Overview The album's title,
Living in Extraordinary Times, refers to political and social movements that are intertwined in ways people are unable to comprehend, such as
Brexit,
Me Too and
Black Lives Matter. Booth often wrote what he felt were his best lyrics in the early hours of the morning. He would wake up at 4AM, and be unable to go back to sleep because he had a line in his head. Writing the line down spurred Booth to write more lyrics without putting much thought into them.
Living in Extraordinary Times has been described as an
indie rock release, It was written in response to Trump's decision to
build a border wall. The track starts with an
acoustic guitar and a Mariachi-style trumpet part that builds up to the line, "There's only one human race, many faces, everyone belongs here." Booth makes namechecks a canary in the song, which refers to the bird's use as a
warning system in a mineshaft. Andrew and Giles later added in a choir section to it. The slow-tempo folk track "How Hard the Day" revolves around single-note guitar lines and focuses on the vocal melody. Booth wanted Diagram to add a "wild & uncontrolled" trumpet section at the end of "Picture of This Place", and sung placeholder words on the demo version to indicate where he wanted the trumpet to be played. Diagram liked the placeholder parts and simply played along with them. Discussing the origins of "Better Than That", Booth said he was in the middle of
paddleboarding against -high waves, and after being repeatedly struck by the waves, he was exclaiming; "Come on, you can do better than that." James did not want to play the track to their management or
record label because they felt it was "too safe." Giles edited the track; he removed some of the
hooks, added
backwards reverb and changed the rhythm section. The song talks about moving forward in life despite difficult challenges, some of which help one's development. "What's It All About" was edited down from an hour's worth of jam sessions into seven minutes; Booth said the final version lasted that long because he wanted to work on a lot of different parts. Some of the song's lyrics were influenced by ceremonies Booth took part in with two
shamans, and includes a reference to
El Dorado. Booth called "Backwards Glances" a "[p]arting of the waves song." "Moving Car" was compared to the darker-sounding parts of the band's fifth studio album
Laid (1993). It is a 4-minute snippet of a full jam recording that lasted 45 minutes. "Trouble" is one of the tracks Diagram and Booth worked on in Los Angeles; it was edited together from two jams. ==Release and promotion==