Urban Pastures is Banter's first full-length album, consisting mostly of brand new tracks with a few re-arrangements from earlier recordings. The band began recording the album in the summer of 2000 as a trio consisting of Andrew Warden on bass, Joe Smith on drums and Dan Sheehan on guitar. Various things would halt the completion of the album until almost 2 years later, including physical injuries to band members, Warden's departure from the group (which forced Dan to have to play many of the bass tracks), the addition to the lineup of former guitarist Jeff Gourde who had new ideas for guitar parts, and various mismailings of ProTools sessions and scheduling conflicts with mixing engineer Glen Robinson who mixed the tracks in between hectic live recording sessions of Ringo Starr's All Starr Band and the Monkees. As Dan was taking audio production classes at Emerson College at the time, the tracks were recorded in the college's studios. Impressed by Robinson's work with Red Telephone, who self-recorded their material at their practice space down the hall from Banter, the band hired Glen for the job which prompted Dan as producer to make several trips to New York to help with the mixing sessions.

By the time the album was finished, Banter's performing lineup had magically regressed to its 1997 lineup of Sheehan, Smith, Gourde on 2nd guitar and Doug MacBride on bass. The quartet, fully expecting the CD to be finished by December 2001, played a CD release party at the Linwood in Boston although the disc would not see the light of day for five more months.