Those lyrics would become the album's seventh track "Parade," which talks about finding happiness in genuine connections, whether they're with nature or other human beings. "But then when the streets get flooded, we know what proximity's worth," Silberman sings, "Because we're already here in the same place when our phones don't work.

"I was writing about a kind of euphoria that I had experienced at times in my life and any time I had it I would try to write something. It had been awhile since I actually experienced that though, it's kind of like an old feeling and a new feeling at once," he said. "This kind of exuberance was sort of like a rebirth, like a waking up from something. It got me really excited to work on new music."

Silberman tends to be reading five or more books at the same time, a product, he says, of his "weird attention span." While working on Familiars, Silberman was reading the Tibetan Book of Dead, along with other books about Eastern philosophy and mediation including the works of American mythologist, Joseph Campbell and Brave New World author Aldous Huxley. "I wasn't necessarily reading them for the sake of them translating into the record, but it was sort of a natural part of the process for me," he explained. "Whatever I'm reading ends up getting in my head and effects the way I write."

This album - the Brooklyn trio's fifth - takes inspiration from the Tibetan Buddhist concept of bardo, which means "in-between state" and is often used to describe the time after one's death and before one's next birth. Silberman wrote all nine songs on the record as a conversation between two forms of one self, saying it's as if he was writing about estranged twins reconnecting after years apart or an older version of one's self coming back to speak with his or her current self. Silberman didn't originally set out with this concept in mind, in fact, he was looking to get away from conceptual songwriting all together, but gradually realized while recording that there was a clear through line developing.

"I think once I started thinking of it as this kind of split person, or multiple levels of a person talking to each other, then it organized itself. It was kind of like an a-ha moment," he said of the album's theme. "Like, 'Oh this, isn't as insane as it sounds if I treat it this way. If I stop trying to be the same voice and same character.'"