Montreal’s Yves Jarvis has released a new single and official music video entitled “Victim,” his first offering since 2019’s The Same But By Different Means. Described by Jarvis as a tightrope walk between victor and victim, you can watch the accompanying visuals for “Victim” via YouTube now.
Yves Jarvis is itself a clean slate, a recasting of Montreal-based musician Jean-Sebastian Audet. Audet previously created under the name Un Blonde, a name which he says was, at one point, all he wanted. But of course, things change. Each aspect of Audet’s work is immensely personal, and Yves Jarvis reflects this literally. Yves is Audet’s middle name, while Jarvis is his mother’s last name.
Included on the 2019 Polaris Prize Long List, The Same But By Different Means is at once warm, haunting, and unfamiliar while remaining singularly inviting and kind—a mélange that reflects both comfort and its counterpart. Un Blonde’s 2017 LP, Good Will Come To You, was celebrated universally for those things that make Audet’s work compelling: careful folk noir, tender R&B flourishes, pillowy vocal beds that somehow seem to neither begin nor end, and a punkish ambivalence towards saccharine melodics that traditionally dominate the previous three structures.
These same qualities are present across The Same But By Different Means, a record that builds a delightful, imaginative framework from which to explore what it means to be Yves Jarvis.
