All Cylinders by Yves Jarvis
All Cylinders by Yves Jarvis
Montreal’s music scene apparently cherishes odd combinations and the oddballs who create them—the plastique funk of Chromeo, the incandescently human electronic pop of Majical Cloudz, the potentially infuriating indie-rock of Arcade Fire—and Yves Jarvis is experimental and different enough to belong among them.
On his newest long player, All Cylinders, Jarvis experiments with more conventional songwriting: hooks, choruses, brevity, prettiness. However, he embellishes the writing with idiosyncrasies that connect these 11 tracks to earlier LPs like 2022’s The Zug.
The main connection comes through style, or styles, because Jarvis loves to mix-and-mismatch, whether driving stake-like guitar riffs through the Steely Dan mellowness of “With a Grain” or updating the blaxploitation-style groove of “The Knife in Me” with softer moments of sympathy.
Jarvis invites a crowd of influences, including Crosby, Stills & Nash harmonies and glistening acoustic guitar (plus a touch of Ben Harper’s folk-rock jaggedness) on “Warp and Woof,” or earthy Leon Bridges soul (and hints of DeBarge) on “One Gripe.”
If any influence stands out from the rest, that would be the late Prince, whose storied vocal range gets more of an homage than a direct imitation. Jarvis also follows the Purple One’s early example by writing, producing, playing, and singing absolutely everything here.
Jarvis of course can’t reach the heights Prince scaled, although there are moments when a listener wouldn’t rule out an implied yet, such as “Gold Filigree,” a smooth-as-Babyface R&B number with gorgeously suggestive electric-guitar licks, layered snatches of falsetto, and a dollop of Beck’s humor (rhyming “jewelry” with “tomfoolery”).
All Cylinders reaches further back to the show-biz principle of leaving the audience wanting more: it’s over within a half-hour. Yves Jarvis is an oddball, but he’s an oddball who densely packs that running time with pop pleasures both intelligent and instinctual.
Get All Cylinders at Amazon here.
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