Never Underestimate Little Corners.


Slumber Party – That’s Why I’m Not Sad

I love Slumber Party. I think they’re one of the great, under-rated bands of the early ‘00s, and it is rare that I should spent a long period of time alone without at some point feeling the urge to put on one of their three wonderful albums of dreamy, Velvetsy psychedelic pop. (They re-emerged a few years ago with a new, synth heavy line up to record a disappointing fourth album, a circumstance which we still find it painful to talk about ‘round these parts).

Oh, to be the rhythm guitar player in Slumber Party, I used to opine to myself on long winter evenings shortly after I bought my first guitar. So much beauty for such little effort! Sadly main singer/songwriter Alicia Berg already fulfilled that job perfectly though, so it was not to be. Just a few downstrokes on a few open chords, set all the knobs on the amplifier just right and…. how does she make sound so lovely? Lead guitarist Gretchen Gonzalez is my real hero in the band though, unafraid as she is to inject some real gutsy psyche into the brew, pulling things back from the gates of whimsy with some plain fuckin’ beautiful lead lines, rich, fuzzy tones and real subtle and inventive use of effects. ‘Church Key Gonzalez’, they shoulda called her. The band’s minimal bassing and one drum drumming too should serve as a model of restraint for all groups approaching this kind of music, and OH MY, what’s the use in continuing: Slumber Party were just real real good, that’s what I’m trying to say. You just cannot go wrong with those three albums.

(I’ll give you a bonus song actually, to demonstrate all this in case for any Slumber Party neophytes in the audience: opener off their self-titled album: Sooner or Later.)

I guess some folk may be apt to accuse Slumber Party’s music of being samey, predictable, unadventurous, ‘pretty’. But phooey to them, I say! That’s like approaching someone who’s experiencing some kinda idyllic whirlwind romance, and saying, oh come on now - running through the park with your new love in the blazing sunshine, crying tears of laughter and joy ‘pon his/her shoulder as the sun sets? Everyone’s seen that shit before; what a bunch of boring crap! Start stabbing each other or something, or I’m just not interested!

Slumber Party is comfort music, perfect for settling into new surroundings, establishing a sense of continuity and contentedness in changeable circumstances. ‘Comfort music’ may sound like some kinda fuzzy, questionable notion, like ‘chill out time’ or obsessive concern with interior decorating or white wine or something – just the sort of girly nonsense you’d expect a group called “Slumber Party” to indulge in. But phooey to that too! Comfort music is very important. Black Sabbath is comfort music too, just at the masculine end of the scale. In fact, if we’re talking vague n’ nebulous binary gender divisions, I’d contest that Slumber Party were ‘girly’ in very much the same way that Black Sabbath were ‘boy-y’. Eg, the best possible way.

And, it is in the process of squaring such weird notions that we reach ‘That’s Why I’m Not Sad’, from Slumber Party’s debut LP ‘Psychedelicate’ (and, according to iTunes, my most played Slumber Party song). A simple, beautiful, psychedelic lament of self-explanatory, universal loss, return and reassurance, done to spidery, slow-burning ballroom perfection. I love it. I know it’s a winner in the long song stakes because it’s 6+ minutes always seem to pass by in about 90 seconds, leaving me thinking “what, it can’t end yet, surely?” In fact, such is the hazy, low-key bliss conjured by the song’s cyclical melody and basic, hypnotic chord changes, I think it could work very effectively as the ‘Louie Louie’ of plaintive, minor key jam band songs. (I guess ‘Down By The River’ must be a distant relation.)

Altogether now: “I was sitting by this river, feeling very sad…”

I was thinking I’d like to hear some other bands revive the song in precisely that fashion – rooms full of stoners, crying into their cider. But it never occurred to me it already WAS a cover version. Imagine my surprise then when I threw on ‘Artefacts From The Black Museum’, second record from mysterioso ‘70s private press heavy-psyche godheads Dark, (quite an UN-girly outfit, one would assume), and there it was, just sitting there fully formed, track # 5.

It felt weird, but good. Slumber Party, you were just too cool for school.

Labels: Psychedelia, Slumber Party, song reviews