The album contains ten songs written by Steve Knightley, as well as the duo's arrangements of two traditional folk songs and Kelly Joe Phelps's "Tommy", the latter being a "raw tale of schizophrenia" about "a misfit" and featuring Phil Beer's "unusual voice". The title track and album opener, "Country Life", is a "stirring" and "finely honed rant about the desecration of British country life" and "an acerbic indictment of modern values". Inspired by the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak, it became something of a break-though