When Romy Lightman and Yves Jarvis’ voices fall into harmony on “Olamim”—the opening track on Banned, their first album as the duo Lightman Jarvis Ecstatic Band—they sound at ease, like they’re on familiar ground. Which makes sense: Banned was recorded at the Tree Museum, an outdoor, installation-style gallery spanning 200 acres in Ontario, and neither Jarvis nor Lightman is a stranger to the property. Jarvis’ last solo record, Sundry Rock Song Stock, was made there; Lightman’s aunt co-founded the museum. Plus, as romantic partners, nor are the pair strangers to each other.
Lightman is half of the Toronto folk duo Tasseomancy, and Jarvis is the stage name of Montreal’s one-man psych-pop outfit Jean-Sébastien Yves Audet. Recorded over two weeks—Lightman plays synthesizer, Jarvis plays guitar, both sing—Banned is an experimental, largely improvised attempt to blend the two’s musical impulses. The results are closer to Jarvis’ more far-flung reference points: acid-rock, sound collage, surrealist folk. Lightman once described the couple’s approach to the collaboration as a “non-approach,” and Jarvis has called the album a “waste product” of sessions that were primarily a means for them to connect with each other. Naturally, Banned is a bit of a hodgepodge, a collection of wayward sounds and textures built by happenstance rather than intention.
Sometimes their experiments pay off: “Red Champa” pairs a distorted vocal sample with a rhythmic steel drum loop to charming effect, while the percussion in “Elastic Band” pitter-patters satisfyingly over itself. Tracks tend to pick up in their latter halves, as though after some trial and error the elements finally click into place. But just as often, Banned is a free-associative exercise that seems to demand little commitment from the artists. Meandering instrumentals often dissolve into shapelessness—for instance, “Ein Sof,” built from a staccato bass loop and randomly strummed acoustic guitar, wears out its welcome long before its three minutes are up. Elsewhere, cut-and-paste lyrics just evoke scrawled bathroom-wall graffiti. Phrases like “toxic masculinity,” “a sacred BPM of 69,” and “cums” are tossed out at random to little more than gimmicky effect. Not helping matters is the fact that Jarvis sings with an academic indifference, as though he were reading from a dictionary. It can seem like the duo is trying both too hard and not hard enough.
Banned is stronger when the pair sound more invested, when the songs feel more composed and can unspool without as many distractions. In “Recurring Theme,” Jarvis pleads, against a low and ominous cello, “I am fighting/I don’t wanna fight,” with a quivering desperation while Lightman intones limberly along. And after four minutes of splattered words and chaotic drum hits, it’s a relief when “Stomach Pit” breaks into a lovely singalong chorus: “Old ways broken and in front of me/I feel the beauty of love/Deep in the pit of my stomach.”
The record’s most compelling tracks are the ones that put Lightman and Jarvis’ hearts a little more on display, when they exploit the tension in their own relationship. In “Elastic Band,” they enact a lover’s quarrel alongside a jaunty bassline, while in standout track “Nymphea,” they sing to each other over gentle acoustic strums and a wash of synths: “Yes there’s always surprises, my love/To sustain excitement in love.” And in these moments, it almost doesn’t matter that we are on the outside, hopelessly peering in.
Buy: Rough Trade
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