Can't Do Without You

Dan Snaith opens Our Love with “Can’t Do Without You,” five and a half minutes of a vocal sample repeating a single phrase over a slowly accumulating house arrangement. The song starts sparse — almost diary-like — and gradually builds into a full-band, full-dance-floor release by the three-minute mark.

The architecture is cinematic in the most literal sense: a long setup, a slow build, an apex, a comedown. Snaith never raises his voice. The song does all the lifting. It is one of the purest examples of the kind of electronic track that turns a fluorescent-lit walk across a parking lot into a moment of personal narrative. The camera is on a slider. The light is changing for a reason.