Solid composition and recording. Great hooks. Excellent a capella section. Good job.

Bold panning decisions! I like how the guitars sound in my headphones but might have been tempted to drop it when the vocals come in on the first verse as it maybe feels a little overdone. I really like how the doubled vocals drop out to the solo voice before the chorus and then everything comes back in, excellent attention to dynamics. The chorus itself is extremely catchy, and the a cappella section is perfect, excellent layering and it's so well integrated into the song.

This is a perfectly crafted pop song, nice double stop guitar riff that is very hooky and leads you into that pulsating I IV groove. The build into the chorus is good, and the chorus pays off well also. It’s a very Beach Boys type of lyrical theme, so the a cappella section also pays off with its echoes of that era. This song works SO much better on headphones than on my speakers, where the mix sounds really problematic. The subs are a little overwhelming and seem close to clipping. Even then on headphones some of the hard panning choices seem a bit extreme, in the sense that it I notice it and it takes me out of the song.

I like the crunchy electric guitars on this one, and I think the hard panning call and response stuff is cool. This sounds considerably better in headphones to me than on the little speaker on my desk, where the vocals sounded suuuuper hot in the mix and the drums were really quiet and the whole thing just sounded kind of rough. I like the dynamic shifts in this song--in particular, where the vocals drop down from the multitracked versions to a solo track with the higher melodic bass stuff happening, it suddenly sounds pleasingly vulnerable. The a cappella bit is nicely arranged and has a real purpose in the song--didn’t feel like it was shoehorned in there for the sake of the challenge. It’s a nice arrangement in general; the backing vocals add a lot but don’t draw attention to themselves, and I like the rhythmic interplay between vox/guitars/drums/bass in the second verse. I also really like your lyrical take on the song. When we assigned this title, I figured it would be hard with a title like that to make a song that both stands on its own and is serious--making it the team name is the perfect way to do that. Lots of cute but subtle wordplay around the stakes, bursting into flames, etc. without ever losing that desperate, small-town Springsteen vibe. I think the lyrics are generally really good, but I wasn’t hugely into the gated community verse--”inbred immunity” just felt a bit clunky to me. The melodies are catchy--I love the “feel alive” bit of the prechorus, and the chorus itself.