The album's opening track "Debaser" references surrealism, a theme that runs throughout the album. "Debaser" alludes to Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's 1929 surrealist film "Un Chien Andalou", and the lyric "slicing up eyeballs" refers to an early scene in the film. Surrealism heavily influenced Francis in his college years and throughout his career with the Pixies. In 1989, Francis expressed his interest in surrealism and its influence on his songwriting method to "The New York Times" by stating "I got into avant-garde movies and Surrealism as an escape from reality. ... To me, Surrealism is totally artificial. I recently read an interview with the director David Lynch who said he had ideas and images but that he didn't know exactly what they meant. That's how I write."