Pre-Polaris, day four: Tobias Jesso Jr., New Pornographers

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; day three is here. And a whole bunch of relatively unnecessary distractions are here and here.

Tobias Jesso Jr. – Goon (Arts and Crafts)

The album:

  

From my April review:

  

The 1970s in California produced dozens of top-notch songwriters: some famous, some not-so-famous, many of which are rediscovered by subsequent generations, and revisited by young songwriters. The latest of the newbies is Tobias Jesso, Jr., a 29-year-old Vancouver native who retreated home after four years in L.A., only to write songs that suddenly got attention from the calibre of people he’d been trying to impress for years. So here we are, with a debut album of piano ballads for sad sacks on sunny days, produced by John Collins (New Pornographers, Destroyer), the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney, and the man behind hits by Vampire Weekend and Haim (Ariel Rechtshaid), released by Broken Social Scene’s Arts and Crafts label.

  

I didn’t have much more to say about this album then, and I still don’t. It’s so featherweight that I can’t imagine anyone getting riled up and arguing passionately why it deserves $50,000. The first track is nice: “Can’t Stop Thinking About You”? Well, if “you” means Elliott Smith, then yes, I can’t stop thinking about how much I’d rather be listening to XO right now. The one about how “everyone lies in Hollywood” also strikes a chord: “I don’t know if I can make it / and I don’t know if I should.” Hey buddy, you said it.

OK, to be fair, Jesso obviously has talent, but this debut is super green. I have no idea what it’s doing here.

The chances: Non-existent.

New Pornographers – Brill Bruisers (Last Gang)

The album:

  

This was a shocker. Not because the New Pornographers aren’t a great band; they are. Not because this isn’t a great album; it’s one of their better ones (but definitely not their best). But I don’t recall any great critical outpouring greeting its release; being Canadians, we take bands like this for granted. “Oh right, that band with A.C. Newman and Dan Bejar and Neko Case and Kathryn Calder and Kurt Dahle one of Canada’s best producers on bass. Are they still around?” (Well, Dahle split after this record.)

The last album fans all agreed was fantastic was 2005’s Twin Cinema (I loved 2010’s Together, but it was pooh-poohed in most Brill Bruisers reviews), so maybe the 10-year gap renewed our collective appreciation for a solid Pornographers record—which this most definitely is. “Champions of Red Wine” is a total earworm that I had in my head most of last fall. Bejar’s “War on the East Coast” is easily one of his best melodies he’s written for this band (and there’s been quite a few). The keyboards of Blaine Thurier and Kathryn Calder (as heard on her fine 2015 solo release) are brought to the forefront, competing with the chugging guitars and sounding more modern than the new wave throwbacks of earlier albums. And, as has been the case on recent albums, the four- and five-part harmonies and shared lead vocals have supplanted the one-singer, one-song model that made this band seem like a bizarre variety show. The Bejar-Calder duet on “Born With a Sound” is sublime [update: I've since learned this is actually Black Mountain's Amber Webber, not Calder; I have no liner notes!], and unexpected (and rather Arcade Fire-ish; Calder [actually Webber] sounds a bit like Régine Chassagne here).

My August 2014 review is here.

The chances:

Zilch. Other than Feist’s 2012 win for Metals—an album I love intensely, but that got a lukewarm reception upon release, and was considered to be a curiosity from an artist ever-so-slightly past her prime—Polaris jurors aren’t usually the sentimental type. We’ve all grown up with this band. We still love this band. But can they still blow us away? Also: Vancouver. Don’t discount the central Canadian conspiracy that has clearly cast a curse on West Coast artists at Polaris.

Two of the should’ve, could’ve beens:

Terra Lightfoot – Every Time My Mind Runs Wild (Sonic Unyon)

The album:

Holy cow, what a barn-burner. This is the sound of an artist waking up and deciding to grab life by the balls and live every moment to the fullest. How often do you hear that?

  

My April review:

There’s lots to love about Hamiltonian Terra Lightfoot’s second album: her songwriting has improved tenfold; she’s got a roaring rock band behind her; she’s steeped in the most durable elements of classic rock, country and Americana, and her music is exactly what you (okay, me, at least) want to hear when you hit the bar on Friday night.  But records like that are a dime a dozen. Lightfoot has something else going for her. Everyone, it seems, loves a man who sings like a woman. And everyone loves a woman who dresses like one of the guys on stage. But what of the woman in a dress with a masculine—or, at the very least, androgynous—voice? It’s not just that Lightfoot has a lower range, it’s the timbre of her voice that sounds like no one else, male or female. She’s the Alison Moyet of Canadian roots rock. It’s what makes or breaks her appeal; it doesn’t leave anyone sitting on the fence, especially when she hangs onto notes at the climax of a chorus ("No Hurry"). Producer Gus Van Go (Whitehorse) pushes her to go big or go home; even the sparsely arranged ballads here (“NFB,” “Splinter”) don’t shy away from big, brassy moments—and she pulls it off every time.  That approach applies not just to her voice: this is Lightfoot putting all (or most) of her cards on the table. Opening with a rollicking electric waltz, she frontloads the album with rockers before branching out to tender folk songs or a 1950s 6/8 shuffle or two-step country. Every Time My Mind Runs Wild is brimming with confidence, a calling card for a young artist more than ready to make her mark.

  

Why it didn’t even make the long list:

  

Her debut album was barely noticed; this one came out in late April and word of mouth started spreading slowly—as did radio play. Come the summertime, she was the talk of festival season. Now that it’s September, it looks like Polaris voters really missed the boat. No matter—she’s already onward and upward, not looking back.

Tre Mission – Stigmata (Big Dada)

  

The album:

This Toronto MC and producer was one of the most exciting things I heard last year. His charisma and flow as an MC are solid and better than most, but it’s the production here that really stands out. Signed to Ninja Tune subsidiary Big Dada, his ties to British hip-hop, particularly its grime scene, run deep. For Tre Mission, grime is an excuse to blow open boundaries and create futuristic, next-level hip-hop that challenges any cutting-edge electronic artist. Of course, that can also be said of Drake and Kanye, for example, but for whatever reason this music resonates with me more: it’s much more animated, limber and playful than Drake, it’s more sparse, atmospheric and dub-influenced than Kanye. It shares plenty with my other favourite new Toronto MC/producer, Keita Juma, who got lost in this year’s discussion but whose new work I’m looking forward to. For a 23-year-old on his second album, Tre Mission is remarkably accomplished and fully formed. And in a singles-driven genre, Stigmata holds up from top to bottom. I can’t wait to hear what he does next: on his own, or producing other people, or whatever the hell he wants. And I hope to God Canada doesn’t sleep on it.

Why it didn’t make the short list:

Plenty—though not nearly enough—hip-hop records get suggested by the jury; a handful make the long list, and usually no more than one or two make the shortlist. There’s clearly some kind of glass ceiling. This year the biggest rap star in the world and a hip-hop legend both showed up to the Polaris party, which squeezes out smaller voices. One hip-hop fan I know thought this record sounded “too British”—not sure about that, but it is markedly different than most North American hip-hop.

I'm a Polaris juror, and Canadaland sucks

Attn: tiny Canadian music media bubble.

In response to Johnnie Regalado’s Canadaland piece:

I enjoyed Johnnie Regalado’s contributions to the Polaris Music Prize jury. He, like me, championed the Native North America comp. He introduced me to a weird blues guy from Victoria called Iceberg Ferg. He suggested some things that I checked out but that did not float my boat. He frequently chimed in to discuss new music—discussions that comprise 95% of what happens on the private message board used by Polaris jurors. I’m sad to see him go.

I’m also sad to see the way he went, complaining that he was consistently marginalized and bullied by, in his words, “high-profile,” “influential” “big egos,” and claimed that represented the bulk of his experience with Polaris. Maybe I’m one of those people. Some people I consider close friends most certainly are. (Full disclosure: the CBC host Regalado singles out as being particularly hostile has been a close friend of mine for more than 15 years. Boys’ club!)

Is the Polaris jury “a hostile, boys’ club atmosphere,” as Regalado claims? Obviously I’m not the person to judge that. Women I love and respect tell me that is, regrettably, the case. Other women I love and respect tell me that it’s absolutely not the case. The latter doesn’t negate the former. Yes, the jury is dominated by men; sadly, that is true of the lowly profession of rock critic. The math is indisputable. And yes, I’ve seen well-intentioned men in the group “pile on” a woman who claimed that nobody listens to her—and all those men wanted to hear more of what she had to say. (A well-intentioned pile-on is still a pile-on, gents. Full disclosure: I was one of those men.) I also know that the organizers always try to achieve gender parity in the actual jury room that decides the winner.

Is the Polaris jury a hostile space? It’s an online jury of almost 200 people who are there to have a spirited discussion about music. If you’ve ever been in a room of music nerds debating whether or not, say, Drake or Arcade Fire or Colin Stetson are musical geniuses or totally talentless clowns, then you’ll know that people will voice strong opinions—especially people whose job it is to have strong opinions. Sometimes many people who disagree with you will stand up and tell you that you’re wrong and have terrible taste. Is that hostile? We’re talking about music here, not the Middle East. It’s really not that important. We should be able to laugh about this at the end—not take all our toys home and cry to Canadaland. (Full disclosure: My family and I have attended birthday parties for Jesse Brown’s children, among other social occasions. Boys’ club!)

Regalado accuses jurors of being “genre cops” because people who didn’t like B.A. Johnston were particularly virulent about it. Should that be surprising? Johnston has a clear shtick; it’s only natural that will provoke a divisive response. Any random, harmless, solo folk singer with an acoustic guitar would not provoke that kind of reaction. That’s not genre, that’s a question of taste. If I don’t like Drake it’s not because I don’t like hip-hop. If I don’t like Tobias Jesso Jr. it’s not because I don’t like sappy singer-songwriters. For whatever reason—especially for someone who claims to represent “marginalized music communities”—Regalado spends a lot of time defending a white guy from Hamilton who appeals mostly to university students. (Full disclosure: I once attended a wedding with B.A. Johnston. Nice guy! I’m completely agnostic about his music, and found the whole “controversy” highly amusing.)

I think Regalado would have a much better point to make if he were arguing that metal, jazz, classical, or breakcore records—or artists who sing in neither English nor French—had zero chance of being recognized by Polaris, and that hip-hop still suffers, all these many years later, of being marginalized by a country of rock critics raised on Blue Rodeo. (Full disclosure: I love Blue Rodeo.) That is a conversation we should all definitely be having. And we do, we Polaris jurors, among ourselves and in public forums as well.

Then we get to Viet Cong, the Calgary band whose debut is shortlisted for this year’s prize. Like Regalado, I too find the band’s name offensive, for many of the same reasons he does. (It helps that I don’t like their music.) Unlike Regalado, I’m well aware that other people disagree with me/us. And it’s not like Regalado was the only Viet Cong dissenter; many jurors took issue with the band’s name, so he was neither alone nor ignored.

Something like the Polaris jury’s private message board is exactly the kind of place to have those discussions, to engage with others. Not to lecture them, which would mean you say your piece and then expect everyone to agree. Engaging means that someone responds, and then the conversation continues. How else will you ever change minds? Once it starts to get asinine—which might be after the first response, maybe the 10^th—just walk away. Your point’s been made. Maybe your opponent wasn’t convinced, but maybe someone else reading the thread was. Doesn’t this happen every day on Facebook and Twitter? Does this have to be explained to someone under 40? (Full disclosure: I have no idea how old Regalado is.)

I’m glad there is a discussion about Viet Cong happening before the Polaris gala next Monday. Mostly, I’m glad that this excellent piece ran in Exclaim!—a magazine, by the way, edited by the Polaris jury foreperson Regalado takes issue with.

I don’t think the Polaris prize is perfect, far from it. And the behaviour of many jurors on the private group occasionally irks me as well, including jurors I like personally—but mostly I just ignore it, because it’s easy to ignore. I’m sorry that Regalado only saw hostility. I’ve learned a lot from my fellow jurors, even the ones I don’t like personally. I see passionate people who have elevated obscure or difficult records to national and international prominence. I’ve seen valuable conversations develop when someone like Tagaq or Godspeed or Fucked Up or Final Fantasy take home the prize. And even though I take issue with Regalado’s points,  and his breach of privacy, hopefully some valuable conversations will emerge from this as well—in the tiny, tiny world where any of this pretends to matter.

(Full disclosure: I am and will continue to be a Canadaland patron.)

UPDATE: Proving the earnestness of Canada's music and media industries, many people don't seem to understand that the headline of this article is sarcastic, in direct reference to the headline on the Canadaland piece. Because I have to explain sarcasm, no wonder these problems boiled to the surface in the first place.)

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.