I was really hoping that spending so much time together in the cabin, they would be able to write so easily that they'd make too many songs, that they'd need to trim the fat and eventually we'd get some b-sides on top of a stellar album.
Perhaps with them writing in a rehearsal space, this will happen. But then again, I wouldn't expect it. Even when they wrote ToT, there was nothing extra that was recorded. Since FII, they have always just written enough for an album, and in a way, I understand, because otherwise there's a lot of extra time (and therefore money) spent in the recording studio for those extra songs.
Still, I do hope that there will be extras recorded for this album - maybe at least a few cover songs like they did for BCaSL. Or another thought would be to do alternate (and not just acoustic) versions of some of the songs, like they did with the piano version of Wither. Given the fact that they're now on Inside Out, maybe we'll see a deluxe version of the album and/or some B-sides. But I won't get my hopes up.
I wonder if the 7 songs they have are complete, or if they’re just working on bits of each one. If they’re complete, then damn! They’re on a roll for sure!!
If it's same as the way they wrote when MP was in the band (which I believe is the case), then I would say that there are 7 songs they've completed already. Generally they would come up with different song ideas (sometimes out of jam sessions), which may or may not work with the song they are focusing on at the moment. If the part doesn't work for that song or any others, it gets set aside to perhaps be used later. In fact, there are tons of ideas that they come up with that never find a home (used in a song) that we never hear. Every great once in a while, an idea might even be resurrected from an earlier writing session if remembered, such as one of the riffs in TGP (starting at 1:44) which was written during the FII sessions, and most of (if not all of) IWBY which was written during the ToT sessions but discarded due to the fact that it didn't fit the heavy/dark feel they were going with for ToT.