Understated and sedate, Slumber Party's hypnotic pop dreamscapes unravel in pixel vision: slightly unfocused, obscured and intimate, artsy. On its exceptional self-titled debut, the women in this Detroit foursome reveal their secrets in cinematic slow motion, in lingering close-ups of long-gone and longed-for loves. Amid swirling and twirling Velvet Underground sounds, densely layered harmonies echo and haunt as if entire lives have been lost inside their pop fantasia -- and they have.
Incredibly, every track feels this precious, this familiar; evoking Lou Reed and Phil Spector, Slumber Party's pop-perfect album taps into that timeless and endlessly shared experience of romantic longing. These 13 songs are full of retro-droning atmospherics and hidden, fragile beauties that don't truly come into focus until you've cried yourself to sleep listening to such emotionally exhausted songs as "Sooner or Later" and "Why Do I Care."
