Recorded in two years at his Austin, Minnesota home, most of its subject matter concerns apocalyptic themes inspired by the newsfeed of world events he garnered while making the LP.

The album received generally favorable reviews from critics, and was honored on numerous year-end lists by publications such as Uncut, The Wire, Fact, and Clash magazine.

[8][9] After the favorable response to Maus' previous studio album We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (2011)—which was unprecedented for him—he became more widely accepted as an outsider artist.

Maus wrote and produced virtually all of Screen Memories by himself in his Austin, Minnesota home studio, nicknamed the "Funny Farm".

"[18] In an interview supporting the album, Maus expressed an affinity for post-war musicians that "follow the contradictions of what they’re already given through to their breaking point, as opposed to just starting from scratch or doing the wrong thing on purpose or whatever," citing examples such as the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (1966) and the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" (1967).

I messed around with a simple process where you take an integer sequence and let the numbers one-through-six designate the scale degree of a mode and then I added the additional thing of collapsing each consecutive, each I-iii-V I-IV-V triad into it.

[18] The latter is the only track on the album that he did not write alone; it is a cover of a song by Holy Shit, a duo that formerly consisted of Ariel Pink and Matt Fishbeck.

[5] When asked about perceived connections between his album and Pink's concurrently-released Dedicated to Bobby Jameson (2017), Maus answered that the two records "couldn't have been an influence onto each other at all because he was done before he heard what I was doing, and vice versa.

[18] Maus did not engage in much social interaction while creating the album, and he only learned about the dark global political climate through newsfeeds.

[28] It was his first solo tour with a live band, featuring his brother Joseph Maus on bass, Minneapolis musician Luke Darger on keyboards, and Jonathan Thompson on drums.

[30] That same day, the LP's lead single, "The Combine," and its Tina Rivera-directed music video, "a lo-fi, psychedelic vision of farmlands being harvested" as Stereogum summarized, was released.

[14] The tour associated with Screen Memories and Addendum came to an abrupt end on July 28, 2018, when Joseph died of an undiagnosed heart condition while with the band.

[37] AllMusic reviewer Marcy Donelson stated that the album succeeds by basking in its murky splendor,"[5] while Clash magazine honored its "all-consuming, oddball" nature, calling it "akin to a well-warranted display of authority from an artist that’s truly a master of his craft.

"[43] Kevin Harley of Record Collector wrote that it "conveys Mau' confounding persona with total confidence: sometimes silly, sometimes stentorian, it gives the impression of a man in full command of his off-piste forays, rendering it fascinating even as it befuddles.

"[27] Devaney, reviewing for Crack Magazine, called it "just as tragically captivating than ever before," reasoning, "There is a sense of lethargy throughout the record but it is greatly outweighed by striking moments of ethereal bliss along with the profound reflections of an isolated intellect.

Club's Sean O'Neal praised the album's "undeniably hypnotic pull" and "haunting, churning synth lines rendered with impressive precision," but criticized its "stupid" and seemingly provocative lyrical content.

reviewer Cole Firth described the songs as "so clearly laboured over and full of detail that their impact as a whole, coupled with bizarre and often-obfuscated lyrics, can easily wash over a first-time listener.

"[46] All songs written, mixed, and produced by John Maus and mastered by Heba Kadry; additional writing on "Bombs Away" by Ariel Pink and Matt Fishbeck.