(photo: blogto.com) It's all over but the crying, now (tears of joy, for sure). Polaris 2009 is one for the history books now, and it surely will go down in the annals of Canadian music as a definitive celebration of the diversity and breadth of talent the Great White North has to offer. They may make mountains out of molehills about awarding $20,000 to a band with an expletive-laced name, but in the end, it really didn't matter which album walked away with the prize on Monday night; the real [...]
Fucked Up wins Polaris Music Prize 2009: put that in the papers tomorrow. The last thing you want from me (and the last thing I want to do tonight) is give you a song-by-song recap of last night's (or tonight's, depending on when you 're reading this and when I get finished writing it) Polaris Music Prize Gala. I wasn't there (although in hindsight I should have just gone) so I'm no further ahead than anyone else who tuned into CBC Radio 3 to hear the hour-long pre-show [...]
(Put up yer dukes, Polaris nominees, this fight is on!) 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 [...]
(photo: mysapce.com) And then there was one. Wooden Arms may be the last in my alphabetical examination of this year's Polaris nomination, but the second LP from Polaris-winner Patrick Watson is certainly not the last one I would have ever considered for this year's prize. The first time I heard Wooden Arms I was struck at just how well-adorned Watson and co.'s arrangements were, and the vibrancy and uniqueness the foley sound effects used throughout brought to the songs. In going back and listening to it now, [...]
(Why is he smiling like that? Doesn't he know it makes him look creepy?) I knew this day was coming, but still I hoped that by some unexpected, unexplainable act of sheer coincidence, time and space would unravel just long enough to skip over the ninth consecutive Monday of my weekly Polaris Prize '09 Round-up and I wouldn't have to write my post on Chad VanGaalen 's Soft Airplane . It's the same kind of hope you had when you were a child, praying to whatever gods were listening [...]
(photo: J. Carlin / the2scoops.blogspot.com) It wouldn't have worked out any better if I'd planned it. It's Labour Day, and the eighth installment of the QBiM Polaris Short List review, which means the hardest working songwriter in Canada gets to be in the spotlight. I have a lot of respect and admiration for Joel Plaskett and a certain sense of pride in knowing he's one of my fellow countrymen. It's akin to the same sense of connection I have to author Nino Ricci. In 2009, both Ricci and [...]
(photo: Justin Broadbent) I'm not really a pompous ass who likes to quote himself, but in preparing to write this piece I went back to read my initial review of Fantasies to see if my first reactions still hold true. Forgive me the length of the following quote, but I think it encapsulates both Metric and the album in question. Back in April I wrote: Throughout their career trajectory, it's never been black and white with Metric: are they a mainstream act [...]
(photo: voir.ca) Of all the nominated LPs for this year's Polaris Prize, the one farthest from my circle of music is Labyrinthes by Malajube . After listening to it closely though, I'm not quite sure why I never got on the Malajube bandwagon earlier. Their post-rock, almost proggish, epic sounds fit nicely alongside the rest of my music collection, and I'm not in the least put off by the fact that they sing en français rather than English. So, on paper, it looks like Malajube and I would be [...]
(photo: James Minchin) Rap and hip hop have never been my forté, and I always feel a bit awkward about commenting on the genre here for fear of looking like a total idiot. The first time I wrote about K'naan back in May, I figured that Troubadour would end up being on the Polaris short list, so I'd end up writing about it sooner or later. Of the 10 finalist album's, it's the one I feel most confused about. I actually like the album a lot; its energy [...]
(photo: www.nxew.ca) The more I hear "New Goodbye" by Hey Rosetta! the more I want to love the LP it leads off. Into Your Lungs (and around your heart and on through your blood) ticks off all the right boxes: stadium-filling anthems? Check. Classic pop songs delivered flawlessly? Check and check. Heart and soul? Check, check. So why then am I still finding it so difficult to fall in love with this band the way so many others have? When I first reviewed the album back [...]
(photo: Ilia Horsburgh) The other day on CBC Radio 2's Drive , Rich Terfry posited that the sound of Tony Dekker's voice can melt women's hearts, and coupled with the languid musical accompaniment of his band, Great Lake Swimmers , has the power to win over both the hearts and minds of the female persuasion. Maybe that's where Dekker got the idea to name his band's second disc, Bodies and Minds , which leads me to wonder what the inspiration was to name his current disc Lost Channels [...]
Quick Before It Melts
![Niki & The Dove - The Fox [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/l2f6UbMnlq4_130.jpg)
The Twilight Sad cover The Smiths
Whitney! ♥
Chromatics: “Into The Black”
Download: The Violet Lights - "Sex and Sound"
