The album's primary producer was Ben Hillier with additional production by Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim), and William Orbit.

[5] Albarn, a pacifist, had spoken out against the invasion of Afghanistan and, after Western nations threatened to invade Iraq, took part in the widespread protests against the war.

[7] Blur's prior album, 13, had made heavy use of experimental and electronic music with the guidance of producer William Orbit.

Albarn teamed up with Robert "3D" Del Naja of Massive Attack and various campaigns to raise awareness of the potential dangers of the UK's involvement in the war.

[15][19] Albarn was due to speak in Hyde Park on the rally in March 2003 when a million people took to the streets of London in protest at the imminent war.

[23] By January 2002, the rest of the band were mainly recording demos that Albarn had started on a four-track and subsequently transferred into Logic with 13's in-house engineers Tom Girling, Jason Cox and assistant, James Dring.

[7] Coxon spent, what he described as "awkward afternoons", contributing on the track "Battery in Your Leg", and non-album B-sides "The Outsider", "Morricone" and "Some Glad Morning".

[23] Albarn had previously been in talks with Norman Cook, commonly known as Fatboy Slim, to be involved on the record, although he originally wanted to contribute "just feedback and nothing else".

[23] Hillier and the band also spent time working with other producers, including the Dust Brothers, whilst the Neptunes were also reported to be involved at one point.

[33] The song started out as a jam session, eventually evolving into "Put It Back Together", which ended up on Fatboy Slim's fourth studio album, Palookaville, which was released in October 2004.

Coxon's absence also bolstered the role of Alex James and Dave Rowntree who provided backing vocals throughout the album.

Think Tank's songs aren't merely multicultural, they're multilateral, recorded partly in Morocco and sung in a musical polyglot Hoovered up from stray corners of the empire: aspects of Afrobeat, bits of bhangra, images of Islam.

With guitarist Graham Coxon missing in action, the rhythm section of Alex James and Dave Rowntree steps up, and the album shuffles and grooves like Fela Kuti sloshed on gin and tonics."

Despite Albarn stating that he originally wanted to return to their more commercial sound, Think Tank continues the jam-based studio constructions of previous album 13.

Sam Bloch of Stylus Magazine praised the song's intro, describing the beat as "an offbeat rhythmic synapse that nearly collapses into itself [...] Heavy electronic drums.

"[40] Devon Powers of PopMatters wrote that "the first bars [...] are stricken with throbbing beats that sound simultaneously futuristic and primitive.

Distinctive African percussion is leisurely incorporated into the bass overtone—it's the darkness in a thunderstorm, the pure, simple fury that comes before a glorious lightning streak.

As Albarn delivers the next line ("'cause I love you"), a synthesizer kicks in, described by stylus as "illustrious", "otherworldly" and "flooding the song's deathly stomp.

Powers speculated that the song was about love but said "it's also a fitting introduction to a record that's such an extreme departure from their past work, and so drastically left field from the garage and post-punk and easily accessible poprock currently drenching the airwaves".

[39] In an XFM radio interview, Albarn spoke on the composition of the track, stating, "I try to do a lot of stuff once I've got the melody and the chord structure.

Describing the song as "failure-soaked" and "heart-stoppingly lovely", Greenwald went on to say that it "perfectly captures the jumble of beauty and dread that defines life under orange alert.

XFM described the song as "Fatboy Slim meets Middle Eastern Punk rock ... energetic, punked-out rocker.

And I mean I remember we just finished it and when everyone left to go back to London, I went down to Mali for a couple of days 'cause Honest Jon's [were] still working with musicians and stuff.

[43] Despite Banksy stating that he normally avoids commercial work,[44][45] he later defended his decision to do the cover, saying: "I've done a few things to pay the bills, and I did the Blur album.

[46] The fold out booklet of the album features the text "Celebrity Harvest", which was the working name for a proposed, but ultimately unmade Gorillaz film.

[54] Drowned in Sound writer Andrew Future deemed the album "a genuine pleasure to behold" and whilst stating that previous albums Blur and 13 were "full of jump-start arrangements and fractured experimentalism", he described Think Tank as being "lush in melody, flowing in windswept electronica with a myriad of bombastic orchestral backing one minute, before retracting into cocoons of melancholic and clustered acoustics the next."

"The beat-driven tracks," observed Steve Lowe in Q, "veer towards the arty, white-boy-with-beatbox line of Talking Heads and The Clash (actually, the low-slung hip-pop of 'Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club' even recalls Big Audio Dynamite).

"[34] However, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that the album "is the sound of Albarn run amuck, a (perhaps inevitable) development that even voracious Blur supporters secretly feared could ruin the band — and it has."

They have hopped genres in the past, from baggy to mod to pop to grunge to art-rock, but the sound has always stayed urban, Western, cool.

"[70] After the album's release, Blur went on a world tour with former The Verve's guitarist and keyboardist Simon Tong filling in for Coxon on guitar, in both new and old songs.