metric up for 2009 polaris music prize

Winner to be announced in September

It’s easy to forget that Neko Case isn’t Canadian so our first reaction upon seeing this year’s Polaris Music Prize shortlist – something along the lines of “OMG! WTF! No Middle Cyclone?!?” – was a rather foolish waste of our precious righteous indignation. What we were happy to see, however, was that Metric have made the list of the 10 Canadian albums eligible for the $20,000 prize money. Sadly, Emily Haines will be the only one flying the flag for Canadian women as the rest of the shortlist is disappointingly male-dominated. Sure, the Fucked Up album has some guest vocals from the amazing Katie Stelmanis, but we would have liked to have seen longlist nominees Martha Wainwright, Jill Barber, Lhasa, Land Of Talk and Cœur De Pirate make it into the final ten.

Now in its fourth year – and yet to be claimed by a female artist or female-fronted band – the Polaris Music Prize is voted on by a jury of 182 music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers from across Canada. Albums on this year’s list were required to have been released between June 1st, 2008 and May 31st, 2009. Six of this year’s finalists have been previously nominated, with Patrick Watson claiming the prize in 2007, and, for the first time ever, there are no debut albums on the list.  “If there’s a common thread to these records, it’s that each artist built on previous successes by pushing themselves into even riskier artistic dimensions,” said Steve Jordan, Founder and Executive Director of the Prize, while announcing the nominees. “Listeners will find the jury picked quite an ambitious crop this year. This is exactly the kind of artistry that Polaris aims to support.”

The winner will be announced during a ceremony at a concert hall in the Masonic Temple in Toronto on September 21st.

Full list of nominees:

Elliot BROOD – Mountain Meadows
Fucked Up – The Chemistry Of Common Life
Great Lake Swimmers – Lost Channels
Hey Rosetta! – Into Your Lungs (and around in your heart and on through your blood)
K’NAAN – Troubadour
Malajube – Labyrinthes
Metric – Fantasies
Joel Plaskett – Three
Chad VanGaalen – Soft Airplane
Patrick Watson – Wooden Arms

 

In other Metric news, the band will release ‘Gimme Sympathy’, the third single from Fantasies, on August 3rd.

Alan Pedder

 

‘Gimme Sympathy’

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqldwoDXHKg]

Written by: Wears The Trousers magazine

Tags: alan pedder, emily haines, metric

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under news, the inside leg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.