The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #241

#241: "Dance Me In" (2005) - Sons & Daughters


By this point of the countdown, you might have noticed that I have a strong tendency to group songs together with similar or complementing sounds. Why? Can't help it; I'm a DJ. I'm also a long-time mixed-tape maker (as are many pop/rock/soul/country/rap afficianadoes), and I like my music to flow together well (most of the time), so that I can sustain my mood and groove, and the most common way I juxtapose songs on tapes/CDs/playlists is by the similitude of the beat. The drum pattern, the rhythm--it's the first, foremost, and most basic component of all--and I mean all--pop music.

Knowing that, and knowing that I'm a drummer, you'd think that I'd call attention to the percussion much more often than I do on the countdown. The reason I don't spotlight the drumming on most of these songs is because--for the most part--the drumming on these songs is relegated to the background on purpose; it's not supposed to be noticed. It's the utilitarian dimension to pop music: if the drummer/percussionist/programmer does his/her job well, then no one will notice (so the thinking goes, and I've heard plenty of people--common listeners and professional musicians alike--state this)--just keep the beat while the real musicians ply their trade. Most drummers do.

Glasgow, Scotland's Sons & Daughter's drummer David Gow is not most drummers, though--at least, not on this track. On "Dance Me In," Gow syncopates a pattern of sixteenth notes all on the snare, forgoing the hi-hat, and this martial drumming propels the song steadily forward, not just along, as if the record's going to jump out of the speakers and attack. The snare rolling adds the bristle, the excitement, the crackle to an already sultry song. Adele Bethel's singing is nasal, but she's a vixenish tease, whose pouty come-ons contrast sinfully with the orgasmic moaning of the background vocals in the chorus. The song's similar to some of the stuff that the Talking Heads used to do, but the Talking Heads never had a song this outre, this sexy, nothing that moved and moved, closer and closer, faster and faster, quite like this, and the main reason for that is that Chris Franz, while quite adept, was no David Gow.