The creation of Arms Around a Ghost took a few twists and turns during its original start date. After recording the basic tracking for a few of the songs with a friend from school, Nathan set out on a backpacking trip through Israel and Egypt.. A few months later he returned and was approached by Adrian Olsen who ended up engineering, producing and mixing the record from his home studio; located on a peaceful horse ranch in Virginia. During the first session the members of Annie and the Beekeepers passed through the ranch for a few days and contributed much of the recorded instrumentation such as bass, cello and pedal steel, most of which was tracked live, giving the record a very honest feel. The original idea was to create a record that would be sonically much different then his live show by experimenting with new types of percussion and layered production, but once in the studio it became clear that many of the songs seemed more fitting either solo, or sparsely arranged. The song “Two Winter Birds” is one of the more intimate and haunting tracks on the record and the low-fi hiss of “Where the Sun Goes” sounds like it could have been recorded on a tape player in the living room. While on the other hand “Virginia” ended up straying the farthest from Nathan’s usual melancholy sound and ventured into heavy drum pounding production. Some of Nathan’s earlier songs with regards to his live performance have been written about in the Berklee College of Music newspaper The Groove: "The pictures that Paper Planes (Nathan's earlier EP release) paint go far beyond lyrics. The group's indie-folk blend weaves simple and elegant string parts and tasteful pedal steel volume swells. The musical intricacies of "The Hard Stuff" and "So Gratefully" are as dreamlike and wondrous as Roald Dahl's classic novel James and the Giant Peach, while still retaining a mature, professional sound." - The Groove "Pastoral indie-folk with subdued vocals and glittering acoustic guitar." - CMJ