In an interview with "NME", posted on 9 July 2018, Andy MacFarlane stated that the band's fifth studio album is "finished", with a tentative release date of January 2019. MacFarlane said, "It all came together really well. To me, it's like a different band almost. I did a stupid thing of writing loads of music, then giving it to James to write stuff over, then I deleted all the music. So then I wrote another album under it... I think we just needed to shake up the routine. One of our mates bought us those Brian Eno Oblique Strategy cards. I picked one out and it was like 'delete everything, must try harder, don't tell James'. The aim was to try and do stuff that we'd enjoy playing live, to make it more interesting for ourselves as well as everyone else." In the same interview, James Graham discussed the album's lyrics and themes, describing them as "heavier": "It's all pretty full on but there's some lighter shades and some hope on there. The first song that we're going to come back with epitomises the record. It's got really noisy guitars but it's pretty melodic. I think it's the next stage of who we're meant to be. ...I won't say exactly what it's dealing with because a lot of it might be quite obvious, but I'm not hiding behind a lot of metaphors anymore. I've done that, what's the point in trying to do it again? I'm really proud of our lyrics in the past but this is just what came out. I don't need to hide behind anything any more. It's a bit of a leap to just go 'this is actually how I'm feeling.' I think now is the time to just be more open and honest with people. For myself it was important to say these things, but when it was done it was great to share it's okay to feel that way."