Zeno Jones writes the majority of the lyrics, which are deeply blues based. While more leaning songs like 'Retro Rockets' or 'Street Sweeper' can be based around anything, Jones believes that true blues music should be truly desperate.

There is no overall theme to the album, though throughout Jones hides personal details of life and struggle in a mosaic of allusions to metaphor. The focus ranges from expressing desperation of loneliness brought on by the constant connection to screens in Black Glass Blues, self medicating to stop thinking about one's own disappointments with Drinking the Stone, watching others pass you by in Steamboat and admitting one's own undeserved hubris in Rio Vista.