CYR

In early 2020 Corgan confirmed that new album was in the process of being recorded, while going back and forth on how many songs would be on the album, starting with 23 songs, and eventually settling on just 20 to be released. Recording was finished early in the year, and had been taking place during 2019 and 2020, with Chamberlin noting, "Once we got a beat on what the record was gonna be, we had this pile of songs and they either translated that to that architecture or they didn’t, and that’s kind of the 20 that we ended up with. They were the best of the best representation of that, ideologically." Unlike the previous album, produced by Rick Rubin, Corgan self-produced Cyr, pushing himself to record and work outside his comfort zone: "I was trying to bring myself into modernity. I got Logic, I got some beats going, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I started to feel like the Luddite who couldn’t evolve. But then I realized that when I first heard Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sisters of Mercy and Joy Division, they were making very modern music by using the technology that they had at hand. So I had to get inside the choices that they made." The band members recorded parts on their typical instruments, with synthesizers being recorded by Corgan and backing vocals by Sierra Swan and touring member Katie Cole. Chamberlin notes that the sound of his drums on the album were influenced by "early-seventies prog rock bands, that type of tight dry drum sound."