Reportage (album) - Enter Timbaland, Exit Andy

Enter Timbaland, Exit Andy

The Timbaland sessions were advanced to September to allow for the participation of Justin Timberlake. They both joined the band along with Nate "Danja" Hills at Manhattan Center Studios in New York for writing and recording sessions, but Andy didn't appear. After a month of fan speculation, it was announced that he had parted ways with the band again. Andy later wrote in his autobiography that there had been "pressure building up" between the band members, a "lack of clear direction" during the sessions, and that the music had been prematurely submitted to Sony in his opinion: "the album needed more work" he wrote, although he had "played enough guitar parts for about three albums". Andy attributed the cause of his departure to a combination of "constant arguments within the band", clinical depression brought on by his father's recent death, and "administrative failures by the band's management" in neglecting to renew his US work visa, leaving him feeling "as if I'd been trapped on a derailed runaway train."

The band initially planned to incorporate the new Timbaland-produced songs into Reportage. A December 2006 Billboard article claimed that "the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2004's Astronaut will also feature the reggae-tinged '48 Hours Later' and 'Transcendental Mental,' which Rhodes says takes aim at 'new-age frauds. It's one of the funniest lyrics Simon has written in many years.'... Asked if the disparate sounds of compared to the album's more guitar-driven songs may be jarring to the listener, Rhodes says, 'With, you can tell there was another hand in them for sure. Although they are a slight change of direction in that some of the others are a bit more guitar-heavy or indie-sounding, Simon is the glue that holds them all together.'"