Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever

At the conclusion of The New Fellas campaign, the Cribs signed a major label deal with Warner Bros. Records in North America, retaining Wichita Recordings in the UK and Ireland. Recording for the album began in autumn 2006 with Franz Ferdinand lead vocalist Alex Kapranos as producer at the Warehouse Studio, Vancouver, British Columbia. With the majority of the album recorded, the band undertook a run of small club dates to preview the new songs, captured on the accompanying Leave too Neat documentary. Further sessions took place at Avatar Studios, New York City in spring 2007, producing "Be Safe", a collaboration with Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, and "Shoot the Poets", which closes the record. David Corcos engineered the sessions, whereas Andy Wallace mixed the record, with all the songs receiving mastering treatment at Alchemy, London, from John Davis.^[9]

Rob Crane designed the cover and inlay artwork. The inlay features photography by Bert Hardy, Bob Taylor and Janette Beckman. The album features Gary on bass and vocals, Ross on drums and Ryan on guitar and vocals, and Lee Ranaldo performing spoken word for the track "Be Safe".

Musically, the album takes inspiration from indie rock, post-punk revival, punk rock and garage rock.

The albums lyrics explore a range of topics, from social commentary of their contemporary music scene 'Our Bovine Public', to social alienation 'Be Safe', to conflicts within romantic relationships 'I'm a Realist'.^[10]

The album produced four singles: "Men's Needs" released on 14 May 2007, and "Moving Pictures" on 30 July. The double a-side "Don't You Wanna Be Relevant?"/"Our Bovine Public" introduced a new song recorded shortly after the album sessions finished on 15 October, and "I'm a Realist" closed the run of singles on 25 February 2008.

On July 29, 2022, The Cribs released reissues of their first three albums, the main reason for which was because the albums' vinyl editions had been out of print for some time.^[11] After regaining the rights and master tapes for the albums through the legal battle that caused the band's inactivity several years prior, they spent 2021 sifting through their archives for bonus material to include on the reissues.^[12] All three reissued albums entered the Top Ten of the midweek UK Albums Chart.^[11]