Another day, another Seattle band that has been around since the first part of the Eighties. And again, more of a cult, particularly among the music critics and psychedelia aficionados. The Green Pajamas and their key mainstay, songwriter/guitarist/singer Jeff Kelly have a special, relatively secluded place in the modern psychedelia.
Decades and strings of excellent albums have passed, and the Pajamas have remained on the outskirts of recognition, so for a few last years (actually since 2012) the band decided to lay a bit low, only to come with this new album, “To The End of the Sea” las autumn. It was worth the wait.Green Pajamas and Jeff Kelly might be from Seattle, but they have quite often had the feel of a late Sixties British psychedelic band with folkier inclinations. You could even call it something like a “Victorian psychedelia”. Not that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) turn up their guitars and keyboards up a notch or two (try “Ten Million Light Years Away” from this album), just that this “ghosts from the past” sound has in many ways become their trademark.
And “To The End of the Sea” abounds with that sound.Not that you can’t feel the best trademarks of the psychedelic age music throughout the album, Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles, Smile Smile-era Beach Boys, often in the same song. Try the duo of “Madness To Burn” and “Juliet Smiles” somewhere in the middle of this 18 song cycle.
It does seem that Kelly works in song cycles and that this pause between albums has helped him think and compose things through because among all the good albums The Green Pajamas have come up so far, this is definitely one of the better ones. For the uninitiated, along with the “All Clues Lead To Megan’s Bed” from 1999 the best place to start. Maybe the sea should not end after all.
