years after the end of the conflict.

[95] Among the historical events that inspired the track was the Sykes–Picot Agreement,[15] the Balfour Declaration, British support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland within Palestine, and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem under the orders of U.S. President Donald Trump.

[92] Steven Johnson of musicOMH said of Making a New World's suite arrangement: "It all forms interlocking musical blocks which when placed together still somehow seem to outline jagged, modernist architectural landscapes.

Citing an example, James Anderson of NARC Magazine wrote that "Best Kept Garden" offset a buoyant guitar riff against "ethereal vocal harmonies", which was said to exemplify a "shifting mood (that) reflects the ironies of its subject matter".

"[8] "Best Kept Garden" has been noted for its mix of styles, having been described as "dramatic pop",[114] "industrial splendour",[61] and "rock-classicism", while received comparisons to the works of Roxy Music,[115] Talking Heads, and the Kinks.

[55][110][111] NARC Magazine's Lee Hammond said the album is "peppered with short instrumentals that provide segues between poignant moments",[116] and Matt Churchill of God is in the TV claimed the pieces "humbly majestic flow to proceedings, with each part given space to breathe and own its segment of the whole".

[56] Pitchfork writer Brian Howe called the song "an interesting blend of beauty and terror",[104] and Ross Horton of The Line of Best Fit said it evokes the "contemplative, humming soundscapes" popularised by the English band Japan on Tin Drum (1981).

[55] "An Independent State" is a dreamy and contemplative closing track,[6][61][102] which begins with simple piano tones, but builds in intensity while adding cymbals, synthesisers, and lead guitar lines.

[16][104][114] BrooklynVegan writer Bill Pearis described the album's harmonies as "lush and lovely",[74] and Jesse Locke of Slant Magazine wrote that Field Music's vocals "sound as effortless as always, delivered with a laidback breeziness belying the songs' sophisticated melodies".

[10][106][132] Although Field Music planned to perform a few of their most popular older songs during the tour dates, the suite-like nature of Making a New World meant they would largely be playing the entire album in its entirety,[106][131] a concept Peter described as "terrifying".

[116] O'Connell said the album was delivered with "Field Music's customary artful intelligence and funk-pop verve", and wrote that "the pair's writing/arranging smarts and the dominant, switchback guitar style are on peak form".

[15] Victoria Segal from Q described the album as "a fascinating response to war's seismic impact", adding: "By opening up these surprising echoes, Making a New World resonates with hidden meaning and lost connections.

"[26] Several of the favourable reviews complimented Field Music's ability to make an enjoyable and engaging album based upon such a lofty and complicated concept;[nb 5] Evening Standard writer Harry Fletcher claimed that the band's "songcraft is strong enough to support weighty themes", adding: "They've taken the unsexiest subject matter and made it sing.

"[115] Some writers said Making a New World is enjoyable even for listeners who are unfamiliar with or uninterested in the album's historical context,[nb 8] though others felt having an understanding of the concept and the stories behind the songs was helpful.

[16] Howe felt the album had good ideas, but the medium did not lend itself to such complex topics as women's suffrage, skin grafts for injured soldiers, and menstruation; he wrote: "Who listens to pop music and thinks about stuff like this?

[76][77][84] Beaumont said the album had a "jumbled, ADHD approach" and that the "ideas are far more interesting than their execution",[77] while Phil Mongredien from The Observer wrote: "Such is the ambitious scope of the concept [that] the individual songs can seem like an afterthought, eclipsed by the weight of all that they're trying to say.