That’s something that I wrote toward the end of Paralytic Stalks, and I recorded a whole version of it that was very different. It was very electronic-feeling and all programmed drums and drum samples and things like that. I sent it to Polyvinyl, and my main guy, the A&R guy, I always send him my stuff and we have a great relationship. And he said, “Well, it kind of just sounds like of Montreal, and I thought you were going to go in another direction.” So I wasn’t so sure about it. I was really excited about it, but I played it for other people, and they’d be like, “Eh, it’s okay.” I wasn’t sure if I was going to put it on a record or wait for the next rarities compilation. But I felt good about it, so I wanted to give it another try. So when we had the whole band together I played it for them, and we went through a couple different versions of it and eventually hit upon the version that’s on the record. We did that a couple times on the record, that song and “She Ain’t Speakin' Now.” There’s a couple songs that we tried drastically different versions of and worked on them all night and wasted a lot of time going in this one direction before realizing at the end of the night, “Uh… this is not happening,” and then the next day [we’d] pick it up and go in a totally different direction. Maybe we’d keep some of the ideas or some of the parts and change part of the rhythm of something or change the tempo. So “Triumph of Disintegration” was one of those that we worked on for many, many hours and went in one direction that was very Motown-y, but I wasn’t happy with that. So then we went in this different direction. It still has this ‘60s R&B vibe to it in the verses, and it slows down and becomes a bit more rock or late-'60s rock or something.

–Kevin Barnes, Under the Radar