Paralytic Stalks

The recording of the album is dense, featuring dark tones and an indiscriminate eclectic nature both electronically and aesthetically. The album features a wide array of music, ranging from "pseudo-country" and, to a larger degree, neo-prog often switching and mixing music styles multiple times through the course of a song. Most of the recording was done with a Synclavier 9600 workstation. Kevin Barnes's lyricism also returns to the confessional style heard in Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, entailing dark topics such as revenge, self-hatred, the human condition, and their painful relationship with their wife Nina. It has been called their most personal recording to date.[11]

The album was recorded in Barnes' personal studio and was mixed at Chase Park Transduction with engineer Drew Vandenberg, who has mixed albums by Toro y Moi, Futurebirds, and Kishi Bashi. Kevin is the producer, songwriter, and co-engineer for the album. The album features a crew of hired session musicians for the first time in of Montreal's history and features horn and flute player Zac Colwell as a new addition to the band's line-up.[12] While Kevin Barnes is known to take primary creative control of their recordings, K. Ishibashi of Kishi Bashi was a known collaborator on this record and was said by Barnes to have helped shape the songs.[13]

The reception from critics has been mixed, with the average critical score being a 62 out of 100, according to Metacritic. Some have praised its emotional rawness,[14] while others thought its divergence from the band's previous poppy style was alienating.[15]

• Mixed by Kevin Barnes and Drew Vandenberg at Chase Park Transduction
• Mastered by Greg Calbi