The songs on this album are more folk-oriented with occasional harmonica, bass, drums, banjo and mandolin as opposed to the previous releases which only consisted of acoustic guitar and piano. On February 8, the complete album was made available for listening on City and Colour's official MySpace profile. The music video for the first single, "Waiting...", was released on January 24, 2008 and was listed for 9 weeks on the Canadian Hot 100. The album is named after a short story by Charles Bukowski. It is also a line sung in the closing track, "As Much as I Ever Could".