Polaris Music Prize, day 3: Pierre Kwenders, Hubert Lenoir

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

Pierre Kwenders – Makanda (Bonsound)

The album:

My Sept. 14 review:

This Montreal artist burst onto the scene with 2014’s Le Dernier Empereur Bantou, a multi-lingual, genre-hopping record rooted in Congolese rumba that landed him nominations for the Junos, the Polaris Music Prize, and Quebec’s ADISQs. Born in Kinshasa, Kwenders wanted to dive deeper into his Congolese roots on his second album. To do so, he travelled to Seattle to work with Tendai Baba Maraire, the Zimbabwean-American half of psychedelic hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces. Makanda moves Kwenders away from modern dance trends and further into mid-tempo polyrhythms. Kwenders is a natural star, but some of the best tracks here are where he cedes the spotlight, sharing it with Shabazz Palaces’ Ishmael Butler on the title track, and duetting with Tanyaradzwa on the lush, string-drenched ballad “Zonga.”

I also wrote about Kwenders, alongside Zaki Ibrahim, Kae Sun and Afrotronix, in an article for the Globe and Mail here.

I wished I liked this record more than I do; I was a huge fan of Empereur Bantou, and voted for it that year on my Polaris ballot. I’m also a big Shabazz Palaces fan, so this should be right up my alley. I can’t even put my finger on what’s missing here for me, but I do know that the mysteriously popular single “Sexus Plexus Lexus” makes me absolutely cringe.  

The chances:

Slim. Happy though I was for Kwenders, I was shocked this made the shortlist. It’s a unique record here, but not in ways that I think will do it any favours in the jury room. Also, this year’s shortlist has some huge heavyweights that will be hard to overshadow.

Hubert Lenoir – Darlène (Simone)

The album:

This 23-year-old put his punk band on hold to make a genre-bending pop album, based on a new novel by his friend Noémie D. Leclerc, where the first five tracks jump from jazz piano to ’70s glam to Black Sabbath to gospel-inspired pop to Fleetwood Mac, with plenty of tenor saxophone all over the arrangements, which occasionally nod to Joe Jackson’s 1984 album Body and Soul. It’s totally bonkers in a way that only the Québecois can pull off—or maybe the Flaming Lips, on a good day. Is it a retro record? Absolutely, but it’s also audacious in its scope, and Lenoir has the songwriting chops, the production values, plenty of earworms and the pure charisma to pull it all off. And yes, francophobes, there is one song in English (“Wild and Free”), so you have no excuse not to start there and then dive deeper.

The chances:

Strong. It’s a great album that gets better with each listen and transcends the retro tag it’s been saddled with. I’ll admit I was initially dismissive, but it quickly grew on me once it shortlisted—and if my experience is true for this year’s grand jurors, then the scent of the new will also propel this further in the jury-room discussion. The fact that it’s the first francophone record to shortlist in seven years also gives it strong underdog appeal.

The shoulda, woulda, coulda:

Cold Specks – Fool’s Paradise (Arts and Crafts)

The album:

My review for the Waterloo Record, Sept. 21, 2017:

A few years ago, I was working at a magazine that ran very little music coverage. A freelancer had successfully pitched a story about struggles facing a new wave of female R&B voices out of Canada: Divine Brown, Melanie Fiona and Jully Black among them. The story started out by talking about Cold Specks, the musical project for a young woman who then called herself Al Spx, who possessed a powerful voice and played stark, haunting music she termed “doom soul.” Wait a minute, I asked the editor: why is Cold Specks in this article? Spx played slow, guitar-based music that has more in common with Nick Cave than Nicki Minaj. Is it because she’s black, one of the few African-Canadian women to have any kind of profile in this country’s music scene? Because otherwise, we’re talking about apples and oranges here.


Two albums and a couple of Polaris nods later, Cold Specks—who dropped the Al Spx pseudonym, and now goes by her birth name, Ladan Hussein—has indeed drawn closer to R&B, although Fool’s Paradise is more Massive Attack than Mary J. Blige. There are barely any guitars: synths and drum programming dominate. The background isn’t necessarily important: as always, it’s Hussein’s voice that draws you in first and foremost, but it does sound even better with some deep bass and beats behind it, situating her somewhere between Sade and Bjork (“Ancient Habits” borrows a bit from Bjork’s “All is Full of Love”), if either artist wrote almost exclusively in minor keys. Hussein also slips into Somali on the title track, acknowledging a family history she once felt she had to mask to make it in the Canadian music industry.If third albums are where an artist really proves themselves—after the potential fluke of a debut, and the transition of a second album—then Cold Specks has most definitely stepped up. The songs are strong, the setting is right, and she’s evolving easily. There’s nothing remotely foolish about Fool’s Paradise.

Why it didn’t even longlist:

What the living hell. This woman shortlisted with her debut album, back in 2013, so it’s not like she’s unknown. But she’s long since abandoned her supposed “doom-folk” genre, and now makes downtempo, synth-ridden R&B—so maybe critics only liked her when she was wielding a guitar? Who knows. In a year where we’re talking about singers like Daniel Caesar and Alanna Stuart, we should also be talking about Ladan Hussein. This album is incredible. I hope it found an audience. It's not too late.

Dennis Ellsworth – Things Change (Pyramid Scheme)

The album:

I had no idea who this P.E.I. songwriter was. I spent a lot of time driving around Ontario in April, and grabbed this CD (yes, CD) off my promo pile and brought it with me. It never left my player. As I reconnected with old friends and family across the province— celebrating a personal triumph while hearing tales of divorce, disease and age—the song “Cruel But Beautiful” was constantly in my head. It hasn’t left, five months later.

An exceprt from my Waterloo Record review:

Right after Bruce Springsteen finished 1987’s Tunnel of Love, he recorded a legendary, long-lost album with fellow New Jerseyites Yo La Tengo, which for its 30^thanniversary in 2018 is finally being—oh, wait, no, that’s not it at all. This is a new record by P.E.I. songwriter Dennis Ellsworth, his fifth.  Ellsworth is a new name to me, as I suspect he is to you—although his last couple of albums came out on Kitchener label Busted Flat, and were produced by either Josh Finlayson (Skydiggers) or David Barbe (Bob Mould’s Sugar), and featured many of my favourite Ontario musicians. This time out, he headed east to Joel Plaskett’s New Scotland Yard studio in Dartmouth, N.S., with other Halifax Pop Explosion veterans Charles Austin and Dave Marsh. So, yes, fans of ’90s indie rock and singer-songwriters will find plenty to love here, with shades of Lucinda Williams and Ryan Adams (or Aimee Mann, or Eric Bachmann, or…). Ellsworth’s songs are as worthy as any found in the canon of those artists: he has an incredibly strong sense of melody, writing songs to be sung at the top of your lungs, whether they’re anthems like “The Bottom” or “Stoned,” or dream pop songs like “Caught in the Waves.” Plaskett once again proves his mettle as a producer—as heard on his own work as well as Mo Kenney and others—giving Ellsworth a gritty rock’n’roll backdrop with rich, Big Star vocal harmonies.

Why it didn’t even longlist:

I’d never heard of him. Have you? Let’s all work on changing that.

Conflict of interest alert: Since falling in love with Ellsworth’s music, I discovered that he also fronts a Tragically Hip cover band in his spare time, the Fabulously Rich. So when I bring my book tour east this fall—the Carleton in Halifax on Oct. 13, and the Charlottetown Beer Garden on Oct. 17—they’ll be performing after my talk. (Full list of events here.)

Tomorrow: Partner, Snotty Nose Rez Kids and two more coulda-woulda-shoulda.

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Polaris Music Prize long list 2018

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The release of the Polaris Music Prize long list (which took place yesterday) is always a cause for celebration, head-scratching, shrugs—but hopefully also some careful examination. I’ve been doing these breakdowns for most of the prize’s 12-year history; I’m frankly too lazy to go back and document trends, but in terms of how this year plays out, it looks like fewer old favourites than ever before: this is a pleasantly fresh crop. Yes, it’s still largely focused on Central Canadian music, and yes, jazz and metal and mainstream country are nowhere to be found, but beyond those perennial pitfalls I believe this is one of the most diverse and musically rewarding lists to date.

Here’s what it looks like, followed by my breakdown:

Allie – Nightshade            

Alvvays – Antisocialites

Arcade Fire – Everything Now

Bahamas – Earthtones

The Barr Brothers – Queens of the Breakers

Bernice – Puff LP: In the air without a shape

Jean–Michel Blais – Dans ma main

Bonjay – Lush Life

Booji Boys – Weekend Rocker

Philippe Brach – Le silence des troupeaux

Cadence Weapon – Cadence Weapon           

Daniel Caesar – Freudian

Jennifer Castle – Angels of Death

Clairmont The Second – Lil Mont from The Ave

Gord Downie – Introduce Yerself    

Jeremy Dutcher – Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa

Faith Healer – Try ;–)           

FRIGS – Basic Behaviour

Zaki Ibrahim – The Secret Life of Planets

Iskwé – The Fight Within

Kacy & Clayton – The Siren's Song

Lydia Képinski – Premier Juin

Pierre Kwenders – Makanda at the End of Space, the Beginning of Time

Pierre Lapointe – La science du coeur

Melissa Laveaux – Radyo Siwèl

Hubert Lenoir – Darlène

Terra Lightfoot – New Mistakes      

Loud – Une année record  

Milk & Bone – Deception Bay

Partner – In Search Of Lost Time

Propagandhi – Victory Lap

Vivek Shraya & Queer Songbook Orchestra – Part–Time Woman

Sloan – 12

Snotty Nose Rez Kids – The Average Savage

U.S. Girls – In A Poem Unlimited

The Weather Station – The Weather Station

Weaves – Wide Open

Charlotte Day Wilson – Stone Woman

Donovan Woods – Both Ways

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan – Dirt

Familiar faces:

Previous winners: 1 (Arcade Fire)

Previous shortlisters: 7 (Cadence Weapon x2, Jennifer Castle, Gord Downie, Zaki Ibrahim, U.S. Girls, Weaves, Yamantaka/Sonic Titan x2)

Previous longlisters: 10 (Bahamas, Barr Brothers, Jean-Michel Blais, Clairmont the Second, Pierre Kwenders, Milk and Bone, Sloan, The Weather Station, Charlotte Day Wilson, Donovan Woods)

New to Polaris: 22

Debut albums: 11 (Allie, Bonjay, Daniel Caesar, Jeremy Dutcher, Frigs, Iskwé, Lydia Képinski, Mélissa Laveaux, Loud, Partner, Vivek Shraya)

(Hopefully) recognizable names for even those living under a rock: 5 (Arcade Fire, Sloan, Daniel Caesar, Gord Downie, Bahamas)

Hall of famers:

2011 winner Arcade Fire now has four Polaris nods (not including the Heritage Prize they won for Funeral). Always longlisted, never shortlisted, Afie Jurvanen of Bahamas now has a fourth longlist appearance under his belt. Bahamas and Arcade Fire now join other four-time nominees The Weeknd (not longlisted for his EP this year), BadBadNotGood, Basia Bulat, Joel Plaskett, Tom Wilson, the Sadies, Daniel Romano and Patrick Watson.

All those acts still trail Drake, Dan Boeckner and the New Pornographers, who have five Polaris nods each in the prize’s history.

Former two-time shortlisters Yamantaka/Sonic Titan and Cadence Weapon now have another Polaris nod, bringing their tally to three.

Other than Arcade Fire, Y/ST, Cadence Weapon and Bahamas, this is a rather fresh set of Polaris nominees.

QUALIFIER: Everything below can be somewhat subjective, and I’ve no doubt got a few things flat wrong. All corrections are welcome.

Demographics:

Female solo or female-fronted: 19

Male/female partnership up front: 2 (Arcade Fire, Kacy & Clayton)

Acts featuring female instrumentalists who do not sing or lead the band: 1 (Alvvays)

Franco: 7 (plus franco instrumental artist Jean–Michel Blais)

Indigenous: 3

Others with persons of colour, solo or up front: 11

Geezers well past the age of 40: 3 (Gord Downie, Propagandhi, Sloan)

Geography:

This is always tricky, as ever-transient artists often have several cities claiming them, especially when they end up in Toronto or Montreal. Edmonton-born Cadence Weapon made his current record in Montreal and Toronto, where he now lives. Partner formed in Sackville, N.B.; its two members grew up in Goose Bay, N.L., and Summerside, P.E.I., and now live in Windsor. But generally speaking:

Toronto: 17

Montreal: 10 (includes current Parisian Mélissa Laveaux)

Hamilton: 2 (Iskwé, Terra Lightfoot)

Vancouver: 1 (Snotty Nose Rez Kids)
Edmonton: 1 (Faith Healer)

Winnipeg: 1 (Propagandhi)

Calgary: 1 (Vivek Shraya)

Windsor: 1 (Partner)
New Brunswick: 1 (Jeremy Dutcher)

Halifax: 1 (Booji Boys)

Saskatchewan: 1 (Kacy & Clayton)

Genre:

Identifiably rock (extremely broadly speaking): 20

Identifiably R&B/hip-hop: 9

Identifiably acoustic-based modern folk music: 5

Somewhat unidentifiably genre-averse: 6 (Bernice, Jean-Michel Blais, Jeremy Dutcher, Lydia Képinski, Pierre Kwenders, Vivek Shraya)

Weird and/or abrasive music that will scare the shit out of CBC Radio 2 (not counting all the hip-hop, which is certainly off limits, but including Weaves, who is apparently too outré for the nation’s music station in prime time): 10

Left behind:

10 more favourites of mine that deserve your ears, about which I’ll write more later:

Afrotronix – NomadiX

Geoff Berner – Canadiana Grotesquica

Cold Specks – Fool’s Paradise

Daphni – Joli Mai

Dennis Ellsworth – Things Change

Julie & the Wrong Guys – s/t

Peggy Lee – Echo Painting

The Sorority – Pledge

Maylee Todd – Acts of Love

Whitehorse – Panther in the Dollhouse

My picks

The final three records the jury will likely be arguing about at the September gala, from which one winner will emerge: Daniel Caesar, Jeremy Dutcher, U.S. Girls

Pre-Polaris, day three: Jennifer Castle, Drake

The 10^th Polaris Music Prize gala is next Monday, Sept. 21, at the Carlu in Toronto, where 11 jurors locked in a room will decide which one of these 10 artists will get $50,000 and a gig with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2016. All other nominees receive $3,000.

Every day this week I’ll look at two of the shortlisted albums, assess their chances, and celebrate two albums that didn’t make the short list—or, in some cases, even the long list.

Day one is here; day two is here.

  

Jennifer Castle – Pink City (Idée Fixe)

The album:

One of two albums I’m rooting for this year (the only two from my ballot that made it). It’s also an album I almost tossed after the first time I heard it; I didn’t understand Jennifer Castle before and wasn’t sure this time would be any different. And yet, this is the Polaris album I keep returning to again and again, hearing new lyrics, new textures, appreciating her melodies and chords in new ways.  

An excerpt from my November 2014 review:

… Her voice is in full focus: every quiver, every time she slides between notes, the full body of her lower register. Castle’s music sounds like it was made in isolation, crafted in a remote Appalachian (or Algonquin) cabin (“I don’t need a home / don’t need a lover / I’ll be out on my own / come hell or high water”). Though rooted in folk forms, she doesn’t always follow familiar refrains, chord patterns or consistent tempos; many of her instrumental voicings and melodies owe more of a debt to jazz. Then there’s her voice itself: part Mary Margaret O’Hara, part Vashti Bunyan, a folkie flower child sounding alternately lost and innocent or wise and weary. In her left-field approach to folk, she also recalls Nick Drake, who used jazz players and stood far apart from his contemporaries. (She does not, however, sound like Nick Drake.) Though it was her solo performance I found so striking, Pink City is very delicately decorated with subtle touches from players careful not to tread on her unique talent.

Listening again closely now, what stands out is the judicious use of those guest players, most of whom are used to add one specific colour to a given track: one song features duelling flute solos, one song features pedal steel guitar prominently, one features harmonica, the title track features sublime saxophone work by Brodie West, fluttering around Castle’s vocal melody. Owen Pallett’s string arrangements are minimal but highly effective. Setting her apart from most folkies is Castle's use of directed tempos; this is not a click-track record, which makes the ornamentation that much more impressive. And this album also contains my favourite political lyric of the year, in a song about Canada’s oil sands: “I lift my skirt for the economy.”

I’m ecstatic this made the short list, because albums like this—mostly with regional appeal, released on a tiny indie, appealing mostly to the artist’s immediate musical community—are easily lost in the sands of time. Now it’s part of the canon. As it should be.

The chances:

Mild. Okay, maybe better than that, if jurors give this album enough time to grow on them. But I’m purposely low-balling my expectations here.

Drake – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (Universal)

The album:

Is this an album? Or a stopgap before the much-hyped Views from the 6ix, expected in a matter of weeks now? No matter, it’s already made history: due to the ever-changing rules of what constitutes a single, Drake now holds the Billboard record for most simultaneously charting hits: all of these 17 tracks were on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart as of Feb. 26. This album was also the first 2015 release to sell a million copies (it might be the only one).

I’ve spent more time listening to Drake than any other artist I continue to actively dislike, and I recognize that I will lose any argument about his artistic merit—so I’m not even going to try anymore. I will, however, grant that his voice is no longer as cloying and flat as I used to find it; dude actually sounds like he’s trying to impress us instead of expecting us to just melt at the sight of his smile. And for an album that is, by its billing as a mixtape, assumed to be tossed off quickly, tracks like “Energy,” “10 Bands” and “6 Man” are—well, not among his greatest work, but they’d hold their own beside anything on Take Care or Nothing Was the Same. Everything else here is a decent B-side.

The chances:

Good. Drake’s been shortlisted twice, and he’ll likely win eventually. Why not this year? Competition is not that fierce; there is no obvious favourite. It would be somewhat amusing if the man whose first big single boasted about how he “got rich off a mixtape” wins the Polaris for… a mixtape.

Two of the should’ve, could’ve beens:

Pierre Kwenders – Le dernier empereur Bantou (Bonsound)

The album:

This was my favourite discovery of last year, thanks to a tip from Montreal writer Erik Leijon. It was released in October, got a Juno nomination for Best World Album, and I didn’t hear it and write a review until March; he didn’t get around to playing Toronto, to my knowledge, until this summer (July on the Roy Thomson Hall patio, August at Camp Wavelength). My March review:

Montreal has Canada’s best African music scene and its best electro scene. Naturally, it’s also the city most likely to witness fusion between the two. Kwenders was born in Kinshasa and came to Canada from the Congo at 16; his fellow Montreal producers hail from Mozambique (Samito) and New Brunswick (Alexandre Bilodeau of Radio Radio, whose bizarro Acadian take on hip-hop landed them on the Polaris Prize shortlist a few years back). One track here, “Mardi Gras,” featuring a lilting, distorted violin track, is perhaps the only Cajun-Congolese electro track ever made (see below). That’s only the beginning of the successful cross-pollination happening here: dancehall, South African rhythms, cumbia, Bollywood vocals, rock guitars and hip-hop all help colour Kwenders’s tracks. If Manu Chao or Bran Van 3000 had kept pushing their sonic explorations further, they’d likely end up in a similar place to Kwenders. Whatever you do, the man who sings in four languages told the Montreal Gazette, don’t call it world music: this is polyglot pop, and it’s a matter of time before Santigold or Rihanna starts ringing him up.

Or, as it turns out, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, according to rumours. Too bad they didn’t hook up before Reflektor; I could see Kwenders making that good record even better.

Why it didn’t make the short list: 

It’s hard enough to get a francophone on the short list, never mind a guy who sings in five languages. Also, Congolese rumba is yet to be recognized as a breakout genre. (But it’s only a matter of time. See: Mbongwana Star).

Jean Leloup – A Paradis City (Grosse Boite)

The album:

Because most of Canada prefers to ignore francophone music—from Quebec or anywhere else—we know next to nothing about Jean Leloup. Our loss. Who is this wolfman, and why is he such a Quebecois hero? From my May review:

Leloup has been around since 1989; he took a brief hiatus in the mid-2000s and this is his eighth album. He’s the kind of carefree, globe-trotting troubadour who tries his hand making documentaries about monkeys in Costa Rica for six months, just because. He’s not wrapped up in rock stardom, despite his iconic status in his home province.  That’s why A Paradis City is such a refreshing, welcoming record: Leloup exudes charisma, and writes anthemic songs that never succumb to bombast or weighty instrumentation—even when he calls in the choirs or string sections. Leloup makes it sound easy—hell, he even makes it look easy, by providing chord charts in the liner notes, and there are vocal-free karaoke versions up on his website. A Paradis City is the sound of a guy who could dial up the drama if he wanted to, but prefers more subtle strengths. There are quiet folk songs here, midtempo rockers, and a triumphant title track that shows, among other things, how much Sam Roberts learned from Leloup.

  

Since falling for this record, I’ve gone back and listened to more Leloup, including his iconic ’90s album Le dome. They’re all fascinating, but this is clearly one of his best. He’s getting better with age—when he decides to engage.

Why it didn’t make the short list: 

Polaris jurors have been piss-poor at nominating francophone records lately. Only four franco acts have ever shortlisted: Malajube twice, and Karkwa won in 2010. The last one to shortlist was Galaxie, in 2011. Also slept on this year: the amazing record by Salomé Leclerc, which I discovered too late in the game. If you claimed to care about new Canadian music at all in the last 12 months, you need to hear Kwenders, Leloup and Leclerc.