5. Major Parkinson - Blackbox

Pretty cool cover. Actually I really really like it.

Major Parkinson are a Norwegian seven-piece rock band with a thoroughly unique sound. Outrageously underrated, they're relatively unknown even here in Norway. I first took note of the name back in 2008, when the song "197" became a minor minor hit. It has Kaizers Orchestra-esque Eastern European-sounding scales, beats and instruments, adds in some very proggy riffs and odd time signatures, and overall has an extremely dark flavor, largely thanks to singer and main songwriter Jon Ivar Kollbotn's deep, gravelly vocals. It's a combination that sounds unlikely to succeed, but it's a solid winner of a song. However, they never got big, and I never played their other music much, but they're now ten years on from their self-titled debut album, and I'm starting to realize that this band is probably one of the better things to come out of this bumpy country the last decade and they're still maturing. Blackbox is their fourth and newest album, and it's an absolute stunner.

It's lamentable that Major Parkinson's wonderful music is too weird to earn them a living, but also awesome that they're ambitious and creative enough to have pushed on and now actually released four albums. They managed it in part through fantastic fundraising videos, like the one above for Blackbox, the sequel to the hilarious "The fundraiser song" that they made for their third album, Twilight Cinema. Those videos happen to serve pretty well as an introduction to the band, both in terms of style, instrumentation, and it actually helps to know the face of the person singing those absurd vocals. The flamboyance, darkness and humour goes hand in hand, and the result is entirely lovable.

On to Blackbox. It's epic, dark, grandiose, intriguing, magical and intense. The two highlights are undoubtedly the two 10-minute tracks "Isabel: A report to an academy" and "Baseball", but the opening and closing duos are also fantastic. The production is incredible the whole way through, and helps the record sounds cohesive and flow as one piece, despite big differences between the songs. There's lots of very gypsy violin, very majestic brass, very metal drums, some flute, harp and other very pretty chamber music moments, some saloon piano, some castanets I think, some ompa organ, and countless other musical elements that all flow together in a wondrous cacophony. There's hardly a straight 4/4 beat anywhere on the album, but there's also no shortage of crowdpleasing moments like awesome modulations and catchy hooks. For examples of almost all of the above, look no further than the album centerpiece "Baseball". And it's all so, so fun.

Opener "Lover, lower me down!" is a slow burner with a long instrumental intro, intensifying as Kollbotn's incredible vocals come in, and intensifying further as a female chorus echoes the synth line from the introduction halfway through. As the song climaxes with an ever more distorted guitar line, crazier drumming and the chorus' dramatic return, it transitions abruptly into track 2, the addictively rhythmic "Night hitcher" (I've had that 10-beat rhythm stuck in my head for weekends at a time). The two songs flow so well and also share so many thematic elements that they might as well have been one 10-minute track.

We then get the first of two relatively toned-down acoustic interludes. "Before the helmets" introduces the whispered mantra "You must believe in magic", and although I have absolutely no idea what Blackbox is really about, the lyrical fragments that do stick out convey utterly magical imagery. There are salamanders, fluorescent skies, black confetti, gleaming pantaloons, tesla coils, and lots of other words that send the imagination running wild. The keywords recur just often enough to create the illusion of a cohesive story... I'm not sure there is one, but it doesn't really matter. It works really well, like on both of Kaizers' triologies.

What's up with the baseball stuff?!

Four of the tracks feature Linn Frøkedal on guest vocals. It's a great addition, providing much-needed contrast to Kollbotn's dark singing; Major Parkinson should just get a full-time female vocalist. But I do find myself wishing, basically every time, that it's Susanne Sundfør singing. I'm sorry, the moody soundscapes are just perfect for her, and simply imagining her voice over "Isabel" or "Blackbox" gives me goosebumps. Frøkedal's more restrained performance does feel slightly underwhelming in the context of the epic music.

More light criticism: The one song I'm not too big a fan of is "Madeleine crumbles". Its very poppy riff sticks out a little too much on the record, and although it only shows up at the very beginning and the end of the song, it's just a little too much. The song in between is good, but slightly less amazing than the other tracks on the album.

But all in all this album is jaw-dropping, in the best possible way. An incredibly creative and thrilling work of art. Give these guys a listen, you deserve it as much as they do.

Best tracks: "Baseball", "Night hitcher", "Isabel: A report to an academy"

6. Dirty Projectors - Dirty Projectors

Dave Longstreth, the eccentric mastermind behind Dirty Projectors, is one of the most creative, ambitious and talented musicians I know of in the indie rock/pop world these days. His music is delightfully odd, off-kilter, and occasionally it's also very enjoyable (on other occasions, not so much). After his longtime bandmate-then-girlfriend Amber Coffman (whose charm and show-stopping backing vocals many claimed was part of the key to Dirty Projectors' success) left him/the band in 2013, the heartbroken Longstreth has responded in the only way I ever expected him to: With a truly unique, epic, fascinating breakup album.

Dark. Is it the logo of Bitte Orca with shoe marks on it or something?

It's telling that Longstreth, now that he's once again completely a one-man band, makes the seventh album under the Dirty Projectors moniker self-titled. Dirty Projectors is really not very flattering at all; the lyrics are painfully honest, seemingly unfiltered from a mind full of anger and resentment towards Coffman, alternating between self-doubt and self-aggrandizement, and with some lines that are frankly quite hideous. I'm reminded ever so slightly by Benedict Cumberbatch's character as Sherlock Holmes, the genious/madman with a hyperactive mind who understands nothing of human emotion and insults everyone he meets. But Longstreth also offers lots of beauty and wisdom on DP, he is after all an artist, who connects with emotions on a very deep level, and now has more fuel for his lyrics than ever before. Longstreth's lyrics and singing have never carried much weight to me - he's such an emotive musician that it never mattered that I couldn't tell you what a single one of the fantastic songs on Bitte Orca are actually about. But now they do, and while his singing hasn't exactly gotten any better ('idiosyncratic' is a nice way to put it), the raw, honest, intensely relatable (to us weirdos, anyway) lyrics on DP add a thrilling new dimension to Dirty Projectors' catalogue.

"Press photo". It's a shot from the "Keep you name" video.

Enough about the lyrics. You come to Dirty Projectors for the music, and what Longstreth has done this time is quite fascinating. He's changed his sound completely - but his style is so recognizable, so inimitable that I barely noticed. One of my very favorite guitarists has made an album almost entirely without guitar, and I barely noticed. Dirty Projectors is full of organs, horns, fuzz-bass, industrial percussion, heavy influences from r'n'b and hiphop, ska and reggae. Longstreth has turned to beatmaking with the same fanatic obsession and vigor that made him a guitar virtuoso. And he uses the kaleidoscopic beats just as he would his crazy guitar lines. They don't simply accompany a song, they create an impossible collage, dense and disorienting, often distracting, but when you get familiar with them they blanket the music, the weird and hurried percussion giving it all a feeling of inevitability and even purpose.

As a case study in how Longstreth's music sounds, I'll describe the first time I heard "Work together". I think the first twenty seconds of the song had me questioning twelve times what kind of a song it was. It starts with some sparse piano, with what sounds like a technological seagull in the background - the line is first somber and feels slow, then some bright, giddy chords bounce in, then some strange syncopated, jazzy scale descends, then a strange reversed effect zooms in, giving way to an ugly beat with processed vocals and choppy drums, which reveals that the final beat in the measure is an absurd auto-tuned chromatic vocal riff. When the verse finally kicks in, over a creepy organ and some hyperactive Caribbean-sounding congas or something, it's with lyrics describing Longstreth seen from the outside: "Complex plans and high ideals, but he treats people poorly / Is his ceaseless ambitiousness proxy for a void he's ignoring?". The first chorus then comes in (we're still just 30 seconds into the song) with a futuristic walking synth-bass line accompanying layered Longstreths falsettoing "How good we could have it if we worked together". It's a fascinating song, by no means an easy listen, but completely captivating. It's as if the schizophrenic music serves as illustration to why their relationship didn't work, purposefully. Though it's hard to tell whether that's the case, or if it's the only kind of music Longstreth can (be bothered to) make. "Maybe love is competition that makes us raise the bar and better ourselves" he sings. Sounds like a charming fellow.

On many of the other songs, though, Longstreth has actually toned down himself down a notch. DP is by far his most mellow album, with a lot of beauty and serenity. It's borderline sappy at times, as such an album should be, but the leftfield musical antics keep things interesting for me all the way through. From the somber opener "Keep your name" (a stunning stylistic curveball à la "Everything in its right place") to the epic "Whiter shade of pale"-alluding closer "I see you", Dirty Projectors is a rock solid album, easily on par with Bitte Orca. The Kevin Parker-esque singular focus and musical perfectionism pays off just as on Tame Impala's Currents. All nine songs have a very distinct sound, and the only time the album loses a bit of urgency is in the scatterbrained second half of "Ascent through clouds". But even that bit is pretty cool, and a necessary transition before the relative radio-friendliness of "Cool your heart", with Dawn Richard on guest vocals sounding strangely similar to Coffman on Swing Lo Magellan.

"Up in Hudson" got an amazing music video in November. Colors and noses unlike anything I've
seen before. Just realized that the filmmaker, Isaiah Saxon, also made the wonderful videos
to Panda Bear's "Boys latin" and Björk's "Wanderlust"!

Dirty Projectors is an entirely new sound both for Dave Longstreth on his eighth full-length album, and for the long legacy of break-up albums in general. It's not always pretty, but it's a sentimental and memorable emotional ride, and only slightly less musically thrilling than his previous work. The eight-minute chronicle "Up in Hudson" is among his best in both respects. In total, it's a victory of an album.

Hear: "Up in Hudson", "Cool your heart", "I see you".