Green Pajamas - Ten White Stones
(Hidden Agenda)
First off, a confession: Seattle’s Green Pajamas are one of my current favorite bands. Recent releases on two of the best and most widely respected indie labels (Strung Behind The Sun, All Clues Lead To Megan’s Bed, and Northern Gothic on the Australian Camera Obscura imprint and 7 Fathoms Down and Falling and This Is Where We Disappear on England’s Woronzow) have graced many year end “best of” lists, including mine. Lately, however, their releases have been sporadic and wildly uneven, partially due to the difficulty in getting everyone together in the recording studio (they all have day jobs) and partially due to the pursuit of other projects (leader Jeff Kelly released his ninth solo album, For The Swan in the Hallway last July, Kelly and fellow guitarist Laura Weller are in the eclectic, wyrdfolk duo Goblin Market, and keyboardist Eric Lichter released his debut solo effort, Palm Wine Sunday Blue in 2002). The recent departure of longtime drummer Karl Wilhelm (who, besides Kelly has spent more time in the lineup than any other member, including co-founding bassist, Joe Ross) also contributes to the band’s current state of flux. [The drumkit on these recordings was manned by Seattle DJ, Scott Vanderpool, who, along with Weller (she’s also his wife) and Ross were briefly in the Seattle pop combo Capping Day, whose “Holden Caulfield” gets a rudimentary run through here.]
The loose sense of immediacy that the live setting offers benefits the band (who’ve always been a tight-nit live project) considerably. Kelly’s stident, aggressive soloing on opener “The Cruel Night” (which, along with “Lost Girls Song” originally appeared on Northern Gothic) and the slow, sexy blues of “If You Love Me (You’ll Do It”) demonstrate why he’s one of the most underrated guitarists in America.
The mildly psychedelic “Gazelle” illustrates why the band have occasionally been heralded as the second coming of The Byrds and the short, punchy “Blue Eyes To Haunt Me,” the newest song in the set, illustrates the band haven’t lost a step in their old age (most are at or pushing 40).
Kelly also delivers one of his best love songs on the album’s 11½-minute centerpiece, the slow, swaying, heartwrenching “For S,” (longtime fans will recognize the reference to his wife, Susanne), which also features his yearning, Hammond organ backing. Kelly wrote this about the song: “Some parts of this song originate from when I was a teenager in the ‘70s and it was nice to update and finally record some words and a melody that have lived only in my in my mind for 30 years! (By the way- in this song I say ‘I mark them with a white stone.’ Admirers of Lewis Carroll might recognize the reference, for he ‘marked’ his diary with ‘a white stone’ after a particularly good day with his muse- Alice Liddell.)” Hence the title of the album!
7 Fathoms Down and Falling’s “She’s Still Bewitching Me” (recently covered to good effect on Mary Lou Lord’s Live City Sounds collection) gets a sedate, somber, laidback rearrangement here, which turns its original spot-on Byrds-y vibe into a foky lament, and the original meaning of “she’s still enthralling me” can almost be reinterpreted as “she’s still stalking me.”
While not in the same league as their early Camera Obscura masterpieces (which were more focused and, consequently, preferable to the looser, harsher Woronzow releases), Ten White Stones is still recommended as a companion piece to the band’s recently released live collection Lust Never Sleeps (on Joe’s Endgame imprint) as a fitting document of the current live Green Pajamas, which Kelly claims “is a better band than ever.”
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