The Zug

The colors of Yves Jarvis’ album sleeves are meant to respect the records’ respective moods, which makes the double rainbow on the cover of *The Zug* feel especially significant. Jean-Sébastien Yves Audet’s fourth self-produced solo album under the alias bears all the hallmarks of the Canadian musician’s previous work, nestling his hushed, multi-tracked vocals inside homespun bedroom soul; but the colors are brighter, the melodies more vivid. A kaleidoscopic jumble of acoustic strumming, funk bass, and loose drums, “At the Whims” could be a lost gem of Brazilian Tropicália. “You Offer a Mile” sculpts its polyrhythmic groove into a triumphant chorus. And on the autobiographical “Bootstrap Jubilee,” he vows to “coalesce into a higher form of being”—confirmation that, for Audet, psychedelia isn’t just a vibe, it’s a way of life.

Made up of acoustic instrumentation and primitive electronics, the Montreal-based psych-folk auteur’s latest navigates a world of discord with wide-eyed optimism and withering wit.

Yves Jarvis refines his art with a deceptively light touch on the idiosyncratic The Zug

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In some ways The Zug, although hardly less enigmatic, feels like that album’s woozy, dislocated melodies being pushed into sharper focus, becoming in the process psych-pop with an emphasis as much on the pop as on the psychedelia.