Songfacts®:

• The lead single from Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action started with a postcard that frontman Alex Kapranos discovered in a flea market. He explained to NME: "There was a collection of postcards from all across the world, all blank and unsent, apart from one. On it was written the phrase: 'Come home, practically all, is nearly forgiven' (the song's opening line). I loved it. It was like a plot in three lines, and I was thinking of how that could be answered. It was addressed to Karel Reisz, who directed the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which I was obsessed with in my early teens."
• The disco-tinged track was produced by Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard, and mixed by Dave Fridmann, long-time collaborator of Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips. It was premiered on BBC Radio One's Zane Lowe show on June 27, 2013 and paired with the track "Love Illumination" for an iTunes and 7" vinyl release.
• Here's some more songs inspired by postcards:
  
  "Another Postcard" by Barenaked Ladies (Penned by the band after receiving postcards from one particular fan for a long time).
  
  "Test For Echo" by Rush (The song title was inspired by a postcard brought by the band's lyricist Neil Peart with a picture of a stone statue).
  
  "I'm No Angel" by Dido. (Some of the lyrics were taken from a postcard that Dido had written to her boyfriend, Bob).
  
  "Porcelain Monkey" by Warren Zevon (Inspired by a postcard picture of Elvis' TV room).
• The video was directed by Jonas Odell, who also helmed the visuals for Franz Ferdinand's breakout single "Take Me Out." It sees the band performing the song while backed by an array of visuals inspired by the graphic style of a series of books on Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology published by Pelican between the late 1950s and the early 1980s.
• The song's choruses act as answers to the verses which are all have uneasy paradoxes. Alex Kapranos told Q magazine: "It's a positive reply, not an answer, a reply. So as the song evolves it reverses. When it starts it's the positivity of the reply which leads, but then it's the unease of the paradox which dominates."