Montreal’s Yves Jarvis is readying the release of his third album, which was crafted in an open-air environment. “I want my recordings to be naturalist, so from that sense I am ideally making them outside,” he explained. “More than a musician or a singer, I’m a producer, and any studio I’m in will become my bedroom. Creation is my life and I don’t compartmentalize it at all. When you better yourself, you better the world. Even if you only interact with one person in your life, the effect of trying to see things for what they are is vast. Change can feel like a fantasy, but I’m not fatalistic about it. I make music because I get results that way. It’s why I promote creativity, whatever that means for anyone.”

After “Victim” and “For Props“, he has now shared the poetic and psychedelic “Semula” as third single. Watch the trippy video and pre-order the album via Bandcamp below.

Having previously created music under the moniker Un Blonde, back in 2017, Jean-Sebastian Audet reinvented his sound in a way that felt entirely cyclic. His new project, Yves Jarvis, is indeed described as an exploration of shifts and phases. It is also one that is deeply personal to Audet, and it is simply reflected in his name choice: Yves is Audet’s middle name, while Jarvis is his mother’s last name.

Reinvention and metamorphoses are second nature to the artist. This is something that’s displayed frequently with his music, which across the board is a sonic amalgamation of varying genres, a mood board of influences. In fact, of his music and what specifically drives him to create, he commented “It’s this spectrum and it’s this dichotomy that I’m interested in exploring. Both sides of everything, and everything in between.”

His latest single “For Props” is no exception to this eclectic sound, with its irresistibly funky bassline that wouldn’t sound amiss on a Stevie Wonder track from the ’70s. Yet there are elements of indie bedroom pop coming through in the driving acoustic guitars, with a relentless riff grounding the track. There’s an airy nay pastoral quality, one that makes “For Props” fitting for a relaxed summer evening.

This breeziness actually gives a taste for the whole album as Sundry Rock Song Stock has been described as being closely “infused with the natural state of green.” When explaining this further, Yves Jarvis said it’s the colour that he associates with his own personality, one that moves “beyond an aesthetic attraction into feelings of wildness, boundless energy, and an anti-establishment streak permeating 23 years on the planet”.

However, as expected, the last minute of the track morphs and slides into something else, almost stripping back each individual element to its bare bones, revealing to us how the track was made. It’s like a peek behind the curtain, a small taster of what goes into making a soundscape as lush and full-bodied as “For Props” without it being overbearing or heavy. Combined with Yves Jarvis’s dulcet R&B tones and soothing croons, it’s a song that glides incredibly smoothly down into your soul.