aaamusic | On 10, Jul 2012

Still aged only 22, Cosmo Jarvis will release his new and third album Think Bigger on July 23, via his own music and film label 25^th Frame in the UK.  The album will be preceded by the release of a new single ‘Love This’ – an ode to TV’s top gangster Tony Soprano – on July 2.   If releasing your third album wasn’t enough to be getting on with, Cosmo Jarvis has just completed his first full-length feature film, entitled ‘The Naughty Room’.

 

Cosmo’s music and films have made him an online phenomenon. His YouTube shorts, usually observational comedy skits about small town life, have been viewed over two million times – his contagious shanty single ‘Gay Pirates’, beloved of Stephen Fry, picking up almost a million Youtube hits alone.  His last two albums, 2009’s  Humasyouhitch/Sonofabitch and 2011’s Is The World Strange Or Am I Strange?, have seen him hightail between many musical styles, but with his new album, Think Bigger, Cosmo’s decided to adhere to a singer-songwriter template tinged with alt-country sensibilities and a string section sourced from Ebay. This is Cosmo Jarvis, though, so it’s never straightforward or predictable- everything is imprinted with his personality and imagination.

 

Whilst the tone of the album maintains a steady musical course the subject matter on Think Bigger is intriguingly varied.  There’s the roaring folkabilly of ‘Sunshine’ about contemporary society’s damaging sense of entitlement; the poignant elegy for ‘The Girl From My Village’ (“about my loathing at the fact she was taken when others who I am certain will do less good with their lives are allowed to keep on breathing”); whilst single-in-waiting ‘Train Down Town’ is about a dystopian future akin to one of Charlie Brooker’s ‘Black Mirror’ satirical drama.  Even the love song ‘Lacie’ is revealed as an ode to Cosmo’s computer’s external hard drive – “because I am unable to express how thankful I am that while I sleep the contents of my brain are being guarded.”

 

A down-to-earth maverick talent, Cosmo Jarvis was born in New Jersey to an Armenian-American artist mother and an English sea captain father.  The family moved to the UK when he was very small and Cosmo spent his formative years with his mother in Totnes, Devon after his parents split in initially acrimonious circumstances.  His teens were spent sparring with her and getting up to all manner of small town trouble. He also developed a sideline in writing songs and making films. By the time he was in his late teens local appreciation had bloomed into a MySpace and Youtube following.  Now a one man word-of-mouth industry who might just be about to receive the recognition he deserves, Cosmo’s work is unique, forthright, human and involving.  He’s an artist, in other words, who’s proving truly exciting to follow.

 

Praise for Cosmo Jarvis:

“He is a very interesting example to me of a new kind of person; a new kind of artist”- Brian Eno

‘Inarguably gifted with imagination overload’ – Mojo

‘One of the most potentially important and fascinating new artists around at the moment’ – Guardian