Tim Baker – Forever Overhead
Tanika Charles – The Gumption
Clairmont the Second – Do You Drive?
Charlotte Cornfield – The Shape of Your Name
Marie Davidson – Working Class Woman
Dilly Dally – Heaven
The Dirty Nil – Master Volume
Dizzy – Baby Teeth
Elisapie – The Ballad of the Runaway Girl
Fet.Nat – Le Mal
Dominique Fils-Aimé – Stay Tuned
Fucked Up – Dose Your Dreams
Yves Jarvis – The Same But By Different Means
Carly Rae Jepsen – Dedicated
Kaia Kater – Grenades
Kimmortal – X Marks the Swirl
La Force – s/t
LAL – Dark Beings
Laurence-Anne – Premiere Apparition
Salome Leclerc – Les choses exterieures
Lee Harvey Osmond – Mohawk
Jean Leloup – L’étrange pays
Shay Lia – Dangerous EP
Les Louanges – Le nuit est une panthere
Loud – Tout ça pour ça
Shawn Mendes – s/t
Haviah Mighty – 13th Floor
Operators – Radiant Dawn
Orville Peck – Pony
Sandro
Perri – In Another Life
Pup – Morbid Stuff
Lee Reed – The Steal City EP
Jesse Reyez – Being Human in Public EP
Shad – A Short Story About War
Snotty Nose Rez Kids – Trapline
Alexandra Stréliski – Inscape
Sydanie – 999
Tobi – Still
Voivod – The Wake
Wintersleep – In the Land Of
Familiarity factor:
The list is almost exactly half
new faces, half old faces.
Debut records: 7 (Dizzy, Laurence-Anne,
Les Louanges, Haviah Mighty, Orville Peck, Sydanie, Tobi)
First time on a Polaris list (not
counting debuts): 13.
Congrats, Voivod!
But especially LAL, who’ve existed largely on the margins of even their
hometown of Toronto for 20 years now.
Previous winners: 1 (Fucked Up)
Previous shortlisters: 4 (Carly
Rae Jepsen, Pup, Shad, Snotty Nose Rez Kids)
I’d say that this year’s shortlist
could well include those five very familiar names.
Shortlist-esque: Tim Baker (as
member of Hey Rosetta) and Operators (Dan Boeckner with Handsome Furs and Wolf
Parade)
Previous longlisters: 14 (includes
La Force’s Ariel Engle, as member of AroarA)
Demographics:
Female solo or female-fronted: 19
Male-fronted acts with female instrumentalists
who don’t sing: 3 (Fucked Up, Lee Harvey Osmond, Operators, Snotty Nose Rez
Kids)
Indigenous-identifying acts: 3
(Elisapie, Lee Harvey Osmond, Snotty Nose Rez Kids)
Acts we’ll refer to as “new
Canada”: 13
Francophones: 5 (plus instrumental
artist Alexandra Stréliski)
Allophones: 0.25 (some songs on
the Elisapie record)
Geezers: LAL, Jean Leloup, Lee
Harvey Osmond, Voivod
Getting up there: Fucked Up,
Operators, Sandro Perri, Lee Reed, Shad
Genre:
Music roughly defined as
pop/rock/indie rock: 14
Hiphop: 8 (this might be a
record)
Aggressive: 5 (Dilly Dally, The
Dirty Nil, Fucked Up, Pup, Voivod)
R&B: 3 (Tanika Charles,
Dominique Fils-Aimé, Shay Lia)
Folk-ish: 4 (Charlotte Cornfield,
Kaia Kater, this particular Jean Leloup record, Lee Harvey Osmond)
Country-esque: 1 (Orville Peck,
but not really)
Electro: 2 (Marie Davidson, LAL)
Chart pop: 2 (Carly Rae Jepsen,
Shawn Mendes)
Music that CBC Music will have
considerable difficulty programming: 17
Geography:
As always, assume that about half
the acts from Toronto and Montreal originally hail from somewhere else (i.e.
Calgarian Yves Jarvis, whose career has been based in Montreal). Also: I have
no idea where Shad lives these days. Is he back in Vancouver? I put him in Toronto.
Toronto: 14
Montreal: 14
Vancouver: 3 (Carly Rae Jepsen,
Kimmortal, Snotty Nose Rez Kids)
Hamilton: 3 (The Dirty Nil, Lee Harvey
Osmond, Lee Reed)
Brampton: 2 (Haviah Mighty, Jesse
Reyez)
Oshawa: 1 (Shawn Mendes)
Ottawa/Gatineau: 1 (Fet.Nat)
Halifax: 1 (Wintersleep)
St. John’s: 1 (Tim Baker)
I did not expect to see these 10 on the shortlist:
Charlotte Cornfield. This record has a lot of love on the
jury (obviously), but I wasn’t sure this Toronto songwriter (and club booker)
would be able to reach beyond her city limits.
Dilly Dally. This band is not on my radar,
musically. More power to them for that.
Dizzy. This band is also not on my radar.
Partly because I confuse them with Dilly Dally, for reasons that have everything
to do with spelling and nothing to do with music.
The Dirty Nil. I do not get this band at all. Nice shirts, though.
LAL. This duo have been underdogs for so
long that I never thought they’d be on a Polaris list. But the latest record
got them some incredible reviews, including from younger jurors who might not
even know the legacy.
Jean Leloup. The man is a legend, and his last
album should have shortlisted (rumour has it that it missed out by a single
ballot). But this album appeared a week before this year’s voting deadline, and
I wasn’t sure enough jurors from either franco or anglo pools would have time
to rally around it, especially because it’s an understated acoustic record.
Shay Lia. This woman has had a good buzz since
appearing on Kaytranada’s Polaris-winning album a while back, but I wasn’t sure
if this EP would vault her onto the list on her own.
Shawn Mendes. In the category of “it’s so popular
that it’s a dark horse,” this chart-topping record garnered some last-minute
discussions among jurors, one of whom admitted that this was the one album they
listened to the most in the last 12 months, and others (like me) had to admit
that they’d come around to its charms. Jim Di Gioia of Dominionated wrote a great
piece about poptimist prejudice against male pop stars, who are not
afforded the same benefit of the doubt that the likes of Carly Rae Jepsen are
among critics.
Operators. Dan Boeckner’s output carries a lot of
weight with Polaris jurors, which is why I was shocked that Operators’ debut
album didn’t make the long list a couple of years ago. I wondered if jury
turnover meant that this new one would miss out as well, so consider this a
comeback. (Even though I prefer that neglected debut.)
Sandro Perri. Perri is much beloved among the more
experimentally minded corners of the Polaris jury, and this four-song album
contains one 23-minute track and three variations on a theme. I wasn’t sure
that would break through all the noise, but I’m glad it did.
Lee Reed. This veteran Hamilton MC, who started
out with a politically charged, live funk band called Warsawpack in the early
2000s, proves that Snotty Nose Rez Kids are not the only anarcho-punk hip-hop
act cranking out future classics.
Tobi. This debut is a lovely R&B record
that I discovered late in the Polaris cycle, and I hope it finds many more ears
after landing on the long list.
Wintersleep. These veterans have never caught the
ear of Polaris before, and those earlier records were wildly successful. I
didn’t expect that pattern to break now. But the incredibly catchy radio single
“Beneficiary”—with the highly unlikely, Midnight-Oil-ish, white-guilt chorus of
“I’m the beneficiary of genocide”—was an unavoidable triumph.
CORRECTION!!!! Juror Holly Gordon pointed out that they longlisted in 2008. Apologies for missing that.
CORRECTION!!!! Juror Holly Gordon pointed out that they longlisted in 2008. Apologies for missing that.
Most sorry omission:
Digawolf – Yellowstone. I voted for it. You should hear it.
Shocked not to see:
Akua – Them Spirits. This Solange associate had a lot of love on the jury.
Also somewhat surprised not to
see:
Belle Plaine – Malice, Mercy, Grief & Wrath
Black Mountain – Destroyer
The Cosmic Range – The Gratitude Principle
Jayda G – Significant Changes
Murray Lightburn – Hear Me Out
Motherhood – Dear Bongo
Nehiyawak – Starlight
Doug Paisley – Starter Home
Rae Spoon – bodiesofwater
Colter Wall – Songs of the Plains
Hawksley Workman – Median Age Wasteland
Hall of Fame update:
Hall of Fame update:
Dan Boeckner of Operators now has SIX Polaris nods in
the course of his career, including two shortlist spots (one each for Wolf
Parade and Handsome Furs). That’s more than anyone else in the prize’s history.
Following him is Tom Wilson of Lee Harvey Osmond, who
marks his fifth appearance on a Polaris long list, putting him alongside fellow 5x-ers Drake,
the New Pornographers and Arcade Fire (although those three artists either
shortlisted or won the prize; Wilson has only ever longlisted).
In the heroes to zeroes category, Drake’s Scorpion did
not longlist this year. Neither did the new Black Mountain album, which would
have given the Vancouver rockers their fourth Polaris nod.
Others in the 4x category of the Hall of Fame are
BadBadNotGood, Bahamas, Basia Bulat, Joel Plaskett, the Sadies, Daniel Romano,
Patrick Watson and The Weeknd. Joining the Hall of Fame this year is Shad,
whose last three albums were all shortlisted.
Conspicuously absent from the 2019 list: popular
favourites Arkells, Alessia Cara, Drake. But that’s what the Junos and Grammys
are for.
Shortlist
will be announced on July 16. The gala is on Sept. 16.
