We continue our "Best of NYC Countdown", covering every day one of the artists that made our Year End Best of NYC list (a chart compiled by a jury comprised of local bloggers, music writers, promoters, record store personnel and DJs).
By “Oh! Centra,” the third track on its Luaka Bop debut, “No Mas,” Javelin has already covered bumping Tom Tom Club funk, Beach Boys-circa-’66 chamber-pop, and “Super Mario Brothers” blip-bloop-bleep. Much of the music sounds lifted from thrift-shop vinyl, but according to George Langford and Tom Van Buskirk, the wily Rhode Island cousins who formed the band in 2005, only some of it is. Often, if the duo’s press releases are to be believed, Langford and Van Buskirk play real, live instruments, using guitars, keyboards, horns, and whatever else they’ve got handy to recreate vintage source material. As slick and seamless as it is, “No Mas” is smudged with human fingerprints and free of the “aren’t I clever?” gimmickry that mars many a lesser glo-fi record. Langford and Van Buskirk plunder with love, whether cribbing glossy new-wave synths (“Moscow 1980”) or the burping baritone saxophones of Stax-aping Daptone soul (“Shadow Heart”). – Kenneth Partridge