Early Eyes signed to Epitaph Records in January 2020 and put out their first singles with the label that march—just as the pandemic brought the entire music industry screeching to a halt. As weeks turned into months, and as their city of Minneapolis imploded in a catastrophic moment of fury, grief, and protest, the band alternated between doing what they could to support mutual aid efforts and holing up in the studio to channel their complicated emotions into song. Along the way, they also parted ways with their previous rhythm section, further escalating their sonic reinvention.

“It kind of gave us an entirely new identity,” Jake says. “It almost feels like we’re completely different people. The three of us who were remaining wanted to pursue this new direction with the band and kind of embrace the chaos that comes with living in 2021.” Away from the gaze of the public, they were free to make whatever best captured their mood in the moment. “We would write stuff previously with the understanding that we are writing to play live,” guitarist John O’Brien says. “And then when playing live stopped being a thing that we had to worry about immediately, we were able to approach the songwriting process with a different mindset, being more production oriented, creating impossible textures and sounds.”

“The question we would ask all the time is, ‘What would be the coolest thing to do here?’ And then we would just go with that idea 100 percent,” says Joe. “We would just ‘follow the fun,’ is what Jake would say a lot.”