"I never worried about sending Matt something unfinished," Knopf said in a release. "He's able to imagine where it can go. He can grab the four bars that will become the core of the track and develop them into something amazing."

"This record is more autobiographical than anything else I've written, but the details aren't true," said Berninger. "It's written in the voices of a few invented characters, composites of different people--myself, my wife, and other people I was thinking about."