Pajama Club - Pajama Club

The first and most important thing to say about Pajama Club is that they are not Crowded House. Nor should they be seen as simply another vehicle in which Neil Finn might practice his songwriting mastery. Rather, they are a band in their own right, Finn being joined by Auckland songwriter Sean Donnelly, drummer Alana Skyring (ex-The Grates) and his better half Sharon Finn, whose contributions here, both on bass and vocally, combine to ground the project (as they undoubtedly have her husband’s career) while lending it a dark, sultry edge.

Opener ‘Tell Me What You Want’ sets the score in this regard, Sharon singing “tell me what you want / show me how to do it / tell me what you need / I can do anything” in a breathy mantra over an oh-so-smooth bassline. Indeed, Pajama Club is a surprisingly bass-heavy listen; the punchy power-pop chorus of ‘Daylight’ is reached via a verse punctuated with deep and menacing eruptions, with a sense of earthing also true of the simmering ‘Dead Leg’ or ‘TNT For Two’.

Finn has obviously gotten a kick out of experimenting with his friends – everything is coloured with sampled sounds and electronic ornament. That said, it is the stripped-back acoustic ‘Golden Child’ that forms the record’s emotional core, dealing with touching eloquence on the pains of letting one’s offspring go. The album highlight, it is also the odd one out, being more reminiscent of Ghost Of A Saber-Tooth Tiger’s Acoustic Sessions, Sean Lennon’s serially underrated project with Charlotte Muhl, than the night-life flavours of the rest.

Pajama Club provides an equally invigorating and oddball answer to the question of what to do when one’s excessively hirsute offspring flies the coop.


First published in The Brag, Iss. 425, August 22nd 2011