Wednesday 07 July 2010



What Do You Think Will Happen Now?

(photo: Richmond Lam)

Yesterday afternoon, in the sweltering heat of a Southern Ontario summer stinger, the Polaris Music Prize announced the 2010 Short List of 10 albums up for the best Canadian album of 2009-2010.  Here’s the way things shape up:

Of the 10 albums, five of the artists are previous shortlisters (The Besnard Lakes, Broken Social Scene, Caribou, Owen Pallett and Shad), and two are previous winners (Pallett’s previous incarnation of Final Fantasy in 2006 for He Poos Clouds, and Caribou in 2008 for Andorra). Radio Radio are the first Acadian band to be nominated (for their second disc Belmundo Regal), while Montreal’s Karkwa received their first Polaris nod for their fourth disc, Les Chemins de Verre.  The West Coast is representing with 20% of the nominations:  Dan Mangan‘s Nice, Nice, Very Nice (his second album) and Tegan and Sara‘s Sainthood (their sixth).  Last, but certainly not least, The Sadies could be called the veterans of the list, with their eighth (I think, if you don’t count collaborations) LP, Darker Circles.

How did my choices fair?  I’m batting better than I did last year, with three from my short list ballot making the cut (The Besnard Lakes, Caribou and Broken Social Scene, for those keeping track).  There’s going to be the inevitable armchair critics making their comments about the choices, and I say bring it on:  the more we’re debating Canadian music, the more we’re listening to it, and that’s certainly a good thing.  Should Owen Pallett and Caribou be given fair consideration since they’ve already won?  Does Dan Mangan get a vote for the sheer power of word-of-mouth that’s carried him from virtual unknown to the reigning king of Canadian indie rock?  Do Broken Social Scene mark the (supposed) end of their career as a band with a Polaris Prize?  Will Shad take the Prize, along with the title of first hip-hop Polaris winner?  Or will Karkwa or Radio radio mark the first time a French-singing artist wins?  What about Tegan and Sara and The Sadies, who are both further along in their careers and have released a pair of great records?  And is anybody with me on the fact that The Besnard Lakes put out the very finest album of the lot and should walk away with the prize hands down?  Anyone?

This is now the part that I love, the listening and consideration of these 10 records that, regardless of what I may have thought of them in the early balloting, are now going to get a real close listen and analysis over the next 10 Mondays, as I undertake to review (and in some cases re-review) all of the short listed records.  On the 11th Monday (which is September 20–Gala night) I’ll give you my two-dollar predictions as to how I think the whole thing is going to shake down–that is of course, unless I’m asked to be one of the 11 jurists who’ll decide how the whole thing is gonna shake down, in which case you’ll get nothing out of me.

Except for this:

MP3: Dan Mangan “Robots”
Myspace: Dan Mangan
Video: Shad “Rose Garden”
Myspace: Shad
Stream: The Sadies Darker Circles
Myspace: The Sadies





by J. Di Gioia | Comments Off

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 9:15 am and is filed under MP3, Stream, ViDEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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