Yves Jarvis Releases Fourth Studio Album ‘The Zug’ Today
Many-sided Canadian artist Yves Jarvis is releasing ’The Zug’ today, his latest release via ANTI- / Flemish Eye Records. To celebrate the album’s release he has also shared a high-spirited new video for the album track ”On The Line."
“On The Line” overflows with galloping drum fills and foaming guitars, addressing the fear-mongers with plainly tongue-in-cheek descriptions of freedom (“Fear today! I’m alive and free to hate!”.) Verse 2 proclaims with clear-eyed earnestness (“Let freedom reign!”) before relinquishing control and breaking free of our own trappings by acknowledging the choice therein (“Free to oscillate between the poles of my own cage!…”.) recalling Kevin Ayers’ or Faust’s freewheeling and cartoonish experimental rock.
Called a ”magical mood conductor” by The Fader, Jarvis’s music is critically acclaimed, with Under The Radar saying that he is ”an enthralling and surprising listen ... coming from the same Afro-futuristic camp as Thundercat and Kendrick Lamar” while Pitchfork added that he creates ”fluid, soul-inflected folk—like if Toro y Moi produced early Iron and Wine.”
Like the many works under Jarvis’ belt, 'The Zug’ is an entirely self-produced venture. From instrumentation to engineering to artwork, the autodidact has forged a bastion for vanguard exploration within which no holds are barred. With his youthful exuberance and swagger, the 25-year-old Jarvis evokes a mid-1970s Bowie as he bellows operatically with palpable conviction and purpose.
The Zug is at times a stadium spectacle, sometimes a whisper. From Birth to Death we celebrate and mourn, here this gamut of Feeling is condensed into a single motif. The strata of Being are straddled to highlight the relational networks in which we find ourselves. Jarvis expertly appeals to our senses without patronizing us.