"Look Alive" was written in Maine, in a cold room above a car dealership. It was mainly a knock-out melody, with a few key lyrics in place. There was a Motown feel that we knew we wanted to lose, as this one felt like the kind of pop song that could transcend time. Leo gravitated strongly to the demo of the song, but became the force for reinvention. It's his strongest personal imprint of any of the productions, literally hovering for four minutes as a sonic collage of granular guitar bits, digital percussion, and spinning snaps. The bridge became the most devastating political lyric:

"The hero enters the frame / He's memorized his lines... And hollow words from the front of the stage echo for miles and miles..."

We wrote the bridge in the studio. Pulling away the drums and much of the production on the bridge helped focus the song toward it. We ended up having a bit of a fight about this song in the studio once we got to Montreal in regard to which of the collage bits stayed and which got replaced. Everyone cared a lot about this song. In the end, its overproduction became its art. You never know when you make an album which tracks you're going to tire of sooner than others, but this one felt worth of being our title track. It's a holder-upper.