Final, Fantasies: QBiM predicts Polaris 09

Last year I got into a whole Polaris Music Prize pugilism post about my predictions for how the award was going to shake down.  It was a pretty good post if I do say so myself, and not just because my final result matched the night’s eventual outcome, but I thought my blow-by-blow analysis of the battle in the jury room was pretty good, too.

Why spoil a good thing, right?  This year it’s a veritable Battle Royal for the Polaris belt, and there will be no holds barred.

Round one will take out the weakest of the pack:  Great Lake Swimmers will all but dry up, Malajube will  get lost in a maze on the way to the ring, and Elliott Brood will find that their mountain meadows are easily trampled by the heavy weights in this battle.  All three are great albums in their own right, but they don’t have the brute force to battle it out past this preliminary round.

Fucked Up is going to try and fuck up Hey Rosetta! real bad, like- like, really, really… really bad, like.  How hard can a bunch of Newfoundlanders be, right?  Never underestimate the power of the Rock, boys.  Toronto’s loudest and fastest “fuck”ing band are going to find that the down-home brilliance of Into Your Lungs… is going to make mince work of their Chemistry… and the ensuing reaction is going to blow the punks sky high.  Hey Rosetta! lives to fight on!

They’ll catch a bit of a breather actually, while a three-way rumble in the (Masonic) temple breaks out between Joel Plaskett, Patrick Watson and Chad VanGaalen.  The Hurricane from Halifax and the Volcano from Vancouver Cyclone from Calgary are going to jump all over the Mouse from Montreal and send him scurrying back into his hole.  Pleased with themselves, they’ll turn their tag-team technique on Hey Rosetta! only to find–much liked Fucked Up did–that the Rock ain’t going to quit yet.  As poor VanGaalen finds his soft airplane folding like a paper accordion, Plaskett turns on his former ally and sides with this east coast brethren, bringing VanGaalen down for the hardest of crash landings.

Meanwhile, in another part of the ring, Metric and K’Naan are going at it like a couple of scrappy kids, neither one doing much damage to the other but putting on a good show for all those watching (as they’re want to do) and hoping that the others will take each other down, leaving just them two standing.  It ain’t going to go down that way, though, ’cause there ain’t no stopping ‘Rosetta!  With the swiftest of punches, the Polaris newcomer will take down the Troubadour with very little trouble, but in the end they won’t have much fight left for the other two.  In a moment of weakness, Metric will take their chance to strike, pulling out all the gold, guns and girls they have in their arsenal and suck the life out of Rosetta’s lungs.

That brings us down to two.  That’s two, not Three.  That doesn’t bode well for Plaskett, whose lucky number is going to come up empty.  With a fresh sense of purpose, their eyes on the prize, and the knowledge that there fantasy win in within reach, Metric will deliver the final death blow to Plaskett, ending his run at the prize through and through and through.

Polaris 2009 goes to Metric and their album Fantasies, at least in the fantasy mind of this blogger.  We’ll just have to wait and see how things actually play out tonight.

What are your predictions?

MP3: Metric “Sick Muse”

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