The album was produced by Geoff Barrow of Portishead, Craig Silvey and music video director Chris Cunningham.

[2] Webb and Tom Cowan, who had joined the band as keyboardist and bass guitarist respectively, switched instruments from this album onwards.

In a preview article, music journalist Mike Diver commented that the album was "set to be one of the year's best" and that it was "wholly worth all the hype that's attracted to its unexpected brilliance.

[21] Pitchfork emphasized the band's change in style, noting their "shoegazer makeover" and concluding that the album succeeded in "transforming gothic gloom into psychedelic drone".

[23] In a retrospective 2019 article about the album, Loud and Quiet argued "this exploratory, psychedelic record... would act as an antiseptic to the post-Libertines landfill still dominant in 2009.