Composure, Pianos Become the Teeth) and recorded in Yip s Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based Studio 4, After the Party finds the band breaking into new sonic terrain, such as in the stripped-down reverie of Black Mass and the drinking-song-inspired waltz of Bars. At the same time, The Menzingers bring that sharpened songcraft to the lyrical element of each track, with songs like Thick as Thieves candidly recounting their shared misadventures ( Building castles with cans and bottles/Drinking like they do in novels ). And on After the Party, the band spins poetry out of moments as mundane as listening to Minor Threat on a laptop, turning the track into a dreamy meditation on the innocence inherent in unabashed love of music ( Everybody wants to get famous/But you just want to dance in a basement ).With each song unfolding as its own fully realized story, After the Party came to life thanks largely to an introspective yet outward-looking lyrical sensibility on the part of Barnett and May. I take notes on pretty much everything I see and experiencethings that my friends say or my family members say, things that I see or read, says Barnett. And then when I go to write, I go back to those notes and try to think about what they meant, and then build something from there. Working in a similar way, May points out that a lot of my songs come from things I took down in the notepad on my phone when I was out at night and then came back to months and months later. The Menzingers most refined album to date, After the Party was also shaped from an intensive writing and pre-production process that involved holing up for five weeks in Yip s studio. Along with sculpting more expansive arrangements, the band focused on experimenting with new effects and production techniques to forge the album s dynamic but intricately textured sound. After the Party s sophisticated yet emotionally raw songwriting also owes much to The Menzingers broadening their palette of influences in recent years. M