Major Parkinson is a gem flying waaay under the radar amongst unique, multifaceted rock music. Based out of Norway and formed in 2003, the band’s sound is an ever-evolving combination of classic rock, prog rock, hard rock, surf rock, blues, punk, dance, avant-pop, cabaret, metal, tango, ska, and more, all twisted up into a demented, diabolical amalgam. They draw their influences from, among others, Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Yes, System of a Down, Gogol Bordello, and early 1900’s vaudville! They’re really good.

Likely doomed to obscurity forever for a number of reasons, I feel good doing my part to try to bring attention to these wonderfully bizarre musicians. You may not like all of it, but you’re guaranteed to like some of it. Even my wife loves this band and she hates everything I like!

Major Parkinson’s Bandcamp page

JUMP TO:
(2008) Major Parkinson
(2010) Songs from a Solitary Home
(2014) Twilight Cinema
(2017) Blackbox
(2022) Valesa – Chapter 1: Velvet Prison

Major Parkinson (2008) – Rating: 8/10
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The humble self-titled debut is very much a brand new band finding its footing, and it’s the least progressive and the least tonally colorful album to date, but man is it good anyway. The band is already confident enough to be unabashedly weird, and the way they maintain a conscious effort to be listenable with a focus on melody makes everything very satisfying. Frankly, that’s harder to pull off than being weird and unlistenable. Anyone can do that.

Major Parkinson feels like a very stripped-down record, using not much more than basic rock instrumentation with traditional song structures. The “charm”, and I use that word loosely, comes from singer Jon Ivar Kollbotn’s distinct Tom Waits-meets-Bela Lugosi dark cabaret vocals and his desperate, theatrical approach to his delivery. Although the band is Norwegian, Kollbotn sings entirely in English, but it makes no fucking difference since his avantgarde poetic word-salad lyrics are impossible to decipher anyway. “I met a little girl on the marketplace/Born without a proper face/Made to fill that magical sensation/A lovely voice like a radio/Talking in a lavatory disarray/Jacuzzi conversation flow/It was the summer of 187“. It’s either a fundamental misunderstanding of English or he’s being a dick on purpose for the sake of art. Either way, I’m for it!

The whole debut is a tapestry of surf rock, cabaret, Indian raga-rock, ska-punk, jangle rock, and avant-pop. Not perfect because of too much homogeneity in the overall mood and a few songs fall flat, but I really cannot complain too much. Solid first album from a solid band.

Songs from a Solitary Home (2010) – Rating: 7/10
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Songs from a Solitary Home is absolutely a transition album, combining the earlier precocious and raucous avant-punk with elements of the ambitious and atmospheric prog compositions that we’ll see with the next album. While structurally similar to the debut, the band begins to flex their ’70s progressive rock influence with more varied instrumentation and genre-bending, but keeps it reigned in without tipping the scales into excess.

The vocals and lyrics are still as strange and over-the-top as before, but we see a lot more of the mellow side here that was only hinted at with the debut in songs like the pleasant piano ballad “Card Boxes” or the honky-tonk ragtime number “Downtown Boogie”. The songs are more diverse, but there’s a lacking cohesiveness that never really makes Songs from a Solitary Home feel like more than a collection of individual songs that don’t really belong together. Too diverse, I guess, if there’s even such a thing. Plus, while more entertaining overall than the debut, the last third of the record is kind of a drag with a string of weak songs.

My favorite moment of this album comes from the outrageously self-indulgent keyboard solo in the middle of “The Age of Paranoia”, which simultaneously sounds like a Keith Emerson wank-fest and the cheesy musical cues from the Price is Right! What more could you want?

Twilight Cinema (2014) – Rating: 10/10
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Yes, a perfect 10. This is my top pick for the best album from the 2010’s that no one knows about. And now you do.

The problem is that this is Major Parkinson’s first full-blown progressive rock album, so they’ve further niche-ified their already-niche output. Fact of the matter is, the music on Twilight Cinema is so, so consistently good that it’s guaranteed to have crossover appeal. But it will never be hoisted out of obscurity, unfortunately, and I have to come to terms with that. Obviously, it hurts the band more than it hurts me!

Twilight Cinema comprises eight tracks that cover nearly the entire landscape of progressive rock music. “Skeleton Sangria” is a stripped-down cabaret waltz lead-in. “Impermanence” is a perfect chunk of dark atmospherics, chilling crescendos, evolving melodies, and lush instrumentation. “Black River” is an energetic, jauntily sinister tune that brings to mind pirates and haunting, cascading ocean waves! “The Wheelbarrow” is an exercise in ’70s progressive rock traditions; a suite containing what can only be described as separate thematic movements, complete with distinct melodic passages, instrumental mood painting, and emotional continuity. “A Cabin in the Sky” is an incredible piece of visceral carnival horror, combining old-timey circus music with chunky brass, modern lyrics, and a touch of heavy metal. “Heart Machine” is a heavy slab of industrial doom metal riffs interspersed with tense and beautiful piano breakdowns, dreamlike guitar, and hushed vocals. “Beaks of Benevola” is a stunningly gorgeous display of genuine balladry and mellow male/female vocal interplay. “Twilight Cinema” brings it back around with typical Major Parkinson bouncy weirdness, straight-forward rock arrangements, oddball synth noises, and goofy lyrics. The conclusion to the song brings a tangible sense of finality to the album. And that’s everything.

This was my album of the decade. I can’t speaking highly enough about it. Don’t read about it, listen to it!

Blackbox (2017) – Rating: 8/10
No Full Album Review Yet

It’ll be hard to top Twilight Cinema, but Major Parkinson’s fourth studio album certainly tries. It’s incredibly ambitious, although noticeably disorganized, and they lean even harder into prog rock decadence. This one might be a turnoff for anyone who was already tentative about Twilight Cinema.

Once everything comes together, Blackbox is a fantastic experience. The stars of the show here are the two extended prog suites: “Isabel: A Report to an Academy” is an dazzling display of ethereal piano, dreamy strings, and with occasional passages of rough noise and even some really cool typewriter percussion. “Baseball” is a 10-minute tornado of superb musical ideas, energetic genre hopping, more instruments than you can shake a black box at, and an implausibly cool coda at the end with hand claps and a layered female acapella chorus. Neither of these songs can be described in words, they must be heard to be believed.

The rest of album never reaches similar dizzying highs, but the phrase I’d use to describe the vibe is “hauntingly pretty”. Kollbotn’s voice will usually stay low and mysterious, and his avantgarde lyrics paint a surreal and dark picture. “Madeleine Crumbles”, which kind of marks the album’s halfway point, feels like a melancholy interlude and features an unsettling use of the “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” melody. In fact, you already heard this melody used a couple of tracks ago on “Before the Helmets”. Little recurring musical quotes and themes pop up everyone on Blackbox, and I catch something new with each listen.

This is a markedly more mature album than anything that was released before. The band is evolving, and they are always full of surprises. They’re due for a new album soon, and I can’t fucking wait to hear what’s in store next.

Valesa – Chapter 1: Velvet Prison(2008) – Rating: 8/10
No Full Album Review Yet

Well, I wasn’t expecting this at all! This is a giant platter of nostalgic, slightly sleazy synthwave. Jon Ivar Kollbotn calls this an album of “synth anthems set in a disco of nuclear anxiety.” I can dig that. It’s like a cold-war era uneasy Stranger Things world of ’80s sensibilities as hazily refracted through the lens of the modern era. Prog rock is gone now, and unless they surprise me again, I doubt Major Parkinson will circle back around to it.

Cheesy keyboards, drum machines, completely outrageous vocals, lyrics that are absolutely, disgustingly cringe-inducing (and, don’t forget, entirely self-aware). When I first heard Valesa – Chapter 1 I was just about as disappointed as one could be. I wanted heady prog arrangements saturated with dark cabaret, and yet I got weird ABBA-like vocal melodies and a positive, yet strangely apocalyptic, atmosphere. I wouldn’t have even known it was Major Parkinson if not for Kollbotn’s trademark gravelly singing. By the way, Kollbotn sings clean on a couple moments throughout the record, most notably on “Live Forever” (“Tracing all the lines in the palm of your hand/Balancing a horse inside the Eiffel Tower“). If you’ve been following the band for all these years, this cannot be missed. The dude has a pretty good voice!

Truly, this is Major Parkinson’s broadway musical production. Everything is so crisp and bombastic, my wife thought it was a live album when she first heard it and was surprised when I told her otherwise. You have songs like “Behind the Next Door” that start low and build up to an incredible, melodic crescendo. “Live Forever” is larger than life, containing no less than five different pop melodies. “Jonah” will have you standing up and singing along as the gospel passage kicks in and swells to incredible highs. And then you’ll come down once in a while with foreboding tracks like “The House” and the simple, melancholy of “Fantasia Me Now!” that are straight out of the VHS and arcade era.

The best part are the lyrics, because they’re just as oblique and head-scratching as they always are. I love hearing all the references to ’80s pop culture — a ten-foot tall statue of Ferris Bueller; kids in the basement playing Space Invaders; not having seen The NeverEnding Story since 1987 — mixed in with references to Goya beans, Tiananmen Square, and whoever the fuck Nicolae Ceaușescu is, while also alluding to the present era (“Baby boomers from the X to the Y to the Z/It’s the boring twenties“)

In a catalog of weirdness, this is by and far the weirdest thing they could have come up with. Look out for Valesa – Chapter 2, guaranteed to be stylistically different. I’m banking on a bluegrass black metal album with Mike Patton guest vocals.