The stars are out

Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist. (Mary Rozzi/EMI Music Canada)

The launch last summer of the Polaris Music Prize, Canada’s analogue to Britain’s Mercury Prize, was a source of elation and subsequent frustration for music journalists. Each participant had to devise a list of his or her favourite Canadian albums released between June 1, 2005, and May 31, 2006 (myself included). The elation part is obvious: music journos live for making lists — especially one that, regardless of the winner, is intended to raise awareness of homegrown music. The frustration comes in narrowing it down to an essential five albums. (For a music critic, the task can bring on an existential crisis.)

When the inaugural short list was announced last July, each of the 10 nominated discs received a special Polaris sticker, a blue badge of excellence that would inevitably help drive sales in record stores. At a gala event in September, the 10-person jury awarded the $20,000 prize to He Poos Clouds by Toronto violinist and songwriter Final Fantasy, a.k.a. Owen Pallett.

On July 10, Polaris honcho Steve Jordan issued the 2007 short list (for albums released between June 1, 2006, and May 31, 2007). The final award will be handed out September 24. The nominees are:

• Neon Bible, Arcade Fire

• The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse, The Besnard Lakes

• Gang of Losers, The Dears

• Woke Myself Up, Julie Doiron

• The Reminder, Feist

• So This Is Goodbye, Junior Boys

• Five Roses, Miracle Fortress

• Ashtray Rock, Joel Plaskett Emergency

• Skelliconnection, Chad VanGaalen

• Close To Paradise, Patrick Watson

My first response: Woo-hoo! The Junior Boys album — my personal No. 1 pick — made it through. My second thought, arrived at after scanning the rest of the list: disappointing. Obviously, you can’t blame the musicians for poll results. Nor can you fault the judges individually. Yet for a country so proud of its diversity, the picture that emerges here is depressingly homogenous, both in terms of genre (indie rock) and skin tone (white).

Matt Didemus, left, and Jeremy Greenspan, a.k.a. Junior Boys. (Timothy Saccenti/Domino Recording Co. Ltd.)

In their defence, the jurors picked some of indie rock’s recent best: Miracle Fortress’s Five Roses is a rich and dreamy record that channels the guitar buzz of shoegazer rock and the celestial harmonies of the Beach Boys; Skelliconnection, the latest by Calgary one-man orchestra Chad VanGaalen, is a bold yet fun-filled frolic; Montreal’s Patrick Watson, meanwhile, created an album (Close to Paradise) of complex, haunting balladry.

Last year’s short list (2006) also tilted in indie’s favour, but it contained a pair of hip-hop albums (K’Naan’s The Dusty Foot Philosopher and Cadence Weapon’s Breaking Kayfabe). Where’s hip-hop at in ’07? There were a string of exceptional discs, from Abdominal’s Escape from the Pigeon Hole to Trop Banane, an abundantly cheeky record by francophone rappers OMNIKROM. Jazz is neglected, no surprise there; classical and opera are so alien to most rock critics they almost qualify as other media entirely. The 2006 short list included Malajube’s majestic Trompe L’oeil, which sparked national (even continental) interest in francophone rock. Qu’est-ce qui passé cette année?

There’s also poor representation from bestselling artists. To borrow the prize directors’ own verbiage, Polaris “annually honours, celebrates and rewards creativity and diversity in Canadian recorded music by recognizing, then marketing the albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history” (my italics). It’s a pretty simple directive. And yet many music journos are conflicted about what their ballot should accomplish. Is it just a list of the most technically accomplished Canadian albums of the last year… or is it an opportunity to champion five direly unknown (and thus underappreciated) artists?

Those two aims can overlap, but often don’t. Most journalists have an innate distrust of populist fare. Case in point: the absence of Nelly Furtado’s Loose. Ignore the fact that it has sold 10 million copies worldwide. The album was daring, inventive, tuneful — not to mention a gutsy left turn for a pretty anodyne artist. And what of Gregory Charles, the Montreal singer-songwriter who delivered one of the most accomplished pop albums of the year (I Think of You)?

No one who follows Canadian music can feign shock at the inclusion of Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible or Feist’s The Reminder on the short list — not since both artists have won resounding worldwide approval. I don’t begrudge their popularity, largely because Arcade Fire and Feist offer something heartfelt and timeless in an era marked by ironic detachment and gimmickry. The Reminder shows Leslie Feist to be a more confident and enterprising artist, though I can’t say it’s an album for the ages. As for Neon Bible, to me it demonstrates the limits of Arcade Fire’s musical vision; Funeral (2004) was a gust of raw emotion, but they’ve made few advances in songwriting. To my ears, the album by Montreal’s Besnard Lakes (The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse) is far more ambitious and epic, bursting with melodic ideas and textural innovation.

But my mind remains unchanged: So This Is Goodbye is still the best Canadian disc I’ve heard in the last year. Junior Boys have an astounding command of melody to complement their haunting synth soundscapes. But in the interests of camaraderie, I wish all of this year’s Polaris nominees a profitable summer.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBCnews.ca/arts.

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