Background
The group, fresh off the major success of their debut A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, took a break after non-stop touring and began formulating ideas for their next record together during the winter of 2006. After a short period of development regarding the ideas of the album, the band arrived at a cabin in the rural mountains of Mount Charleston, Nevada in March 2007 to begin the writing process for the new album. At the time, the band set a tentative release date for autumn and had not yet settled on a producer. By April, the band had four songs completed and planned to leave the cabin to head to Los Angeles to continue work on what Ross called "a modern fairy tale with a romantic twist." Shortly before departing from the area, bassist Jon Walker remarked the album would be similar to a concept album and that the entire band would be involved in writing (all previous material had been composed by guitarist Ryan Ross).
When the group began settling back in Los Angeles in June 2007, they began tracking the album, and at that point, eight new songs had been written. After recording the new tracks and performing them live over the summer, the band returned to their native Las Vegas as well as their old rehearsal studio, where they wrote their debut record. During this time, the band picked producer Rob Mathes to work on the album, who had previously worked with them on a cover of "This Is Halloween" from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). The band grew uninterested in the songs previously written and by August scrapped the entire new album (which Ross later revealed was "three-quarters" done) and started over. "We wanted to approach these songs in the most basic form," Ross said. "We wrote them all on one acoustic guitar and with someone singing. I think that we kind of skipped that part of songwriting on the first record, and this time we're sort of paying attention to that. We've written a bunch of songs since we've been home . I think it's the most fun and the happiest we've been since we started." With simplicity the new focus and the old album shelved, the group settled in and began recording what would become Pretty. Odd.
Read more about this topic: Pretty. Odd. World Tour
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