During their 2011 autumn tour, the band debuted "
If" live. They continued to perform and develop songs from the album throughout 2012 with "Later...When the TV Turns to Static", "
I'd Rather Be Dead (Than Be with You)" and "All I Want Is My Baby" being among the first to be premiered. During the summer and autumn of 2012, the band went into Gorbals Studio in
Glasgow to record the album. A tour was announced in late 2012 called "The Crying Onion" tour, which would see the band continuing to perform new material. In an interview with
Louder Than War prior to the album's release, bass player Paul Donoghue told journalist Katie Clare how "[lead singer] James [Allan] really has a full idea how this album should be, he even co-directed the first video, it was his vision from start to finish, he worked really hard and it gave everything a real continuity. Even the artwork was planned and the deluxe edition will come with a 40 page booklet that was all part of the idea." The album was also produced by lead singer James Allan; guitarist Rab Allan insisted to
The Daily Record that, "[the band] knew exactly what we wanted so there was no point in having anyone else but James working on it." James added, "It's really hard to get to that point where you have a record out that you can sit and listen to that you totally adore."
Writing Talking about the songs on the album, James Allan said in an interview with
The Quietus, "...the songs were about my experiences... and if they weren't about my experiences, they were about my thoughts on things." Allan explained in another interview with
The Daily Record that the song "If" is "quite a sympathetic song. It seems a shame the hardest, toughest things seem to define people. It's not the times you hold the medal or wins that do it. The song is a spiritual view on things – without something evil, the kind-hearted man would walk on by, invisible." He went on to explain the inspiration behind the song: "My idea for the song came about during a phone call a while back with my good friend
Alan McGee. He was talking to me about something quite difficult that was going on at the time and I said to him, 'Alan, if we didn't go through the bad stuff, we wouldn't recognize the good stuff; it would be invisible to you." Talking about the album's closing track "Finished Sympathy", Allan told
The Guardian that "it's about the speed with which we're expected to shed naivety, how people's expectations can be overwhelming. It's like when an infant trips and falls – people rush to pick them up and crowd around them going, 'Are you OK? Are you all right?' But as soon as you're out of that infant stage, when you trip and fall, everybody laughs at you. As you get older, it seems like sympathy is nowhere to be found." Explaining the meaning behind the title track, Allan said, "I guess it's a song that I was writing, kind of about the place between what has just happened, a chapter that has just passed, and moving into the next chapter, the new dawn, that in-between place, where the unknown lies ahead, the mystery lies ahead, and that can be quite scary." == Reception ==