 The lyricist cannot remember writing "White Snake" and did not know there was a band of the same name in existence. "Focker" evolved out of a demo, called "6 / 8 Focker", Eastgate sang through a guitar amp with initially indecipherable lyrics. "The Enemy Are the Future" gets its name from a sentence in a promotional leaflet for the indie rock band The Enemy. Eastgate has explained that for "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" he randomly "shouted lots of short phrases" and then tried to make sense of what he said. The process led to stylised lines like "Falling over aeroplanes and wanting to be a derelict".
