So it’s an exciting week for Canadian music! The Polaris Music Prize shortlist was announced! This is like Christmas morning for music nerds and I know personally I was watching the twitter feed with anticipation for the nominees!
For those of you who don’t know, the Polaris music prize honours, celebrates and rewards creativity and diversity in Canadian recorded music. Polaris recognizes and markets albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history. it is adjudicated by selected music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers. The winning band also wins 30k, which is nothing to sneeze at!
Winners of the Polaris music prize in the past have included bands such as Arcade Fire and Karkwa, artists such as Final Fantasy, Feist, and Patrick Watson.
The 2013 crop of shortlisters is an impressive group of Canadian artists and bands, this years nominees are:
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
Zaki Ibrahim, Every Opposite
Metric, Synthetica
METZ, METZ
Colin Stetson, New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light
Tegan And Sara, Heartthrob
A Tribe Called Red, Nation II Nation
Whitehorse, The Fate Of The World Depends On This Kiss
Young Galaxy, Ultramarine
Purity Ring, Shrines
Now because I love all of you so much. I’ll be doing a complete shortlist album review. Yes that means I’ll listen to all 10 albums on this list and let you know my opinions. This will start a 5 week countdown to the award ceremony, which is always held in September.
So hold onto your hats kids, because next week we jump right in with a review of Purity Ring and Young Galaxy.
Navigating the stormy waters 