Knock Knock

Callahan wrote most of the songs in 1998 while driving from South Carolina to Chicago after his relationship with Chan Marshall of Cat Power ended. They had been living in an eight-room farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina. He made the record with Jim O'Rourke, whose production was at first uncredited. The sessions lasted ten days, twice as long as for Red Apple Falls, and brought in the drummers Thymme Jones and Tim Mulvenna, Liam Hayes of Plush and Loren Mazzacane Connors on guitar, a string quartet and a small children's choir.

Callahan recalled the thrill of having a band, saying that with three or four people playing it was a different energy and that he felt some of the responsibility lifted from his back. Philip Sherburne, reviewing it for Pitchfork in 2020, called it a road record about motion and distance, in contrast to the pastoral Red Apple Falls, and noted that the lyric sheet does not say who played what. Callahan described it as his album for teenagers.

Held was the first single, with Cold Blooded Old Times as the second. AllMusic gave the album 4.5 stars, NME ranked it tenth among the albums of 1999, and The Independent's Steve Jelbert named it the best pop album of 1999.