were excited to just be writing songs without any constraints or outside pressure from record labels. According to Tommy Scott, up to 40 song ideas were brought to the studio, before the group eventually settled on a concise, eleven song track listing. As is tradition, out-takes from the sessions would later end up as B-sides or Music for Aliens tracks. Doug Trantow engineered and mixed the album, and the final mix was mastered by Alan Yoshida at Ocean Way Studios in Hollywood. Composition Lyrics In a webcast interview in 2003, Bassist David "Yorkie" Palmer elaborated on the concept of Suburban Rock 'n' Roll: "The album basically deals with the subject of surveillance and a certain loss of freedom in modern society. On different levels from like the tiny sort of restrictive signs you see everywhere like you know: no ball games, no trespassing, no dogs, no cycling, clean it up to more oppressive things on a larger scale such as cameras in the back of police vans, helicopters with cameras in. Generally the whole idea that even though you may think you live in the most idyllic place every place comes with its own restrictions that prohibit you doing certain things and we just found it interesting because it seems to be an unnameable group of people who put these restrictions into place, it doesn't seem to be by general consensus." Some of the lyrics deal with Tommy Scott's feelings of raising a family in suburbia, and how it parallels with having grown up on a council estate plagued by high levels of crime and unemployment (as previously discussed in the song "Neighbourhood"), as well as his opinions and experiences in the music industry. Scott singled out the album's lead single "Zombies", a self-described "electro-punk" song, as a key example of the record's themes: "Basically, it's our little dig against the voyeuristic society that we all seem to be trapped in at the moment: Big Brother, I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, Popstars, even Coronation Street, EastEnders, etc. People seem to forget that they have their own lives to lead. We've all become a bit numb to real experience." Sound Whilst recording Suburban Rock 'n' Roll, the band made a conscious decision not to repeat the sound of their last two albums, and set out to explore more experimental methods, with a greater emphasis on sampling. Jamie Murphy's departure