No offense to 2009 or anything, but there’s something really refreshing about a Brooklyn-based, MySpace-made indie band’s releasing an album devoid of blatant art-rock agendas and half-assed attempts at cohesion. Javelin’s debut, which builds on last summer’s Jamz n Jemz, is an aimless foray through a jungle of funk/soul/electro/pop/who-knows-hip-hop samples and genre-bending homespun beats, all replete with fun.
The variety-pack-ness of No Más peaks on “Oh! Centra,” which pairs a beat filtered through a Nintendo lens with a flute-driven melody and eventually dips in and out of a sample of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It.” This is all behind chipmunk-sung lines like “You wanna go to the park/And peep the kangaroo?/They got a pouch in the front/And plus a tail in the back/You got a tail in the back/I keep hightailing it back.”
The duo can’t possibly keep up this kind of frivolous pace, and several of the 15 tracks are just (and I apologize for using the term) chillwave jams — but nearly all are expertly crafted, and hedged with mirthy dance flavor.
