As a fan of pop and dance, one truism I’ve come back to over and over again is that music about dancing is usually awful. Successes usually come where the songs deal with the stories tangential to going out, and they strike close to the heart of why we dance—to forget, to celebrate, to escape, to be with friends and lovers—or to get away from them.

Le Mans– Countach (Now I’m Dancing), [Countach (Now I’m Dancing)]

A slippery kiss-off, pure and simple. Singer Kris Le Mans (of “Nostalgia Locomotive” almost-fame, through no fault of my own or Matthew Perpetua, mind) criticises her lover, deriding his “lack of heart” and then insinuating that he has no skills on the floor to boot: “Now I’m dancing / While you stumble and fall / I don’t mind at all / I won’t catch you when you fall”. Finding her superiority on the floor, as in life, she also sounds a bit like Lene Nystrom. Don’t take that as a bad thing, and even if it was, there’s still a nice riff to pay attention to.

[visit Le Mans’ website here]

Universal Poplab– Brilliant Creatures, [Casanova Fall]

Something of an afterthought, appearing on the B-side of Universal Poplab’s debut single Casanova Fall in mid-2003 and not revived for their album, this is an uptempo, ever-so-slightly rejigged version of a lesser-known Marc Almond track from the 90s. A few lyrical changes have been made and the song has been given a sense of giddy abandon that is somewhat beyond Almond’s repertoire, particularly on the key line, “I’ll cry tomorrow, but tonight I’m gonna dance my tears away”. The tears are for a fleeting meeting in the first verse, and a lover gone away in the second, and the remedy is propulsive Swedish dance pop of either the best or worst kind depending on your taste.

[visit Universal Poplab’s website here, buy the Casanova Fall single here]

Loto– The Club, [The Club]

This is the title track from Portugese group Loto’s sadly unsung album of this year. It’s an expert blend of weary nostalgia, especially in its 80s house-influenced beats—New Order would be an obvious reference point. Mixing an uplifting, optimistic chorus (“Whenever I’m feeling down / Take me where there’s simple sound”) with a slight lament in the repeated verse, the narrator details all the styles of music they used to listen to. Whether rock’n'roll, disco shows, Afro beats and acid jazz have been replaced by “the simple sound” or are that which the phrase refers to I can’t ascertain, but I find Loto’s brand of ESL dance-pop endlessly and somewhat strangely uplifting on both their upbeat and downbeat songs.

[read Matthew Perpetua’s take on another Loto song here]