Monday, September 09, 2019

Polaris Music Prize, day 1: Marie Davidson, Elisapie

“The best shortlist in years!” I’ve heard that said more than once about the 10 albums vying for this year’s Polaris Music Prize, mostly from jurors themselves. I’m not sure the same could be said of the general public. Or me.

The shortlist: 
Marie Davidson – Working-Class Woman
Elisapie – The Ballad of the Runaway Girl 
Fet.Nat – Le Mal
Dominique Fils-Aimé – Stay Tuned!
Les Louanges – La nuit est une panthère
Haviah Mighty – 13th Floor
Pup – Morbid Stuff
Jessie Reyez – Being Human in Public
Shad – A Short Story About War
Snotty Nose Rez Kids – Trapline

I’m rooting for exactly half these 10 records. (One year, there were as few as two.) As always, this year there were several records on the long list that I would prefer to have made the final cut; there’s a few that missed even the long list that should also be a part of the discussion.

What I think separates this shortlist from all others is the element of surprise: heavyweights faltered, underdogs rule.


Carly Rae Jepsen or Shawn Mendes? Nope. Fucked Up or Broken Social Scene? Nope. This list provides exactly the type of narrative that we music critics love. Look who made it on the list instead of Drake: a female francophone electronic artist! A female Indigenous filmmaker from northern Quebec who sings in three languages! A weirdo jazzy prog band with elements of Zappa and Mr. Bungle! And in an extremely rare nod to pre-punk pop forms, a Haitian-Québécois woman steeped in gospel, R&B and jazz!

The list gets even more diverse as it goes on, albeit less genre-busting. There are only two names that your family and co-workers might possibly recognize (and that’s by no means a slam dunk): Juno-winning show-stopper Jessie Reyez, and the rapper Shad, who these days is likely better known for hosting CBC Radio’s Q (2015-16) and HBO’s Hip-Hop Evolution than he is for his music. (Season 3 of HHE is now on Netflix, by the way.)

Is this list weird? Yep. I like weird. But it’s also wildly uneven. 


Last year’s was exceptional. On the 2018 list there were only two records that I didn’t think were excellent—and even those I was still rooting for, either because I like the artist’s previous work or I simply felt they were good people doing things the right way (o, Canada). Plus, it was just as diverse as this year’s list, if that’s important to you. Take a look at it again: Alvvays, Daniel Caesar, Hubert Lenoir, Jean-Michel Blais, Partner, Pierre Kwenders, Snotty Nose Rez Kids, U.S. Girls, Weaves, and winner Jeremy Dutcher.

This year, there is only one album I think actually deserves the prize. We’ll get to that much later. In the meantime, as per tradition on this blog, we’ll break the list down into five parts, and each day also direct some attention toward some other records we should be talking about.


The shortlisters:
 


Marie Davidson – Working Class Woman (Ninja Tune)
 

The album: DJ Davidson “works all the fucking time,” she’ll have you know. She’s been on the scene for more than 10 years: first in the duo Les Momies de Palerms, who released an album on Constellation, then in the duo Essaie Pas, who longlisted in 2016, while also putting out three solo albums before this one. She may be a new name to you, but she’s been around a few blocks.

It sounds like her music has, too. In what decade was this album made? Her drum programming has a rigidity that suggests she’s using sequencers made before she was born. It’s my own bias that I expect modern electronic musicians to at least conjure interesting sounds and rhythm; otherwise, I’d rather go back and listen to Kraftwerk. Or, at least, something equally retro but that has a swing, like Vancouver’s Jayda G. Davidson’s drum programming is not only dated, but dull; on “Workaholic Paranoid Bitch,” it’s practically punishing—and not in an interesting, avant-garde way, either. Her vocals are campy and distracting; not because of her heavily accented English, but because her script sounds downright corny, as on the supposedly spooky “The Tunnel,” or the supposedly sexy “So Right.” I enjoy this record much more when Davidson steers off the dance floor and into hypnotic, Philip Glass-like arpeggiations. 


Davidson has already signalled that this album marks the end of a prolific spurt, and that she’s taking some time to slow down and focus on something new. I’m much more excited about where that is than what we hear here.

The chances: Slim. This album’s champions are fervent; I keep reading their words hoping they can convince me. But I can’t see Davidson having the same crossover effect as previous winners Caribou or Kaytranada—all three of those artists are very different, but can be loosely grouped together as largely instrumental electronic music. Alas, as I will point out repeatedly in the coming posts, I am often very, very wrong. 



Elisapie – The Ballad of the Runaway Girl (Bonsound)

The album: This is the third solo album by this 42-year-old artist, who has a long list of accomplishments before her Polaris accolade. She grew up in Salluit, in northern Quebec, where at age 12 she sang on a song by local band Sugluk (featuring her uncle), and later worked at a local CBC station. She was one-half of the Juno-winning duo Taima, and is an award-winning documentary filmmaker with the NFB. This, her first album in seven years, was intended to be covers of artists found on the Native North America compilation—though Elisapie no doubt heard them long before that collection surfaced in 2014. She does songs by Sugluk (the title track), Willie Thrasher (“Wolves Don’t Live By the Rules”) and Willy Mitchell (“Call of the Moose”), but dives deep into her own personal history and culture for a solid series of songs that flesh out the record, including ones about her adoption, her birth mother, post-partum depression and MMIW. She sings in English, Inuktitut and French. Co-producer Joe Grass, a leading light of Montreal’s underrated roots music scene (Lil Andy, Katie Moore, El Coyote), does an ace job behind the boards, and the backing band includes members of Patrick Watson, Plants and Animals, and Suuns.

I like this record a lot, but I don’t love it; I feel like I heard better modern folk records in the past year (Digawolf, Lee Harvey Osmond, Great Lake Swimmers, Salomé Leclerc). But I admire the artist and the ambition and I’m glad to see her thrust into a larger spotlight. This album has grown on me a lot since I first heard it; it’s the one record on the list that I’m happy to have had to spend more time with. But all told, I’d much rather listen to this talented artist talk about her work. Listen to this great interview with Strombo.

The chances: Fair. This is a very nice, mostly musically conservative album that seems tailor-made for the CBC. Those kinds of records don’t usually win Polaris. But this one has deeper and darker edges that could convince jurors who spend more time with it.


The could’ve/should’ve/would’ve beens:




Digawolf –Yellowstone (independent)

The album:

From my February review:

“It’s cold, but I don’t care / because there’s something in the air.” There sure is. The man who calls himself Digawolf hails from the top tip of Great Slave Lake, 80 km northwest of Yellowknife, from the community of Behchoko, the capital of the Tlicho Nation. It’s not a big place, and Digawolf’s creativity can be found everywhere there—because he helped design the street signs.


Recorded in an oceanside barn in Denmark, with Greenlandic producer Jan de Vroede, Yellowstone sounds massive: this is not a lo-fi production from an artist in a remote community. The drums are crisp and thunderous, the guitars are fuzzed-out and thick, and other sonic layers provide gorgeous colours. Digawolf himself has a gravelly voice that sounds like it could only come from the Canadian Shield, which suits his thoroughly modern and often atmospheric take on the blues, not entirely unlike Tom Wilson’s Lee Harvey Osmond. On opening track “By the Water” he hews a bit too close to July Talk’s Pete Dreimanis; it’s almost a bit too imitative—doubly so, because Dreimanis himself draws heavily from Tom Waits—and will no doubt cause confusion when played on the radio (which it should be). The other obvious influence is Daniel Lanois; when he’s not digging into a heavy riff, Digawolf is a textural player, separating him from any straight-up traditional takes on folk or blues.


On top of the musicianship, the production, and the (unfortunate) novelty of such a fully formed Northern artist, the songs here are all fantastic, whether they’re folk songs like “Northern Love Affair” or droning, dubby blues like “The Undiscovered World.”


Though he hails from the middle of nowhere, Digawolf has made major inroads in the industry, with wins or nominations from the Junos, Canadian Folk Music Awards, Western Canadian Music Awards, and the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards. This is the album that should connect him with a much, much bigger audience.

Dig in.

Sadly, few did.

Why it didn’t even longlist: No idea. I thought it was a shoo-in for at least the long list. Maybe because comparison points are a bit too obvious—July Talk meets Daniel Lanois in the Far North!—that worked against him? No idea. FWIW, I’m not a big July Talk fan, just in case that comparison is scaring you off. (And FWIW I am a fairly big Lanois fan.) Maybe the Elisapie record pushed a lot of the same buttons for other people that this one did for me: they have some stylistic similarities, and Digawolf also sings in both English and his Indigenous language, Tlicho. Now that you know who Elisapie is, check out this guy as well. 





Christine Fellows – Roses on the Vine (Vivat Virtute)

The album:


From my February review:

There’s no easy box in which to fit Christine Fellows. The Winnipeg artist is a singer-songwriter who collaborates with visual artists and choreographers, writing songs based on people and events generations apart. For most of her career she played piano; other than textural synths, there are few, if any, keyboards on this, her seventh album. It was co-produced by her life and writing partner, John K. Samson of the Weakerthans; she, in turn, plays the same role on his recent records. Their influence on each other is obvious, and fans of the intricate character studies in his songs will find plenty to love in the writing of Fellows.

Roses on the Vine might well be her finest work to date, even from just a purely musical standpoint. There’s too much ukulele here for my own tastes, but other than that the plaintive cellos, the blurpy and droning synths, stuttering drum machines, and the always eclectic percussion from the Weakerthans’ Jason Tait all colour these creations in indelible ways.

The title track is a straight-up country song, and it’s a beautiful one. “One More For the Road” should be the closing song at every Canadian folk festival in the next 10 years. “Me and Carmen” is deep into Sufjan Stevens territory: wistful but wise. “Evening Train” owes a debt to Television’s “Marquee Moon.” "Unleashed" is so pop it could be a Tegan and Sara song.

It all adds up to a dense but rewarding listen, an embrace of eclecticism, and a masterful display of craft. Phase two of her career starts now.

Why it didn’t even longlist: Just a wild guess here, but Fellows has a lot of things working against her in this arena. She’s a fortysomething arty singer-songwriter from the Prairies on her own label, for starters. Let’s just say that if there was a profile in Vice, I must have missed it. Yes, she’s the partner in life and creativity of the Weakerthans’ John K. Samson, and she has that band’s Jason Tait on this record, but even the once-beloved Samson is again an underdog these days. But hey, the equally excellent Veda Hille did manage to long list a few years ago with her masterpiece, Love Waves (one of my favourite records by anyone, anywhere, of the last 10 years). Jennifer Castle once shortlisted; Elisapie is there this year. Fellows belongs on a list with all those artists. (I realize these comparisons comprise a gender-specific pool, but I’m hard pressed to think of any living Canadian men other than Samson who write at this level.) I can’t blame people for missing it; Roses on the Vine was released in November 2018, and I didn’t get around to reviewing it until February, because I thought I had Fellows all figured out. Maybe others kept putting it off as well and/or took her for granted. Don’t do that. This is an unplucked gem.

Tomorrow: Fet.Nat, Dominique Fils-Aimé, and two more shortlist should’ve-beens

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