Newest Love: Pajama Club

Pajama Club, the new band from Crowded House and Split Enz frontman Neil Finn, are getting to release their self-titled debut album this Tuesday September 13^th on Lester Records/Redeye.  For a taste of what to expect check out the band’s eye-popping video for opening track “Tell Me What You Want.”  The track is a tete-a-tete between singers Neil and his wife Sharon Finn, who coyly blend heaving breathing and falsetto vocals.

Like “Tell Me What You Want,” the rest of the album, the song is anchored by a massive rhythms and quirky electronics, topped off by Neil and Sharon’s back-and-forth vocals. The pair have an alluring natural chemistry that forms the core of the band.  Pajama Club has a wonderfully spontaneous feel to it, which stems from the way in which it was recorded.  The skeleton of the songs were formed when Neil and Sharon began jamming together just for fun at home, drinking wine, wearing pajamas and realizing they had something going on, bigger than just raw grooves.

Eventually Neil added additional layers of guitar, keys, and other melodic lines to the bare-bones songs while he toured with Crowded House in 2009.  The final piece of the puzzle came when Sean Donnelly began rounding out the tracks with electronic loops and texture, in a similarly independent, creative, and organic fashion that Neil and Sharon had first begun.

Pajama Club’s debut bursts with a joyous, free spirited energy at every turn.  However it is Neil and Sharon’s impeccable melodies that bring it all together – burrowing in the listener’s brain while giving each song an immediate likeability.