"The first album was me wanting to burn down my life, cut my hair off, and run screaming into the woods," says Alejandro Rose-Garcia. "This album is the trials and tribulations of becoming domesticated, letting people into your world and letting go of selfishness-the story of becoming a pair, losing that, and reconciling with the loss and gain of love." Rose-Garcia is professionally known as Shakey Graves, and with his 2014 record, And the War Came, he extended the ground-emotionally and sonically-broken by his 2011 self-released debut album, Roll the Bones, which brought him national acclaim. 

"Only Son," a meditation on solitude ("I used to be an only son/My heart was like a stranger"), became the opening track and "thesis statement" for And the War Came. "Hard Wired" is not, as it may first appear, about a relationship falling apart, but "about having friends with problems-watching a friend struggling and not doing anything about it." The themes of these ten songs, explains Rose-Garcia, return over and over to the idea of the "other." "It's not about any single person, it's about being that second, other person. Even the title-I never thought about whether I was able to handle that aspect of things, of having these relationships. And the War Came is a little bit of, be careful what you wish for." Songs like "The Perfect Parts" and "Family and Genus," meanwhile, represent a very different sound for Shakey Graves. "Those have a lot more aggression, they're heavy and big," he says.

Rose-Garcia sees And the War Came as a pivotal step in the evolution of Shakey Graves. "This is a doorframe album, as we're going into a new building," he says. "It's taste of everything-what might come in future, which might include just guitar or the one-man band thing, but not pigeonholed to any one sound. I wanted to open some stuff up and get people ready for wherever it's going."