It is lifted from *GoodTime*, the album that Disco Dreams has been assembling with the patience of a man who understands that the best discos are built slowly. This is the sound of someone raised on synthesisers and psychedelic melody, who has absorbed the lessons of New Order's chilly romanticism, the sugar rush of Saint Etienne, the dayglo ache of Cut Copy and the woozy sprawl of a Cocteau Twins B-side, then decided against merely imitating any of them. What emerges is theirs: nostalgic in texture, thoroughly modern in finish.
Start with the bass, because Disco Dreams clearly does. It pulses beneath the track like a heartbeat taken at a brisk walk, rounded and propulsive, nudging your shoulders into motion before your brain has filed an objection. Over it, the synths bloom in wide, slow-motion colour. Nothing here is cluttered or showy. Each layer is placed with the care of someone arranging furniture in a room they love, and the production has that rare, polished warmth that makes a laptop's speakers sound like a small club at 1am.
Then the vocal arrives, and the record turns from admirable to irresistible. It sits half-dissolved in the mix, hazy at the edges, more confiding than declaiming, the voice of someone murmuring a secret over the din of a party. The hook is the kind that lodges itself in the skull on first contact and refuses to leave. You will be humming it at the bus stop, in the supermarket queue, at the worst possible moment in a meeting. This is no small achievement. The dreampop tradition has always prized atmosphere over tunes, and Disco Dreams declines to choose, delivering both with a straight face and a knowing smile.
What makes "All The Time" so endearing is its refusal of irony. Pop in this territory has too often hidden behind a raised eyebrow, as though sincerity were something to apologise for. Disco Dreams simply means it. The song wants you to dance, to feel a little wistful, and to feel both at once, which is the oldest and finest trick in the dance-pop book. Euphoria and melancholy have always lived on the same dancefloor, and here they share a single, shimmering chorus.
The structure is smart too. The track builds without ever straining, tightening its grip by degrees, adding a countermelody here and a shimmer of texture there, until the closing stretch feels less like an ending than a gentle lowering of the lights. It leaves you wanting a second play, then a third, and by the fourth you have stopped pretending to be anything but a fan.
If *GoodTime* sustains this standard, and the evidence of this single suggests it might, Disco Dreams will soon be much harder to describe as a secret. Play "All The Time" loud, play it often, and play it for friends who claim to have grown out of pop. They will not have.
A radiant, replayable slice of modern dreampop that rewards both the feet and the heart.
