Following the commercial failure of his 1996 album Fantastic Star, Almond released Open All Night on his own newly founded label Blue Star Music. The album features collaborations with Siouxsie Sioux and Budgie (from The Creatures) on the track "Threat of Love" and with Kelli Ali, who was at that time the lead vocalist of the band Sneaker Pimps, on the track "Almost Diamonds". "Tragedy", "Black Kiss" and "My Love" were released as singles, but neither they nor the album itself charted.[1]
The American release of the album came with the bonus track "Beautiful Losers".[2]
The NME describe the songs on Open All Night as inhabiting "an evocative Brel-meets-Barry landscape" with a "midnight blue melancholy".[3] Touching on similar themes the review from Hot Press describes Open All Night's "lush decadence and tragic dissolution".[4] Elsewhere, reviewer Keith Phipps in his review for The A.V. Club magazine states that "Almond's songs have a creepy, dark quality" on this album.[2]