[2] The compilation received generally positive reviews from music critics upon release and debuted at number 40 on Billboard 200 chart, making it their highest-charting album in the United States.

They worked for two-week intervals (opposite The Flaming Lips) in producer Dave Fridmann's Tarbox Road Studios, a converted Amish barn in Cassadaga, New York, through May the following year.

The image on the album cover was constructed with a list of twenty-five themes (for example "Unfounded or Wildly Broad Claims", "Wonderment", and "Light/Optics/Color"), each representing a specific color, assigned to each sentence in both the passage and the lyrics.

Other data collected for presentation inside the booklet includes sentence length, parts of speech occurrences, syllable stress, and words common to both texts.

Kulash, as the primary songwriter for the album, developed the concept and collected the data with Stefanie Posavec and Greg McInerny, who were credited with visualization and layout of the booklet.

It features the standard thirteen-track album along with a bonus disk that includes demos, alternate versions, two covers, and an in-depth interview with the band by Ira Glass.

Barry Walters of Spin said compared the album to the creativity of their music videos from Oh No, writing that it was "similarly ambitious" how the foursome applied the two contrasting genres of "Prince's sexy synth-funk and the Flaming Lips' elaborate dream-rock.

Club, Chris Mincher contrasted the album favorably with OK Go's earlier output, describing a "darker atmosphere in which the band can release emotions other than goofy exuberance".