After a few years of fronting Soma Riot and playing drums in Crystallized, Largo rock songwriter Tristan Jarvis is the latest addition to the bulging list of local band members and artists starting solo projects. In between tending to his three-year-old daughter, he recently found time to whip together a new psychedelic-indie four-track with producer John Cobalt.
Anhedonia hit streaming services on Nov. 28, and other than one synth provided by Cobalt, and one extra voice, courtesy of Jarvis’ daughter—both on the EP’s instrumental final track “Sift”—the entire thing was performed, composed, and sung by Jarvis. Though much of the EP is mainly percussion and an acoustic guitar, with an electric or two thrown in, this isn’t a reflection of his bands and projects of the past. This is probably the most psychedelic, yet acoustically-grunge project Jarvis has worked on.
There have been solo releases from him in the past, but most of them consisted of either covers, or self-produced and recorded productions. Anhedonia’s sound has been compared to Pennsylvania indie artist Alex G, of whom Jarvis admits he wasn’t very familiar with until recently. Jarvis credits Elliott Smith, Nirvana, and The Kinks as his musical inspirations, but admits that they weren’t really in mind during the recording sessions.
“I wasn’t going for a specific sound, but the melodies always dictate the direction of my songs,” Jarvis told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. And he pulled no punches, either. Who’d have thought that acoustic psychedelia could be pulled off so well in 2020?
Even with the burden of a global pandemic, Jarvis has tirelessly worked on music all year—his biggest break came earlier this year, when WMNF hosted a virtual tribute to a fallen victim of the pandemic, the late John Prine (Prine was a part-time Gulfport resident who died in April, Jarvis performed a critically-acclaimed cover of “Lonesome Friends Of Science.”)
UPDATED: 12/7/20 10:45 a.m. Updated Jarvis' role in Crystallized.
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This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2020.