Silverstein released Redux II on November 20, 2020, through their own NSEW Recordings. The 12-track compilation revisited earlier songs with entirely new recordings, continuing the project begun with 2019’s Redux: The First 10 Years. Its selections included songs that rarely made the setlist and others the band wanted another chance to get right.
Silverstein had already released A Beautiful Place to Drown earlier in 2020, with touring planned around their twentieth year together. The pandemic interrupted that schedule and left time for another recording project. They had wanted to make a second Redux collection, vocalist Shane Told explained, and the unexpected break created an opportunity to return to overlooked material. “I will admit a couple of the songs on this album weren’t my favorites when they were originally released,” Told said in the band’s announcement, published by Lambgoat. He pointed to several possible reasons: the original mix, the performance or the song itself. The challenge was to work out what had happened between writing a song they believed in and finishing a recording that disappointed them.
Recording took place in July and August 2020 at Union Sound and Room 21 in Toronto, with additional work at Movin’ Out Studios and Capitold Studios. Sam Guaiana produced, engineered and mixed the album, while guitarist Paul Marc Rousseau contributed additional production and engineering.
“My Disaster (2.0)” introduced the project, returning to a song from 2007’s Arrivals & Departures. Released ahead of the album, it also became the opening track. The selection reached further back with “Waiting Four Years,” a song from the band’s debut EP, Summer’s Stellar Gaze. Bringing those recordings together let the collection cross different stages of Silverstein’s development instead of revisiting one album in sequence.
Some changes went well beyond the performances. “California,” originally from 2013’s This Is How the Wind Shifts, became an acoustic arrangement with piano. “World on Fire (Extended)” expanded a track from Short Songs. The closing “Arrivals / Departures” combined two pieces from This Is How the Wind Shifts into one recording, beginning with piano and Rousseau’s vocals before the arrangement grew to include the band. Those choices gave familiar material different structures and instrumentation within the same collection.
Told explained the difference between the two Redux projects in a 2023 interview with Chorus.fm. For the first, Silverstein had deliberately preserved details such as keys, tempos and drum fills, aware that even a small alteration could disrupt a listener’s attachment to a song. The second gave them room to experiment more freely and revisit material from their Hopeless Records years. That distinction helps explain why Redux II moves between familiar arrangements and versions that change a song’s shape.
Those decisions also made their way into performance. Told recalled playing the new version of “My Disaster” live, connecting the studio experiments with the band’s approach to older songs. “My Disaster (2.0)” opened the first installment of Silverstein’s Out of This World livestream series in February 2021, as AltCorner noted in its review.
