“Polymath” is one of the misused words of music journalism, cousin to the even more hyperbolic “genius”. In pop coverage it usually gets applied to musicians who play more than one instrument and do not fit neatly into a genre bracket — impressive, perhaps, but hardly the same as translating Sumerian while extracting DNA from an apple.
A recipient of this overblown term is Canadian singer-songwriter Yves Jarvis. Born in Montreal as Jean-Sébastien Yves Audet, he plays all the instruments on his new album All Cylinders, which he has also produced. Its songs are filled with switches in direction and doublings back. “If this trail bifurcates, then I just have to choose,” he sings in “Decision Tree”. The choice of language is telling: Jarvis takes the roundabout route when presented with a fork in the road.
The danger for virtuosic musicians, egged on by the lavish praise they attract, is convolution. Cogs and wheels spin in ever greater profusion. Ideas are tossed around without being developed. The acoustic space comes to resemble a whiteboard crammed with the dense scribbles of a puzzling theorem. In that sense, All Cylinders has a foreboding title. But the results prove otherwise.
“With a Grain” has intricately layered guitar melodies and sudden crunching riffs, like abrupt gear changes. But the song is breezy, encapsulated by Jarvis’s languid voice. “Gold Filigree” has the mellow feel of a Prince slow jam. “Get up while the sun is still out,” he sings in “One Gripe”. His slacker’s refrain is set to the promptings of a cheerful drumbeat and bright guitar licks.
The sound quality is warm and unfussy. Using cheap kit and a basic open-source recording app, Jarvis has deliberately avoided pristine production. “I’m Your Boy” is elaborately arranged psychedelic pop in the grand west coast tradition, but the song’s spontaneous character is summed up by an outbreak of raffish Rolling Stones-style riffing. All Cylinders negotiates its bifurcating paths with disarming ease.
★★★★☆
‘All Cylinders’ is released by In Real Life