The surprise musical twist has been a recurring motif in Neil Finn’s long career. But not even his wife suspected this latest one was going to start ramping up after he got his pajamas on. Nor that she would share equal responsibility for its irresistibly strange and propulsive grooves.
Pajama Club began as a private after-dinner racket to fill an empty nest. With their two sons, musicians in their own right, off and away into the big old world, Neil and Sharon found themselves home alone with time, a sensible supply of red wine, copious musical instruments and a 16-track tape recorder on their hands.
“I’d always had a hankering to play the drums, Sharon’s had a similar attraction to the bass,” says Neil. “We were having a great old time making noise but we didn’t think too much about it until we started playing some of it back and found ourselves dancing.”
In between unfamiliar tools and naive enthusiasm, a fresh and potent musical chemistry had erupted. It travelled the world on hard drive as Neil toured with Crowded House through 2009. In far-flung hotel rooms he added guitar, keyboard and other melodic lines to take home to Auckland.
Enter Sean Donnelly, a local friend with a shared taste for sonic intrigue — as heard on numerous indie albums under the SJD banner. Neil and Sharon’s lounge room funk grooves began to expand with electronic squelches, bleeps and loops. Vocal contributions evolved in similar disorderly fashion.
“We’d take turns singing whatever we thought would work over the top,” says Sharon. “Neil did the lion’s share. I contributed a few lines — the good ones,” she quips. “If I didn’t feel comfortable singing something we’d knock it around together, change it.”
The tub-thumping Tell Me What You Want was first to find its feet: a heavy breathing tete-a-tete that opened a range of vocal possibilities. Sean encouraged various blends of breathiness and falsetto that led Neil and Sharon deeper into new territory, from the whispers and shouts of You Can’t Put It Down Until It Ends to the joyously fucked-up soul chorus of Daylight.
Some of it was downright spooky. The Games We Love To Play is all eerie disassociation and adrenaline; fear and excitement. From a Friend To A Friend is a mysterious scenario of strangers and headlights; simmering apprehension and hopes of redemption.
The glam-stomping Diamonds In Her Eyes is perhaps as close to a love song as this Club gets, a celebration of togetherness with a decidedly angular and distorted grin on its face. Then again, Go Kart is a girls-and-boys meeting of a different kind, a gleeful thrasher about kicking arse.
The latter is one of two tunes featuring sole studio interloper Johnny Marr, who played through every song in their early stages in a blaze of first take glory. But not even the former Smiths guitarist survived every twist in the Pajama Club’s relentless evolution.
The mesmerising Golden Child is one example of “a song that went through many transitions,” says Neil. “It’s about the process of letting kids go; how to be there, mindful and watchful at the same time as being invisible and letting them get on with it.”
“It’s an emotional one for me,” says Sharon — but it’s also a good metaphor for how their latest baby determined its own direction and identity between the loving hands of its creators and the glorious unknown.
“Writing from a rhythm track up was a new experience for me,” says Neil. “The songs tended to dictate their own terms, find their own paths. We wound up with an incredibly diverse selection of songs. Some dark, some a bit spiky, some more tender . . . it all unfolded in its own mysterious way.”
The final mystery — how to dress the Pajama Club to tour the world — was solved with the smiling arrival of former Grates drummer Alana Skyring. The choice “was instinctive,” says Sharon. “It was a hunch. She came over for two days, we played and it immediately felt good. So here we are.”
Neil is the first to admit the hard work starts here. “We’re not under any illusions that people are immediately gonna jump on this because it’s me,” he says. “We want to earn our stripes as a band, get really good.
“There’s definitely a sense of struggle involved which is always an appealing thing in music,” he adds. “There’s an element of working to the edge of our abilities and that makes you work hard for the gains. The payoff is that lovely energy that only young bands get.”
Asked how the world-conquering rock’n’roll star has modified his taskmaster role in rehearsals, Sharon is quick to reply: “I answer back.”
“We know there’s a long litany of couples in bands that ended very badly,” Neil jokes. “We’ve had a few pre-emptive conversations and we think it’s gonna be OK. But it’s an experiment in progress. We’ll get back to you in six months’ time.”
Track Listing:
1. Tell Me What You Want
2. Can’t Put It Down Until It Ends
3. These Are Conditions
4. From A Friend To A Friend
5. Golden Child
6. Daylight
7. Go Kart
8. Dead Leg
9. TNT For Two
10. The Game We Love To Play
11. Diamonds In Her Eyes
Pajama Club Australian Album Launch
with guests Ernest Ellis & The Panamas
Thu Sept 15
The Prince Bandroom
Melbourne VIC
29 Fitzroy St, St Kilda
Tix: $25 + bf from www.princebandroom.com.au (03 9536 1168),
in person at Prince Of Wales pub and all Moshtix outlets
Doors 8.00pm
