Recording for the album took place over 12 days at Bryn Derwen Studios in Wales with producer Ian Broudie, frontman for the Lightning Seeds; the Coral served as co-producers.

[6] Frontman James Skelly referred to Nightfreak as "quite a spontaneous record", having been made over the course of 12 days, with many of the vocal and guitar parts finished in a single take.

[10][13] "Sorrow or the Song", a ballad that transitions from singing to a melody-less mumbling,[15][16] is followed by "Auntie's Operation", a Kinks-indebted number with cowbell and slide guitar.

[22] Ryder-Jones told reporters that the band did not want audiences to view Nightfreak as "a big third album [...] It's like a mini-album that we just sort of rushed into, and it [...] looks smaller, doesn't it?

He wrote that the album was "another eclectic and accomplished patchwork of tantalizing neo-psychedelia" from the band, who crafted "11 songs [that] are mostly potent and exhilarating" rather than demo-sounding "throwaways".

[10] In a review for Entertainment Weekly, Greg Kot said the album "restores the rough edges" of the Coral that had dissipated on Magic and Medicine, "but with slighter songs".

[15] Ruth Jamieson of The Observer called the album a "light hearted lo-fi bundle of joy", full of "chirpy riffs, chugging bass, and vaguely psychedelic warblings".

[28] NME's Paul Moody saw the album as "a low-key classic from a group grappling with the demands of fame" as they "reject the commercial gloss which made 'Magic And Medicine' [popular ...] and return to the darker grog of their debut".

[16] A guest writer of Tiny Mix Tapes wrote that the band "tend to refer to many musical styles" across their albums, which was an "approach [that] works again on this record".

[30] Adam Corrigan of Bangor Daily News said that Nightfreak was "much less accessible" than its predecessor, Magic and Medicine, and that it was "either an energetic outburst of creativity or an attempt to upset the legions drawn to their more crafted work".

[21] Toledo Blade's Richard Paton wrote that the mini-LP's runtime was "long enough, because at times [it] sounds like a bad musical flashback".

[34] Pitchfork contributor Neil Robertson called Nightfreak "a flatulent, irrelevant, self-indulgent attempt at recapturing the hotwired spontaneity of their debut through a dirge of sub-par psychedelia and try-hard freakouts".

[29] The staff at Uncut were equally critical, saying that, "generally the sense is still of a bunch of tasteful influences [...] and some well chosen chords failing to coalesce into something with real emotional weight".