Billy Miller and Miriam Linna started Norton Records and The A-Bones in the 1980s. In recent years the label suffered (but survived) after Hurricane Sandy's demolition of their Brooklyn warehouse, which destroyed almost everything bar their vinyl stock, and as such, Ears Wide Shut is the first record by The A-Bones in five years. It includes covers of obscure tracks by artists including Jimmy Dee And The Offbeats.

Ears Wide Shut is reviewed, along with Miriam's Nobody's Baby, in The Wire 366. Bill Meyer describes it thus: "The guitars sound like The Stooges trying to teach The Sonics how to play Chuck Berry, and the sax sounds like it's on probation after being arrested for selling stuff off the back of a truck."

Also included here are two tracks from drummer Linna's first solo record as Miriam. Titled Nobody's Baby, it's recorded with arranger and multi instrumentalist Sam Elwitt, and merges "the adolescent melodrama of a Phil Spector production with a bit of Sunset Strip swagger".