The album is musically eclectic, varying from Middle Eastern violin–reggae beat fusion "This House Is on Fire" to 10,000 Maniacs-sounding "Tell Yourself".

Folky "Motherland" precedes stylistically Merchant's next album, The House Carpenter's Daughter.

Merchant noted that: I'd take out one song, 'Not in This Life,' she said, referring to a midtempo meditation on love, because it seems frivolous to me now.

Her original concept for the photograph on the album cover was a picture of children in a field wearing oxygen masks: We shot these kids in upstate New York on Sept 10.

The day I brought the pictures into the city, there were articles on the run here for Cipro and gas masks.