The guitarist, singer, and songwriter Afie Jurvanen has been wrestling with the stage moniker Bahamas for about five years—roughly the length of his recording career.

Since making his name as an adept sideman for Feist and others in the Toronto scene, Bahamas has concentrated on developing his own sound, releasing three albums of finely etched material.

The first two relied on his spare electric-guitar stylings, as reflected in the titles Pink Strat and Barchords. Called Bahamas Is Afie, the latest release on Jack Johnson’s Brushfire label may have less to do with any identity crisis than with how the record was made.

“I’m in Hollywood,” says Jurvanen, on the line from where he’s set to do his next gig—after a spot of surfing in the afternoon. “And all of my dreams have come true.” He’s kidding, of course. Except about the surfing. (Tour drummer Jason Tait is his surf buddy in a band that also features up-and-coming guitarist Christine Bougie.)

Assisted by Don Kerr, best known as Ron Sexsmith’s tasteful drummer, Jurvanen had some outside help on vocals, strings, and horns, but played most of the instrumental parts himself.

“I’ve always been interested in musical economy,” he says. “At the same time, I wanted to find some way to have arrangements that were bigger, somehow more sophisticated. This is the first time I ever made demos, and I had too many ideas. In Don’s studio, we set up stations for guitars, bass, piano, and drums, and I went around the room in a big circle, trying things out. Sometimes it was a matter of four guitars doing the exact same thing, or playing drums with no snare. The goal was to turn up the energy without being louder or more aggressive. It wasn’t directly influenced by Simon & Garfunkel and ’60s folk-rock, but I’m in awe of that music and its quiet power.”

The ’70s are in there, too, California-style. “All the Time”, with its staggered vocals and multitracked electric-guitar lines, recalls late Fleetwood Mac or solo Lindsay Buckingham. Elsewhere, melancholy glimpses of Tim Hardin and Richard Thompson are encountered. The disc’s most uptempo tune, “Little Record Girl”, has a Nuggets-like, garage-band ring, and “Stronger Than That” features horns and keening slide guitar. But many tunes, like the Anglophilic “Bitter Memories”, display a folkier, more reflective mood.

“I changed the whole way I played guitar for this record. Virtually all the songs were done on a new Dana Bourgeois acoustic guitar, with a hard flatpick. I always like the precision of strings in bluegrass and classical music, and wanted to go for that.”

At album’s end, the elegiac “I Had It All” leads to the similarly pensive “All I’ve Ever Known”. With its tidal piano stirrings, rising strings, choral voices, and ghostly guitar stabs, this number is closer in spirit to the soulfully spooky songs on his earlier records. All in all, fairly triste output for a guy who’s only 32.

“Well, that’s a place songwriters have been going to for centuries,” says the artist, Toronto-born but raised in Barrie. “Luckily, I tend to record more than I need. This one had 18 songs, out of which I picked 12, to fit whatever narrative that might connect them. On the last album, I’d say it was more about struggle, with yourself and your decisions. Now I feel I’m coming from the standpoint of celebration—of maybe having addressed those things. Songs are always a distillation of feelings, and not all of them have to be pleasant or upbeat to be rewarding. But they do have to have certain energy that can’t really be defined. That’s what I’m always chasing.”

Bahamas plays the Vogue Theatre on Friday (October 17).