Polaris Music Prize 2018, day 2: Daniel Caesar, Jeremy Dutcher

Day two of my annual five-day Polaris preview, examining two shortlisters and two absentees a day:

Daniel Caesar – Freudian (Golden Child)

The album:

If, at the sound of Daniel Caesar’s voice in the opening track here, “Get You,” you don’t melt even just a little bit, then you are one cold fish.

Even in a genre where a voice like this is almost necessary, Caesar easily stands out in the crowd. There is a significantly larger influence from gospel than we often hear in 2018. There is a focus on old-school skills, matched with modern production that is decidedly stripped down, with nods to the sparse production of The Xx, as well as to obvious R&B classics like D’Angelo’s Voodoo. There are pleasant twists, like the rich, Prince-like harmonies on the a cappella “Neu Roses.” And, unlike, oh, I don’t know, The Weeknd, there’s zero sign of creepy misogyny.

Freudian is a song cycle: boy meets girl, girl is his everything, they split, he’s bitter, they get back together—and by the end of the album, he’s declaring that she “saved my soul like Jesus” and thanking her for “saving my life.” Standard pop lyrical fare, with the occasional clunker (“You’re my sunshine in the rain when it’s pouring … if life is a movie, then you’re the best part”), but with a voice like Caesar’s, one hardly minds.

Almost everything about this record is solid—and yet it’s not that different from the Alvvays record: a major step up from the debut, an album that turns heads around the world, but simply… nice. Much like the somewhat similar Sampha debut—which won the Mercury Prize, mind you—Freudian sounds like a major talent just getting warmed up.

The chances:

Jurors younger than I consider this a shoo-in as winner. Because—why? Because it’s the most commercially successful shortlister? That logic has historically never applied to Polaris, with one exception: Arcade Fire’s 2011 win for The Suburbs. Caesar has a strong shot, no doubt, but I think other albums here hold up more to repeat listens as a whole work.

Jeremy Dutcher – Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (independent)

The album:

An excerpt from my April 6 review for the Waterloo Record, which can be read here in full:

“When you bring the songs, you’re going to bring the dances back. You’ll bring the people back. You’ll bring everything back.” That’s a tall order to hear from an elder in your community, a community where the past 100 years of colonialism have left fewer than 100 people speaking the Wolastoqiyik language of the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick. Those remaining people are known as the “song carriers”—needless to say, they are all elderly.  Except one. His name is Jeremy Dutcher, a young, classically trained tenor singer and pianist who lives in Toronto and hangs around experimental circles. His debut album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, is not merely an academic project that involved him listening to his ancestors singing these songs, stored on 100-year-old wax cylinders at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. If it was merely an interesting and culturally significant history project, that would be enough. But Dutcher’s voice and arrangements transform these songs into a stunning contemporary classical record—which was entirely the point. Even without the high concept, this would be a stunning work…
 Jeremy Dutcher’s dance with the dead is nothing short of transformative. That it’s his debut record makes it all the more remarkable.

The chances:

Extremely strong. The story is undeniably compelling, which makes critics want to pay closer attention. When they do, the music more than holds up. Dutcher is an arresting singer—as opera singers tend to be, of course. His arrangements draw deeply from modern classical; these ears even hear a bit of Moondog. His piano playing is entrancing, and the minimal additions—a few drums here, some cello there—pull the listener even deeper inside.

If there’s a knock against this record, it’s that opera is inherently off-putting to some listeners—not unlike trap or hardcore punk or any other extreme approach, like the Colin Stetsons of the world. But that’s never managed to completely scare off Polaris voters before (Fucked Up, Tagaq). A win would also make it the third Indigenous record to win Polaris (four if you include Lido Pimienta), and the second allophone record to do so (after Pimienta), which would all be remarkable on many levels.

The shoulda, woulda, coulda:

Bonjay – Lush Life (Mysteries of Trade)

The album:

I know a lot of people who would vote for Daniel Caesar as the best new vocalist in Canada, but I, for one, am left totally floored by what Alanna Stuart does with her voice, both on this record and in her work with the Queer Songbook Orchestra. Fact: when she sang “Constant Craving” with the QSO in Calgary, none other than k.d. lang was in the audience. Stuart’s bandmates didn’t want to tell her this before she went on. Of course, the legendary singer was as wowed as everyone else at the show and told Stuart as much afterwards. Because that’s the level of excellence we’re talking about here.

An excerpt from my May18 review for the Waterloo Record:  

Vocal powerhouse Alanna Stuart and producer Ian Swain, who as Bonjay make thrilling modern R&B inflected with Jamaican dancehall rhythms and German electronic music, somewhere on the spectrum between Solange and Kate Bush, but decidedly funkier than either, with some of the sci-fi soul of South African Toronto expat Zaki Ibrahim in the mix as well. This should be known as the Toronto sound. Stuart is nothing short of stunning: soulful and seductive, with the occasional operatic flourish. The music underneath her rarely goes for the obvious; despite Stuart’s clear star appeal, these aren’t straightforward pop songs, and they’re stronger for it. Lush Life arrives several years after this duo’s debut EP. The wait was entirely worth it.

Why it didn’t shortlist:

Timing. This is a deep record that rewards repeat listening, but it came out mere weeks before the Polaris deadline. I don’t doubt that if jurors had more time to spend with it, that it would easily have shortlisted. The only other knock against it is that it’s very much a Toronto record; I’m not sure this band has a large profile outside of the GTA—yet.

Cadence Weapon – s/t (EOne)

The album:

An excerpt from my Jan. 27 review; you can read that and my interview with him (about Bob Dylan, Gord Downie, and other things) here.

Six years is a long time in the rap game. But that’s how long Cadence Weapon has been out of the visible (or audible) action, after spending time as the poet laureate of his hometown of Edmonton, moving to Montreal and collaborating with beatmakers Kaytranada and Jacques Greene while DJing loft parties, and finally relocating to Toronto, where he met the producer Harrison and the singer Brendan Philip. That journey through time, through cities, and through experiences is abundantly evident on his fourth album, one on which the former solo bedroom producer invites plenty of talented new friends into his process ... His fourth album is self-titled, a designation normally reserved for debuts that introduce an artist to the world. In this case, it’s a summation of his musical career to date, and he claims it’s also his most autobiographical. Cadence Weapon claims that he’s never bonded with other rappers, instead finding kindred spirits in electronic and experimental scenes—if true, that’s hip-hop’s loss. As both a producer and a rapper, Cadence Weapon gets better and better with age. 

Why it didn’t shortlist:

No idea. I thought this would be a shoo-in, because it’s an excellent work by a familiar face. If I had to guess, I’d say that hip-hop doesn’t reward its elders—and it’s certainly weird to think of Cadence Weapon as an elder, but his debut was released 12 years ago, and he’s already been shortlisted twice before. But I know plenty of hip-hop critics who don’t at all understand this artist’s appeal with more general listeners—which, I don’t know, I thought would help his chances instead of trapping him inside a genre ghetto. Maybe Cadence Weapon is too much of square peg to still make shortlists, but no matter: he’s got plenty of reviews hailing this as the best thing he’s ever done, prizes be damned.

Tomorrow: Pierre Kwenders, Hubert Lenoir, and two more shoulda-woulda-coulda.