Recording took in both Nashville (Battle Tapes Recording, Blackbird Studio) and Los Angeles (The Village Recording Studio), and production was handled by John Hill, known for his work with Florence and the Machine and Portugal. The Man. Tom Elmhirst was tapped to mix, while Randy Merrill mastered the project in New York.

Social Cues was written while frontman Matt Shultz was grappling with the dissolution of a relationship. In an effort to better sort through everything, he “explored the hidden recesses of his psyche, creating characters to tell different parts of his personal story,” according to a statement.

“It can be a vehicle to act out things that are hard to confront,” Shutlz explains. “When I’m creating, I try to put myself in a reactive state of improvisational thought. I let images just arise in my mind and wait for it to evoke an emotional response and then when it does, I know I’m on to something. I was watching a lot of Fassbinder films, like World on a Wire and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. I was thinking about their beauty coupled with the graphic surrealism of [Darren] Aronofsky.”

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