In his bedroom, Stephens could summon strings on his keyboard, but at the Texas recording studio, he was able to have string players execute his vision. “That was such an exciting part of it for me because I could be so creative,” Stephens says. “It’s interesting because I’ve never had the money for that before, but then obviously with the success of the other stuff, I had money to make a bigger sounding record, and I could do things that I couldn’t do before.”

He would try out different ideas for melodies, singing them to the string players so they could play an idea into fruition. “I think the good thing about people working with me is that I know exactly what I want,” he says. 

That assured vision lent itself to the record, clear in its soft but penetrating lyricism. It oscillates between longing and contentment – two sides of the same coin in the buoyant hope  renders with its herculean melodies. That hope is the nucleus of the album. It’s a distinct kind, one characterised by the uncertainties that glare in a state of flux – intrinsic to this hopefulness is Stephens’ self-doubt shedding itself to reveal his self-actualisation as an artist. 

“I’ve kind of let go of feelings of, Is it going to be good? Is this ‘Mrs. Magic’? because I see it as a separate thing. Like yeah, it’s all my work, but this is just the next thing that I'm doing, and they shouldn’t be compared,” he says. “It’s a ‘hope-core’ record, and I’m just really proud of it.”