(This is not a) dance song

What do my fellow critics hear in the Junior Boys and Hot Chip? With their polite beats and the vocal-as-embarrassed-afterthought mouthing sentimental vagaries, this is dance music for people who don't like to dance very often (I don't go so far as to claim -- as one buddy said -- that it's music for people who don't like dance music). I'm rather fond of Hot Chip's The Warning, a tuneful minor success that mines two veins of disco: the absurdist ("Over & Over") and the obsessive "([Just Like We] Breakdown"); but, jeez, I didn't shudder as its world-historic importance sat on my head. Meanwhile So This is Goodbye really skimps on the melodies in favor of "textures" or something -- or, in the words of a contemporary, creators of moments that "refuse to be architected." (I didn't know that was a verb either). It says a lot that the album's most memorable tune is a Frank Sinatra song -- and a lugubrious one too. I couldn't listen to Frankie Knuckles for more than 10 minutes at a time myself.