Background The band announced in December 2007 that a short tour was planned for February 2008, with only five dates in different small club venues around the UK. Shortly after, they would start recording their sixth studio album. Singer/songwriter Fran Healy said he would like to record the entire album in two weeks,[3] having been inspired by the speed and simplicity of their recent recording session with Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick while participating in a BBC programme celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. The band road-tested the new material in the February 2008 club shows. It was announced in February 2008 that Travis have left Independiente Records as they had "come to the end of our deal and decided to go as it was time to start afresh", according to Fran Healy. The band recorded the album at RAK Studios in London for two weeks between February and March. Afterwards, Fran Healy went to mix the record in New York between March and April. The cover image of the eye is an exact copy of a design by Omnific created for an early 80s Penguin Books edition of the Roald Dahl short story collection, Someone Like You. Fran Healy announced on the band's official website, that 1000 copies of the song J. Smith have been pressed and will be available to buy as an EP called J. Smith EP, along with two other new songs, from the 30th June. However Healy has confirmed that the EP is not the 'official' first single from the album. The EP will be released on 'Red Telephone Box Records', which was the label Travis set up to release their first EP "All I Want to Do Is Rock" 12 years previously.[4] Songs Travis' bassist, Dougie Payne, wrote an official daily diary on the Travis website that can be found at the link provided [5] every day for two weeks until 2 March 2008 whilst they recorded the album at RAK Studios in London, in which he mentions the 11 song titles below: "Franny decides he is in the mood to sing and let's rip on "Chinese Blues"." "We decide to put the songs down in the order that we were playing them in the shows so next up is "J. Smith"." "With spirits up and enthusiasm at a premium we then, in quick succession, rattle off "Something Anything" and "Long Way Down"!" "This breaks the tradition of recording the tunes in live running order, but means that we get to do "Get Up"." "We have to get "Last Words" done before Friday as we have Sally coming in with a string quartet to do a little arrangement for it." "We set up for an atmospheric evening doing the mean and moody "Broken Mirror"." "Up next it's "Quite Free"." "We also got them to sprinkle a little magic on "Song to Self"." "Friends" is a rather lovely thing and has to be played in a very laid back fashion." "We have to hold fire on tracking "Before You Were Young" as the gong doesn't arrive until Monday." Singer Fran Healy also wrote a diary of the mixing sessions for the new album, giving even more insight info about the new songs.