KURATED NO. 255
POLARIS PRIZE 2025 WINNER
All Cylinders by Yves Jarvis
CONTENTS
- PLAYLIST:
– All Cylinders on Spotify, YouTube and Bandcamp - VIDEOS:
– The Knife in Me - LIVE:
– Audiotree Short Concert (30.51 mins)
– Polaris Awards 3-song Performance (8.45 mins) - INTERVIEW:
– Yves Jarvis talks with Tom Power on CBC Radio Q (15 mins)
– “I’m a Vibe Vulture”: Jarvis talks to Out Front Magazine - MORE INFO ABOUT POLARIS WINNERS AND NOMINEES
Solitary Man: On his award-winning album Jarvis wrote the music and lyrics, played all the instruments and did the production work. Here he’s accepting his Polaris award at Massey Hall last week.
ALL CYLINDERS BY YVES JARVIS
Polaris Prize 2025 winner an eclectic talent
This year’s Polaris Prize-winning album, All Cylinders, is an eclectic assembly of genres from radio-friendly pop, psych-folk, soul ballads and lo-fi indie to jazz and searing rock, flare-ups of psychedelia and more. You’d think such a bundle of influences would sound disjointed. Not so. Montrealer Yves Jarvis’ talent and ear for instrumentation and arrangements are strong. The album’s sound is cohesive but perhaps sounds somewhat same on repeated spins.
Drawing on music from various eras the multi-talented Jarvis plays every instrument on the recording which he also produced. He’s at ease in each style. In the year prior to recording his sixth album he reports listening to nothing but Frank Sinatra. Jarvis explained why to CBC’s Tom Power in a March interview: “The way Frank Sinatra commands the narrative, paints pictures with not only the lyrics but the cadence, the delivery, the pacing, the expressive qualities … I wanted to bring that to my work.”
Fair enough – learn from the best. Sinatra broke ground among the pantheon of popular music’s stars. However, as a lyricist Jarvis is short on at least one attribute from the polymath label critics have bestowed on him. The words he’s written and sings are nothing special. But they’re elevated by his fluid phrasing and harmonious solo and multi-tracked vocals.
Devoted to his craft Jarvis sees himself as a disciplined artist. “My ethic is that I’m working every day. I treat it like a 9 to 5. I get up and I record … it’s consistent …” His aim with All Cylinders was to have “replayability and hooks and punch”. He wanted it to be “bolder and more contrasted” than what he calls “murkier” work on previous discs.
It’s not surprising given his rigorous and analytical approach. In an interview with Audiotree last May, he argues there’s a distinction between the recording artist he’s been in contrast to the singer/songwriter role he plays on the new album. “In the past I’ve always thought about my vocals as being integrated into the instrumental … my concern was just about their shape and not even really their meaning … just phonetics.” On this latest record he’s more engaged with narrative and storytelling.
Evenso, he asserts that, “I don’t get much, frankly, from performing or writing. It’s really about documenting and recording … I put all my effort into the recording process and into documenting ideas.” He’s also particular about how his songs start and finish. He told Out Front Magazine, “I like to be like lightning … I don’t even want my songs to have an intro. I want my songs to drop and hit the ground running. I also just want it to end. I don’t want it to have an outro.”
While maintaining clear boundaries in his work, Jarvis considers expanding beyond them and his solo method: “… I definitely think I’m at the end of that. I think this is it for that, this record, ‘cause I’ve always done that, and it’s not that I think I’ve done everything I can do on my own, but I think I would get a lot more out of working with other voices on the next project. That goes for production as well.”
Jarvis is a talented work in progress. He’s occasionally contrarian and rigid while also keeping options and ideas in his back pocket. Will this latest Polaris winner will earn the attention of previous artists like Arcade Fire, Lido Pimienta or Jeremy Dutcher? We’ll see.
Background notes from Jarvis’ beginnings
Jarvis’ ambition started early:
• At 10 years old he started busking in Calgary for three years.
• At 17 in 2013 he recorded a self-titled debut record with a band called Faux Fur.
• The next year, using the name Un Blonde, he released his first solo album, Tenet (French for doctrine or belief).
• In 2016 he followed up with Good Will Come To You which became his first of four albums long-listed for Polaris including this year’s entry.
• In 2018 he started recording under Yves Jarvis –his real name is Jean-Sébastien Yves Audet – releasing two more albums in 2019 and 2020 both of which landed on the Polaris Long List.
26 September 2025
