The shortlisters: Fet.Nat – Le Mal (Boiled Records)
The album:
From my February review:
This band sound like the wheels falling off Deerhoof’s touring van. Their second album, Le Mal—“the sickness”—opens with a staggered, stuttering groove that recalls Mary Margaret O’Hara’s “Not Be Alright,” if it was arranged by Mike Patton and featuring Kid Koala on turntables. The rest of the record gets weirder from there.
Vocalist JFno is muttering and snarling about something, but even if he was singing in English (he’s not) the meaning would be secondary to the way he’s integrated into the interplay between everyone else. Killer drummer Olivier Fairfield (Timber Timbre, Last Ex, Andy Shauf) is the principal driver here, his art-damaged Tony Allen licks challenging guitarist/bassist Pierre-Luc Clement to a rhythmic game of chicken, each daring each other to land on an unpredictably syncopated beat. Saxophonist Linsey Wellman skronks sporadically, popping up like a Whac-a-Mole in the rare spaces left open by Fairfield and Clement.
The most traditional track here is the dark post-punk of “Soft Purse,” and it’s less than two minutes long. It’s also the only composition that doesn’t appear here twice—ostensibly, anyway. The titles of the second half of the record are variations of the first, and though there are similarities between each version of each title, they have about as much in common as Agent Dale Cooper’s doppelgangers in Twin Peaks: The Return. Which is another way of saying: this glorious mindfuck of an album makes as much sense as you let it, depending on your willingness to surrender. "Your world is my mystery gift," sings a small chorus of women here. Right on.
Looking forward to seeing this band baffle and blow away the Toronto gala crowd on Monday. What I'd give to see them come out and play this Canadian classic, on a similar wavelength.
The chances: Normally, I’d say slim, but ever since Lido Pimienta’s win, I’d say all bets are off. It’s a strange new world, and this strange record could well climb on top. Which on the one hand would be amazing, but on the other it would further marginalize Polaris in mainstream discussions. Which is fine—maybe that would finally put an end to the think pieces about why Drake never wins. (The record-breaking pop star didn’t even longlist this year.)
Dominique Fils-Aimé – Stay Tuned! (En Soul)
The album:
From my May review:
This Haitian-Canadian Montreal singer has an audacious plan to release a trilogy exploring nothing less than “the history of African-American music,” of which this album is the second instalment. That’s a tall order, but at the very least she’s made a captivating song cycle here that showcases her spine-tingling vocals and some ace players. “There is Probably Fire” opens with gospel-tinged choral singing over minimal hand drums and clapping, before a long muted trumpet note announces a shift into an Ernest Ranglin-esque reggae groove with upright bass and jazzy piano. Each of those players are as integral to this album’s success as Fils-Aimé’s vocals, although she’s the obvious focal point. As the only credited vocalist, she’s also responsible for the layered harmonies throughout; this album’s one drawback is that she’d likely sound even better feeding off the energy of other live singers, rather than her own multitracks.
Fils-Aimé’s 2018 debut, Nameless, focused on the blues. Stay Tuned is ostensibly rooted in jazz and early R&B, with lyrics drawing from the contemporaneous civil rights movement and feminism (“You don’t treat me like the queen you keep telling me you see,” goes one line.) The next instalment will apparently delve into disco and hip-hop. But there’s a consistency between these first two records, a sound that is very much her own, a sound that pulls from modern R&B and Massive Attack descendants, albeit played on acoustic instruments. That third instalment will likely sound a lot like this one—which is to say, it will be a major work by an important new artist poised to transcend genres and generations.
Stay Tuned closes with a straight-up gospel song with the chorus, “I’ve got joy like a river in my soul.” So will the listener by the time the album’s over.
The chances: Fair. I loved this record the moment I heard it (at the suggestion of another Polaris juror). I championed it and voted for it. And yet I was shocked to see it make the shortlist. I can’t recall anything since Sarah Harmer’s I’m a Mountain, way back in Polaris’s inaugural year, that draws from pre-punk pop traditions. Fils-Aimé is steeped in jazz and blues, albeit with a decidedly modern bent, but there’s way too much upright bass, hand percussion, gospel harmonies and jazz trumpet for this to be on the shortlist, right? Maybe there’s enough resemblance to the ever-cool Sade for this to have wide cross-generational appeal; maybe those inexplicably enamoured by Charlotte Day Wilson will hear this and see the light. The closest Polaris ever got to jazz before this was the drastically different Colin Stetson and perhaps BadBadNotGood. Nothing like this. But for all my pleasant surprise, this record’s differences may well help it stand out against the competition.
The could’ve/should’ve/would’ve beens:
Fucked Up – Dose Your Dreams (Arts and Crafts / Merge)The album: This band won the Polaris in 2009 and were shortlisted in 2012. 2014’s Glass Boys didn’t long list, but this one did. It’s also the first Fucked Up record I’ve ever voted for, as it managed to finally convince me of this band’s greatness. Disclosure: I’ve never been drawn to this band’s style of hardcore punk, and even if I was I didn’t think Fucked Up made good studio records. Their live ferocity always seemed compromised and muffled in the studio. This one changed my mind.
An excerpt from my October review:
Dose Your Dreams is a game-changer. It is here that everything this band has worked toward comes to fruition. The production is crisp: the layers of guitars no longer muddied, the drums thunderous, the myriad extra layers expertly woven throughout. The arrangements are more creative than ever, employing atmospheric textures and harsh electronics, as well as Jane Fair’s saxophone and Owen Pallett’s strings. Most important: this record is where Fucked Up find an actual groove, as on the slinky disco of the title track (which owes debts to the Stone Roses), or the mid-tempo Springsteenian rocker “I Don’t Wanna Live In This World Anymore,” or the lilting shoegaze wash of “How to Die Happy,” or the Eno-esque weirdness of “Two I’s Closed.” There’s even a Skinny Puppy influence on the back-to-back electronic detour “Mechanical Bull” and “Accelerate.” Abraham surrenders more lead vocals than he ever has before, and the album is better for it—especially on the duet between Jennifer Castle and J Mascis on “Came Down Wrong.” Meanwhile, the traditional punk tracks (“House of Keys,” “Living in a Simulation”) are visceral, raw and anthemic fist-pumpers; some things never change, and, in fact, even get better.
Why it didn’t shortlist: I’m guessing a generational shift in jurors is one reason; Fucked Up are now a legacy act, one to be taken for granted. There’s also a political shift away from white guitar bands, which puts them at a disadvantage—although that didn’t stop (the much younger, and therefore still novel) Pup this year. Also, there was a lot of strong support for the new Voivod record, considered to be one of the best in that band’s 35-year career; there may have been some vote-splitting among jurors inclined to only have one aggressive act on their ballot.
La Force – s/t (Arts and Crafts)
The album: This was the first record of the eligibility period that I fell in love with, and it remained at the top of my ballot six months later.
My September 2018 review:
Ariel Engle made my favourite record of 2013, In the Pines, as one-half of the duo AroarA. Five years later, on her debut as La Force, Engle has once again announced herself as a major talent—this time under a new name, and with her alone in the spotlight.
In the interim, she and her friends Leslie Feist and Snowblink’s Daniela Gesundheit formed a trio called Hydra, mainly as a social club with which Engle could play summer festivals with her newborn in tow. She then followed Feist into the latest incarnation of Broken Social Scene; Engle joined the already-crowded band on their comeback record, 2017’s Hug of Thunder, and easily carved out her own space beside the starpower of Feist and Emily Haines. Broken Social Scene also features Andrew Whiteman, who was not only Engle’s partner in AroarA, but off-stage as well. He co-wrote the music for La Force, but this is her project. She’s more than ready for her close-up.
For starters, she’s an arresting vocalist, every bit as compelling—if not more so—as her more famous friends. (The sole distraction on the album is on “Upside Down Wolf,” where she sounds remarkably like Cat Power—for an artist whose voice is so otherwise distinctive, this presumably accidental homage is somewhat jarring. It’s still a great song, though.) Her melodies are lovely, often based—as the best folk songs are—on as few chords as possible, if not just a plain drone (like the opener, “The Tide”).
But where Engle truly shines is in her rhythm: not just in the live and/or electronic percussion behind her, but in the role that every instrument plays on this record, starting with her own guitar playing. Latin rhythms often percolate underneath, not always in recognizable ways, though the bossa nova vibe of “Mama Papa” is undeniable. The overall production aesthetic is that of slick, art-rock torch music with more than a few nods to ’80s new wave (see “Epistolary Love Song”), with thoroughly modern technology; there’s nothing retro here, other than a sheer devotion to craft. As perfect as this record is, it also leaves the future of La Force wide open. This is an artist who could easily pivot in any which way: into darker corners, into sunnier settings, situated anywhere in the world.
Even though all her other projects have been with dear friends and loved ones, once this record makes the rounds, Ariel Engle’s own work will never be seen as an adjunct to someone else. Viva La Force!
Why it didn’t shortlist: There may well be juror fatigue with Broken Social Scene and their satellite projects, which is a shame because this truly does tower above anything from that camp in the last decade, with the exception of Feist. (I’m also partial to Kevin Drew’s 2014 Darlings.) Polaris is also not typically kind to mid-career artists, particularly women. The only shortlisters this year on the other side of 35 are Shad and Elisapie; the latter was previously unknown enough to be considered a new artist to most people this time out. Too bad: your forties is when life really starts to get interesting. Engle’s writing certainly confirms that.
Tomorrow: Les Louanges, Haviah Mighty, and two more should've-beens.
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