Recording Regarding the band's eventual return, Ed Droste noted, "Coming back together to try to write and record was like being in junior high again – after you go away for the summer, the first couple of weeks are slightly awkward when you get back to school. Then, you get back into the swing." Daniel Rossen elaborated, "The whole process with this record felt like starting over. We took enough time off that we... I don't know. My head kind of went out of the game or something. Getting back into it was really confusing. It took a long time." In June 2011, the band moved to Marfa, Texas to begin recording their fourth studio album, with bassist and multi-instrumentalist Chris Taylor returning to his role as producer. Droste noted, "We had passed through before and there is a great arts collective and vibe. We decided to rent a place and make our next album there." The band recorded "an album's worth of material" in Marfa, but ultimately abandoned the majority of tracks. Vocalist Ed Droste noted, "We were like, 'We're ready to do this!' Then, we got there and recorded twelve songs and were like, 'This isn't quite there.'" Vocalist and guitarist Daniel Rossen elaborated, "We didn't have that unspoken momentum, that unspoken understanding of what everyone is into." Only two songs from these sessions made it onto the finished album; "Sleeping Ute" and "Yet Again". The band subsequently started afresh in early 2012, returning to Droste's mother's home in Cape Cod, where the band had previously recorded its second studio album, Yellow House (2006). Commenting on the return to Yellow House, Droste noted, "It's so funny that we went back there in the end. It's my grandmother's house, we know it, and we can use it for free. And as soon as we got there, things started happening. [...] We just sat by the fire, Dan strumming, me singing, and it happened. Some of the best songs on the record, like "Speak in Rounds" and "Half Gate", came out of that. We stayed there in isolation for two months straight." Droste stated that he and Rossen decided to "'try writing from the bottom up. We've never done it before.' There's a little bit of fear there because it's a new process we've never tried. We've never sat side by side and said, 'Let's literally, out of the ether,