Yves Jarvis - Sundry Rock Song Stock

“an album so profusely inventive, so alive to the possibilities of sound itself.” – Pitchfork (7.6)

“Wispy, wavery, deliberately ambling low-fi psychedelia.” – Jon Pareles, The New York Times

“Different instruments and genres all mix together to create a gently effervescent bliss.” – Bandcamp

“His style evokes uncovered recordings from an obscure spiritual retreat, ones that make you believe something transcendent was near when they were made.” – The Fader

On Sundry Rock Song Stock, Yves Jarvis continues to refine his creative approach to the core of his being, where music and life intertwine in harmonious fashion. This latest album from the Montreal-based musician fuses genre elements into a symbiotic relationship where wistful folk, tender R&B, pastoral prog, and musique concrète experiments feed into one another to grow lush new forms. Though he maintains an air of mystery with his lyrics, Jarvis’s whisper-soft words can be interpreted as both deeply personal and politically motivated in ways we haven’t heard from him before.

As a pre-teen street corner busker, some of Jarvis’s earliest performances took place outside. He returned to an open-air environment for Sundry Rock Song Stock’s creation, setting up a makeshift studio to lay down its foundation of guitar, Nord synth, and Rhodes electric piano. Recording on a reel-to-reel tape machine, he experimented with various off-kilter techniques including a softly tapped steel drum drenched in effects, or melodies played on a wine glass meant to mimic a flute.

“I want my recordings to be naturalist, so from that sense I am ideally making them outside,” says Jarvis. “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.”