These parts were recorded at Yale University as well as other locations in New Haven, Connecticut over a period spanning five months and were chopped up digitally to create the backings of the album.

Although the lyrics have been described as gibberish, the words actually do tell a narrative beginning with Don Henley contemplating suicide, and ending with the last of Longstreth's songs about brown finches.

Jason Crock, in a review for Pitchfork, for example, noted that "Longstreth's thorough deconstruction of classical elements gives the colonization theme [of "confrontation between Hernan Cortes and the Aztecs in the early 16th century"] some precedence.

"[1] In a letter to the Eagles' Don Henley, Longstreth described the album's ambitious themes as examining the question of "what is wilderness in a world completely circumscribed by highways, once Manifest Destiny has no place to go - but in the end it is a love story.

"[2] Despite seeming a "disjointed listen" in which songs toss "verse-chorus-verse out the window,"[1] the New York Times' Jon Pareles finds the album "far more a contemporary chamber opera than indie-rock."