Review Summary: Welcome to the opera!!!
Up until this point, I had never heard of Major Parkinson. The only indicators that I had to go on were the tags here on our good ole Sputnik and, to be frank, those tags had me feeling very skeptical of this band and their newest album
Valesa - Chapter I: Velvet Prison. I will never say that I’m an expert on prog rock of any era, but what I HAVE heard of modern prog rock has made me wanna bash my face off of a wall 9 times out of 10. That being said, a double album of that sound had me dreading this. And then something happened…
Instead of the cheesy and unnecessarily wanky prog rock that I was expecting, I was met with a warm and pleasant yet eerily minimal guitar tone with some Nick Cave-esque baritone vocals and I thought to myself “I don’t think this sounds like typical prog rock”. Well I was correct. I don’t know what y’all got going on with the tags on this band, but
Valesa - Chapter I: Velvet Prison is a cavalcade of angelic sounding synthpop mixed with an almost alt rock meets post punk type of mixture…and it is glorious. The opener sounds like Nick Cave suddenly became happy and started ***ing with modern pop synths. The melancholy is replaced with joy and the lush beats in the background will have you floating on a cloud.
In fact, this whole album will have you floating on that cloud. This album is almost hip hop-esque at times a la Cunninlynguists
Oneirology with the dreamy imagery and atmosphere. Just when those beats are pulling you in….all of a sudden you’re hit with a
Tender Prey era Nick Cave sounding banger with the soft, rhythmic drumming and deep pitched crooning putting you in a trance. Hell, there’s even a whole gospel/worship passage in my personal favorite track Jonah that will make you feel like the Holy Spirit is flowing through your whole body at your local church. Then you have the short interlude track Velvet Moon which is only 2 minutes long but makes an impact, sounding like Elton John in his prime with a gorgeous piano piece and dramatic vocals. It's really unbelievable how all over the place this album is yet it all comes together to flow as one being.
Valesa - Chapter I: Velvet Prison can quite honestly be enjoyed by fans of many different kinds of music. This album really transcends any genre tag. This double album is more of a journey that it is just an album. There’s highs and lows and everything in between. Fans from genres ranging from pop to electro to post punk to folk to hip hop could find moments to love throughout this album's duration. That speaks to an album’s greatness in my opinion…and this sure is something pretty damn great.
