their own life and play with them and rearrange them and all that until we're completely happy with it." said Duncan Coutts, "If they sound just like Naveed or if they don't, it wasn't a huge concern. We just wanted to make each song the best it could be." The album was recorded in two parts. Five or six tracks were recorded and finished by April 1996 so the band could review them. These included the base tracks for "Clumsy", "Hello Oskar", "Carnival", "Shaking", "Let You Down" and "Sleeping In", which didn't make the album. The band's feedback directed the next set of songs recorded around June, which included "Superman's Dead" and a re-recording of "Hello Oscar". Raine Maida said in an interview, "We took a lot of time experimenting. The album was really done in three months. We took another two months to really go back over stuff and re-record. It's neat to look back and know the extra time we took was important to the record." Around this time (April), the working title of the album was Propeller, as Raine explained, "as in, that which causes forward movement." This was probably as a testament to the band's evolution since their debut album. Another working title was Trapeze, named after the song that didn't make the album. The cover art proves that this title came close to being chosen. The name was changed to Clumsy in early September. Recording wrapped up by the end of that month. The album was mastered at Gateway Studios in Portland, Maine by Bob Ludwig. Style and themes Raine stated that there was a kind of "Carnival atmosphere" to the whole album and that many of the lyrics he wrote were set at the circus or a carnival. Clumsy'''s songs feature the striking vocals of lead vocalist Raine Maida, who utilizes an often jarring falsetto technique: Maida jumps from lower octaves in his vocal range to higher ones. Raine's vocals provide most of the melody of the songs, with guitars quieted down in this album compared to Naveed, their previous album. This aspect of singing has become the staple sound of the band, continuing with this fashion in their next studio album Happiness...Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch, and since lost on their 2005 album Healthy in Paranoid Times.. In a January 1997 interview, the band stated that then new bassist Duncan