Reckoning with cancer treatment and his own mortality, Walker grieved his creative life that could potentially be cut short. Much like the items abandoned at an estate sale, he knew he too had more worth. “Both my grandparents found value in things that had life left in them,” Walker says. “At the time of writing these songs, I was really hoping that I had a second shot, some more life left in me, and I think that I projected that on a lot of these characters.”

To make the album, Walker and long-time producer and friend John Pedigo locked themselves in Pedigo’s backyard studio for a week. The pair set strict ground rules: everything on the album had to be found in the studio, and the pair would play all the instruments, many of which have never been used before on any of his records— including toy reed organs, synthesizers, banjolele, melodica, and other found objects used for auxiliary percussion.

Walker hopes that by relating to these inanimate characters, listeners will learn to better connect to living ones, too. “It’s probably lofty to think that an album about bowling balls and Barbie dolls is going to make people think about their relationship with their neighbors or community,” he says. “But maybe subconsciously, if people can connect with these things that aren’t even people, it’ll make them a little better at connecting with people.”