The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste for the album. Bill Rieflin and Chris Connelly instead attributed the album's sound to the band's interest in technology. For pre-production, Rieflin said he and Barker watched films for a month, sampling anything that caught their interest. Instead of writing music, they all improvised individually, rarely collaborating with each other. Connelly compared it to exquisite corpse, a Surrealist technique in which an artistic work is created collaboratively without any of the participants having knowledge of the others' contribution. Rieflin cited "So What" as the only track to feature two musicians in the studio at the same time. After playing with
When to Rob a Bank over the following decade. Reviews of the collection were mixed. Kirkus Reviews called it "another kooky and counterintuitive compilation of economic analysis that might appear wildly offbeat but just might be surprisingly spot-on." Publishers Weekly wrote that "Lively, self-deprecating writing ensures an entertaining read for fans and new readers alike". Robbie Millen of The London Times, in contrast, wrote that the collection lacked the appeal of the authors' previous volumes. When to Rob a Bank When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants is an edited collection of blog posts by American authors Steven Levitt