All of the seventeen songs were recorded during the sessions for ''I'm with You''. "Long Progression", the B-side to "Strange Man" which was the first single released, almost made the album's final cut but was left off in favor of "Goodbye Hooray". One of the songs, "In Love Dying" is an eight-minute rocker captured in a single studio take that occupies both sides of a single, as Klinghoffer told Rolling Stone from a recent tour stop in Berne, Switzerland. “We’re going to have to do that old trick where it fades out and fades back in on the B-side.” Another cut, “Victorian Machinery” “sounds like a big three-headed monster playing drums,” Klinghoffer said, adding that the band captured “absolute magic” with “Never Is a Long Time,” a “pop-tastic” number featuring
Greg Kurstin on piano. “It's really one of those cases where they had too many good songs to fit on an album. They have this cohesive thing in the studio – when they get that take, that’s the take that they keep.” “It's always difficult, but we use a democratic process and the songs with the most votes are usually the backbone of the album,” producer
Rick Rubin wrote in an email. “I can just say as is always the case, some of my personal favorites don’t make the cut. I’m sure everyone in the band can tell you the same.” In an interview, Klinghoffer said the band spent time in 2012 and 2013 doing post-session work for some of the B-sides. Klinghoffer also said they recorded 48 songs during the album's sessions and some could eventually see the light of day. “It's possible,” Klinghoffer said. “We just had so much material back then that certain things just straight-up didn’t get enough attention. There’s a couple that will probably just remain in our
iPods.” ==Artwork==