In late 2017, after wrapping up of touring for Painting With (2016), the band was offered to play a show in at New Orleans' Music Box Village, an interactive arts venue.

[5] Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), who was busy at the time in Europe,[6] was unable to attend, so David Portner (Avey Tare), Brian Weitz (Geologist), and Josh Dibb (Deakin) prepared material for the upcoming performance.

[12] After being content with how the EP came out, the band, at the persistence of their manager,[12] began to remotely record what would become Time Skiffs at their individual home studios, spanning August 2020 through the fall.

[7] Still hesitant about the remote recording process, the band remained unconvinced of their progress until Panda Bear entered a professional studio to re-record drums for the first single "Prester John".

The isolation of the pandemic slowed down the recording process, with the band spending weeks mulling over decisions through e-mail and texts that normally would take seconds in the studio.

Ostensibly named after the medieval figure Prester John, the song features "rich vocal harmonies" accompanied by a deep bass groove and "twinkling and atmospheric" synths throughout, ending in an ambient sound collage.

[17] "Strung with Everything" runs nearly seven minutes; Stereogum called it "as woozy and splashy as you'd expect from Animal Collective, but the melody is fairly sharp and straightforward, and it's got a bit of a playful Paul Simon thing going on".

[22] In the review for AllMusic, Tim Sendra claimed that "Instead of regressing or stepping away from the edge when their sound grew too unhinged, the band continues to evolve in unforecastable directions on Time Skiffs.

"[24] Daniel Dylan Wray of Uncut gave Time Skiffs a positive review, writing that the album possesses a "cohesive assuredness" that previous Centipede Hz and Painting With lacked.

[32] Of the album, Mojo's Stevie Chick wrote that the band's avant-garde leanings work "in service of songs that still play profoundly with structure but are, perhaps unexpectedly, coherent and melodically focused".