REVIEW: Javyon’s Point of Departure (LP)
Rattling us with their rhythmic tension in “Overcome Now,” gazing through the stereo like an unforgiving lover’s stare in “In the Haze,” there’s no disputing whether or not the guitar parts are the most important element for us to examine in Javyon’s Point of Departure LP, but that said, they’re far from the lone point of interest in this record. Javyon puts his fingers to work as much as he does his pipes in tracks like “Dust,” “On the Way Down,” “The Reckoning Day” and “Innocence,” and the resulting harmonies have as much in common with the traditional aesthetics of pop/rock as they do a brutishly heavy strain of alternative metal that leaves the ridiculous hip-hop influences out of the equation entirely. He’s a multitalented individual, and his debut is one of the best I’ve listened to in 2020.
MORE ON JAVYON: https://javyon.com/
The guitar absolutely sets the tone for the whole album in “On the Way Down,” but the poetry Javyon offers us as his own in “Remake Me,” “With Me,” “Outside the Room” and the aforementioned “Dust,” is inarguably personal, lending an honest emotionality to the music that goes well beyond what the status quo calls for. Rock n’ roll, at least in its purest form, is a genre that can’t exist without passion on the most human of levels, and in Point of Departure, this songwriter isn’t allowing for us to miss any of the sonic — nor linguistic — haymakers that he’s delivering from within the four walls of a recording studio.
I haven’t been able to get the bassline tread in “The Reckoning,” “Twisted Plot” and the juggernaut “With Me” out of my mind whenever I’ve listened to this LP from beginning to end without any sort of external interruptions. Each of these tracks feature Javyon manipulating textures into a mood-creator, an agent of evocation if you will, and that’s something a lot of his rivals bankrolled with major label money would just as soon spend the better part of a career trying to figure out. He’s already got a good handle on the concept in this rookie affair, and that alone should give listeners and critics a decent preview into what his future could look and sound like in an ideal scenario.
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5Zagpjun6VMt5r5ZPe8phL?si=xPP0RTqsQtWgXfCYZrh1-w:0
If this is just a taste of what Javyon’s going to be pumping out of his next set of recording sessions, the sleeper hits he’s sitting on here won’t be the only headline-making songs of note to bear his moniker in the credits. Point of Departure has a grander narrative broken into its ten movements that stops just shy of being artsy or theatrical, and within the context of modern alternative metal, it’s absolutely on the ambitious side of the spectrum — and that’s taking into account just how experimental a year 2020 has been thus far. I’m excited to hear how he’s going to further shape his professional persona, but based off of this, I believe we can count on a lot more melodic muscle from his camp in the future.
Colin Jordan
