Lois Turns Northern Nightlife into Myth on ‘Small Town Party Girl’

It’s the event of the year. On ‘Small Town Party Girl’, Morecambe-raised artist Lois finds herself amidst the grime of small-town nightlife. Opening with oddly-timed, sporadic synth beats, the song stumbles. Immediately, though, it explodes into deeper synths evocative of disco-pop and breath-like percussion injecting life into the song’s scene, one that Lois knows all too well. In a celebration of Northern nightlife, the track glamourises, even worships, the muse of the “small town party girl” who never fails to capture wandering eyes despite having absolutely no regard for anyone else in the room.

The first verse sets a scene of disappointment, repetition, and tackiness against the backdrop of “another night in the pisser, another beige buffet”. With affectionate exhaustion, Lois’s lyrical eye for unspoken experiences manifests in humour, cutting through the mundanity of small-town nightlife, fearlessly calling out the fucker “two-stepping on [her] Mary Janes”. Growing up around nightlife captured in working men’s clubs with her parents, she writes these experiences as weary, ordinary, almost expected. The deep-synth patterning and paced breathing feel almost claustrophobic beneath the crowded imagery. Enter: the small town party girl.

The chorus shines; the synths expand and come to life, and the titular muse becomes someone aspirational and mythic, almost as if launching a one-girl rebellion against the concept of ‘ordinary’ itself. Like a deity, the second verse is consumed by Lois’s unshakeable admiration of this figure: “she’s got her own reputation, of turning wisdom to wine”. We all know someone who’s always going to be the last one standing. We might whisper about her; we might even mock her. Lois worships her, because she knows that without her, there would be no nightlife to glamourise. In graceless surroundings, she becomes graceful. Falling over herself, she finds her footing: dancing without shame.

The dance-pop production of the song follows its narrative, making the track feel physically alive, ebbing and flowing. Nowhere is this done better than in the “dance break” announced by Lois, swapping synths for cowbell-like sounds and sporadic guitars, speckled with rogue screams and cheers perfectly lifted from a small-town party. Stripping the song down doesn’t remove its pulse. Instead, it transforms what it means to be alive in a song that strives to keep you guessing. It’s the embodiment of a party: the sticky floors, the flashing lights, the fog machine straight out of a movie…

Thank you all for coming tonight. Ending the song, Lois delves into the spoken form, bookending the performance of the ‘Small Town Party Girl’ that rescues beauty from places often overlooked: “I’ll be here ‘til the end of the night. Wisdom to wine, baby”. The instrumental keeps you on your toes once again, calling upon jazzy brass instruments before a signature 80s-style fade-out, allowing listeners to watch the party as it slips away, before they inevitably replay the song to bring it right back in. In her captivating narrative-arc, Lois collapses the narrator, the performer, and the ‘small town party girl’ into one figure: embodying the freedom she once witnessed with awe.

Review from Niall Mirza – @niallmirza2